Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/215

Rh, they would occasion madness. Nevertheless the idea of three Gods is not thereby removed, but only a heavy and stupid faith begotten, under the influence whereof men think of God, like people fast asleep in a dream, or like those that walk in midnight darkness, or as persons born blind, who cannot see even at noon-day. That a trinity of Gods abideth in the minds of Christians, though they are ashamed to acknowledge it, is very evident from the ingenuity of many in demonstrating three are one, and one three, by geometrical and stereometrical figures, and various applications of arithmetic and physics to the same purpose; and also by the foldings of a piece of cloth or paper; thus they trifle with the divine trinity, like so many diviners or calculators of nativities. This sort of divination or calculation may be compared with the sight of the eye, when people are in a fever, who looking at any single object, as a man, a table, or a candle, fancy it to be three, and on the other hand fancy three to be one. It may be compared also with the ludicrous representation sometimes exhibited with a piece of soft wax, which a man takes in his fingers, and moulds into various forms, at one time into a triangular form, to represent the trinity, at another time into a spherical form, to represent the unity, asserting it still to be one and the same substance. Thus do men trifle with the divine trinity, which nevertheless, in its undivided state, is like a pearl of the highest price, but, when divided into persons, is like a pearl divided into three parts, which, it is well known, in such a case, entirely loseth its value.