Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 2.djvu/60

32 He is not duration or space, but He endures and is present; He endures always, and is present everywhere; He is omnipresent, not only virtually, but also substantially, for power without substance cannot subsist. All things are contained and move in Him, but without any mutual passion; He suffers nothing from the motions of bodies; nor do they undergo any resistance from His omnipresence. It is confessed that exists necessarily, and by the same necessity He exists always and everywhere. Hence also He must be perfectly similar, all eye, all ear, all arm, all the power of perceiving, understanding, and acting, but after a manner not at all corporeal, after a manner not like that of men, after a manner wholly to us unknown. He is destitute of all body, and all bodily shape; and therefore cannot be seen, heard, or touched; nor ought to be worshipped under the representation of anything corporeal. We have ideas of the attributes of, but do not know the substance of even anything; we see only the figures and colours of bodies, hear only sounds, touch only the outward surfaces, smell only odours, and taste tastes; and do not, cannot, by any sense, or reflex act, know their inward substances; and much less can we have any notion of the substance of. We know Him by His properties and attributes."

Further, the extracts quoted from their rituals, at the beginning of this chapter, and the able dissertation referred to in the Appendix, are sufficient proof of the orthodoxy of the Nestorians on the important article now under consideration. Mar Abd Yeshua says of it, that "in the confession of the Trinity all Christians agree, for all receive the Nicene Creed, which creed confesses that the Trinity is co-equal in essence, dignity, power, and will;" and his own illustrations of this mystery will amply repay a careful perusal. He does not attempt, by any effort of human reasoning, to prove a doctrine which he admits to be beyond the comprehension of all; but he so opens it out as to enable the mind rightly to conceive of this truth so clearly revealed to us in the Sacred Scriptures, and thus to prevent, as far as may be, that mental confusion of the three Divine Persons, which is apt to perplex even the most devout whenever they contemplate the providence of the towards the world, or their own individual dependance on Him.