Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/126

108 referred, confidently adapts his interpretation of the letter of Scripture to the principles which he had learned, through whatever indirect channels, from Plato. r The wisdom of the world, he repeats, is foolishness with God: not that God esteems the wisdom of this world to be foolishness, but because it is foolishness in comparison of his wisdom; nor does it follow on that account that it is foolishness.

William therefore seeks God through nature: he proves his existence from the good design and government of the world, and scruples not to find a different explanation of the mystery of the Trinity from that which is sanctioned by the fathers of the church. There is, he says, in the Godhead, power, and wisdom, and will, which the saints call three persons, applying these terms to them by a sort of affinity of meaning, and saying that the divine power is Father, the wisdom Son, the will the Holy Ghost... The Father, he continues, ''begat the Son, that is the divine power begat wisdom, when he provided how he would create things and dispose them when created: and since he provided this before the ages, before the ages he begat the Son, that is, wisdom; and this of himself not of another, because not by the teaching of another nor by experience, but of his own nature, he had this knowledge. From the time he was (if it be lawful to say it of eternity), from that time he knew these things, nor was there any else to know them. If therefore he is eternal, his wisdom also is eternal. Thus the Father begat the Son, coeternal with him and consubstantial.'' In