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understandings will make it apparent to us that to these attributes, whatsoever it may be to which we concede them, we must add Personality. For in taking account of the subject of intellectual attributes, if we wish to express distinctly the conception we have formed, we use the word Person. An intelligent, but impersonal agent would again be a contradiction in terms. Intellect and Will, it is true, are not the sole attributes which constitute our conception of a Person. To specify others, however, would cause confusion at this stage of my argument; nor is it necessary to be thus definite. If the acts attributable to the Original Cause are once admitted to be volitional, the sort of intelligence they imply will, as a matter of course, be held to include everything that is essential to the concept represented by the word Person. The ability to "consider itself as itself," a qualification which enters into Locke's definition of the term, must needs be attributed to an Intellect which is conceived as having originated the human mind.

10. The term, however, has a significance which yet remains to be noticed, and in respect to which, if from any point of view at all, the propriety of its application to the Eternal Being will be readily conceded. Under varying experiences, however accompanied by changes in phenomenal conditions and adjuncts, their subject, if intellective, is conscious of being, as subject, ever the same. He perceives that he is something which threads together, as it were, successive phases of thought, and feeling, and, it may be, character. At once the subject and the object of intellectual apprehension, he discovers in the act an individual: that which constitutes the kind of unity presupposed in his mental operations he cannot for a moment conceive either as being divisible, or as losing its distinctness in any com

bination. Now, the word Person, if understood as indicating any kind of finite entity, is never applied, except to a supposed individual, or, if the phrase may be allowed, an intellective atom. But personality, under this notion, being consistent even with mutability, à fortiori it may be ascribed to that Originating Power of which our conception must

• That the Supreme Being is, in the sense above explained, One Person, may be affirmed without impugning the doctrine that in the Godhead there are Three ὑποστάσεις. For ὑπόστασις, although in this connection commonly rendered "Person," signifies properly substance, that is, real being. The thought, therefore, which the word is designed to convey, when severally applied as predicate to the titles Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is, that these represent no mere subjective conceptions, varieties of notion under which the Divine Being has been conceived by theologians, but objective realities, eternally distinct as such. These distinctions relate to something which, of course, cannot be conceived except as transcending all imagination; but that they are not to be lightly classed with the refinements of mere scholastic theology, will, I think, appear if reality is ascribed to an ideally perfect character, considered as including among its attributes, not only Paternal, but also Filial love, and moreover that love whose activity is due to these, and whose bliss arises from the perception of them that Spirit which their fruitfulness discloses, the source of all the emotions and acts which show that they are understood and appreciated. For there is no perfection of Love but in the Eternal essence: none is good, save One, even God" (Luke xviii. 19). To be holy and without blemish is to be "partakers of a Divine nature" (2 Pet. i. 4).

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The word "Person" is with difficulty separable from associations through which orthodox theology is very liable to be converted in the minds of believers into tritheism. "Substance," however, although the correct term, would probably in this respect be even more objectionable; since it would almost certainly be confounded with essence (ovola). It has been argued above that there can be no more than One Divine Essence and One Originating Mind and Will; and thus it has been intimated that the word Person, as equivalent to Óσтaσis, cannot be legitimately applied without scientific caution and reserve. Strictly speaking, there can be but One Divine Nature. Such a nature, however, may, without impropriety, be ascribed even to a creature (vid. 2 Pet. i. 4), provided the phrase be understood to imply no more than that, although manifesting godlike qualities, the

necessarily be that it is not only one and indivisible, but in all respects immutable.

II. Thus it will appear that we are now in a position to make a strictly personal application of the name which connotes the various characteristics that may be attributed to the Cause of the universe, and to account for all things finite and changeable by affirming that God made them, and that because of His Will they existed and were created. This conception of the Creator is indeed liable to be degraded by the fictions of an anthropomorphizing imagination; but it is, notwithstanding, the worthiest and the most sublime that ever entered into the mind of man. what we conceive is an eternal immensity and completeness

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creature has no goodness of his own, but, in so far as he is godlike, thinks and feels and acts as an organ of the Divine Spirit.

That there are трíɑ πрóσwжɑ in the Godhead, the Sabellians were willing to allow; but the Sabellian doctrine was that these are but τρεῖς ὀνομασίας, one and the same ὑπόστασις under three different names. If the Latin language had not unfortunately ignored the distinction between Essence and Substance, an adequate representation of the scientifically accurate Greek word would probably be found in the formularies of the Western Church in the place now occupied by a term which properly corresponds to πрóσwπov. The orthodox Greek theologians manifested not only spiritual wisdom, but a certain scientific tact, in adopting and insisting upon the importance of retaining a term which, rightly understood, is equally opposed to bald unitarianism and tritheistic error.

Nothing is here said from which it may be inferred that πрÓσWπOV is altogether inapplicable. In so far as it simply asserts the reality of relations which no human imagination can dissociate from distinctness in respect to personality and individual freedom of action, this term may doubtless be allowed. Nor is it overlooked that we cannot know the Son of God and learn from Him without ascribing to Him a Will distinct from that of the Father-cannot ignore that it is characteristic of Him as the Son to say, "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt" (Matt. xxvi. 39). If, however, we put acquiescence out of view, and merely contemplate a Will that originated and determines all things, what I maintain is that we are constrained to acknowledge that It is One.

of mental comprehension, and therefore an intellectual state admitting of no advance or change; moreover, a plan which was at no time formed, but entertained from everlasting; and further, a power of Will conditioned by no limitations, except such as are imposed by the adorable character of Him to whom it belongs. It may be freely granted that, in the imagination of the ancient Hebrews -and in this respect the great majority of them were doubtless, like their heathen contemporaries, spiritually children—the Supreme Being was but “a magnified Man.” But those who represented Him as seeing, and planning, and willing, and commanding, expressed themselves in a language to which we should do no adequate justice if we were merely to say that it was compatible with Divine Inspiration. Even when the utterance of a resplendent imagination, it was not more poetical than scientific. That it fell short of the truth, who will deny? For what was it but an attempt to speak the ineffable? Yet, in so far as it shunned lank, meagre forms of thought, skeleton-like abstractions, and moved among representations suggested by the capacities and faculties of the human mind, it came as near as might be to That which transcends all imagination.

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1. EVERY act of Will presupposes of necessity some propositum, or purpose, in the mind of the subject. In so far as a limb or fibre of any organized frame is moved otherwise than by the application of external force or by reflex action, an object is aimed at, even if it be nothing more than the movement itself; nor can the slightest transition of thought, if volitional, be conceived as taking place without some definable, however insignificant, aim.

2. But the action performed may be a purely haphazard experiment; in which case the propositum, although a result, cannot be said to be the result which is eventually obtained. The actual result may indeed be one that has been wished and hoped for, but, except as connected with the agent's will by a presumed catena of causes and effects, it cannot be said to have been designed by him; nor, if a break in the chain should be afterwards discovered, can his will be any longer credited with the determination of the event. If, laying a pair of dice upon a table, I place them, say with the sixes uppermost, their position indicates my design; but if, on my throwing them, they assume this

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