Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/33

Rh their understanding, and call their confusion faith. This, I affirm, not as speaking reproachfully, but, as I suppose, on the ground of sufficient evidence—partly because it cannot be otherwise, and partly because it visibly is not. "No man can assert three persons, meaning three consciousnesses, wills, and understandings, and still have any intelligent meaning in his mind, when he asserts that they are yet one person. . ..

"There are too many signs of the mental confusion I speak of, not to believe that it exists. Thus if the class I speak of were to hear a discourse insisting on the proper personal unity of God, it would awaken suspicion in their minds: while a discourse insisting on the existence of three persons, would be only a certain proof of orthodoxy; showing that they profess three persons, meaning what they profess, and one person, really not meaning it."

The same distinguished writer further remarks, and in a similar vein:

"Meantime, and especially in the former class of those who range themselves under this metaphysical tripersonality, mournful evidence will be found that a confused and painfully bewildered state is often produced by it. They are practically at work in their thoughts, to choose between the three; sometimes actually and decidedly preferring one to another; doubting how to adjust their minds in worship; uncertain, often, which of the three to obey; turning away, possibly, from one in a feeling of dread that might well be called aversion; devoting themselves to another as the Romanist to his patron saint. This, in fact, is