Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/191

 and unity are viewed in fact according to the coeternality of the persons, according to the identity of the essentiality, activity, and will, according to the concord of definitions, according to the identity—I do not say similitude, but identity—of power, almightiness, and goodness, and according to the one tendency of motion—Each of the hypostases has a unity with the other, not less than with itself; that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one in all respects but ungeneratedness, birth, and derivation, and are divided only in our ratiocination (ἐπίνοια). For we know only one God, and only in the properties of fatherhood, sonhood, and derivation do we present a difference—In the unlimited Deity we cannot assume, as in us, spatial distance, because the hypostases exist one in the other, but in such a way that they are not blended, but united, according to the words of the Lord: I am the Father, and the Father in me (John xiv. 11); nor distinction of will, definitions, activities, power, or anything else, which in us produce a real and complete division. Therefore we recognize the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost not as three Gods, but as one God in the Holy Trinity. The whole incomprehensibility of the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity consists precisely in this, that the three independent persons of the Deity are one in essence and entirely inseparable; if they existed separately one from the other, like three entities among the creatures, there would be nothing incomprehensible in that. ‘The Deity is one and three: oh, most glorious transformation!’ What is united in essence is divided according to the persons: the indivisible is divided, what is one is trebled: that is the Father, the Son, and the living Spirit, preserving all.” (pp. 164 and 165.)

So here it is, all the doctrine, all the God-revealed truth, revealed to me in all its fulness for the sake of my salvation. “The Deity is one and three. Oh, most glorious transformation!” The exposition and explana-