Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/38

34 the same with it. but in a primary order and degree. On which account, after identifying himself with the Father, he proceeds to identify himself in like manner with the Comforter, or Spirit of truth, whom he promised to send after his personal departure out of the world, saying to his disciples, "I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you," John xiv. 18.

HAVING in the preceding pages considered the Lord as the Father, as the Son, and as the Holy Spirit; and having identified these essentials as one undivided God; it follows, that there is a Divine Trinity in the person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, similar to the human trinity of soul, body, and proceeding operation in every individual man. And as the three essentials, which constitute a human trinity, do not in the smallest degree derogate from the unity of man's nature, perception, and life; so neither do the three essentials, which constitute the divine trinity, in the smallest degree violate the divine unity, but on the contrary they rather exalt, illustrate, and confirm it. To assert, as some do, that the Father is one person, the Son another, and the Holy Spirit a third, each one distinct from the other, each one by himself a complete God and Lord, though to one are ascribed properties which are denied to the others, and all three co-eval with each other, that is to say, all three co-existent with each other from eternity, is such a manifest and yet contradictory avowal of a Trinity of Gods, that no after-palliation, no lip-confession of there being still only One God, can ever be admitted as any apology for the insult offered both to the Sacred