Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/251

 There are three Persons, but they are not essentially distinguished. Tres personæ, but una essentia. So far the conception is a natural one. We can conceive three and even more persons, identical in essence. Thus we men are distinguished from one another by personal differences, but in the main, in essence, in humanity, we are one. And this identification is made not only by the speculative understanding, but even by feeling. A given individual is a man as we are; punctum satis; in this feeling all distinctions vanish,—whether he be rich or poor, clever or stupid, culpable or innocent. The feeling of compassion, sympathy, is therefore a substantial, essential, speculative feeling. But the three or more human persons exist apart from each other, have a separate existence, even when they verify and confirm the unity of their nature by fervent love. They together constitute, through love, a single moral personality, but each has a physical existence for himself. Though they may be reciprocally absorbed in each other, may be unable to dispense with each other, they have yet always a formally independent existence. Independent existence, existence apart from others, is the essential characteristic of a person, of a substance. It is otherwise in God, and necessarily so; for while his personality is the same as that of man, it is held to be the same with a difference, on the ground simply of this postulate: there must be a difference. The three Persons in God have no existence out of each other; else there would meet us in the heaven of Christian dogmatics, not indeed many gods, as in Olympus, but at least three divine Persons in an individual form, three Gods. The gods of Olympus were real persons, for they existed apart from each other, they had the criterion of real personality in their individuality, though they were one in essence, in divinity; they had different personal attributes, but were each singly a god, alike in divinity, different as existing subjects or persons; they were genuine