applied to other than finite beings, for such alone are capable of returning by a circuit, which is the true signification of the word.

Whitby on the other hand, who in his latter days deviated from orthodoxy into arianism, has * deduced contradictions from the doctrine of the trinity in unity, which may be usefully stated as examples of the fallacy attending every effort to reason on a subject placed so far beyond human comprehension. "Hence it must follow," says this writer, "that the same numerical essence must be self-existent and not self-existent, communicated and yet incommunicable (as a self-existent essence must necessarily be), generated and ungenerated, derived and underived; it being certain that the Father's essence is self-existing, uncommunicated, and underived; and that the essence of the Son is not so; so that it must be an express contradiction to predicate these opposite and contradictory assertions of the same numerical essence-" In regard to this argument it may be sufficient to state, that the term numerical, on which its validity depends, implies finiteness, because it denotes something which may be numbered, as being externally distinct and separate from other things of the same kind. But with what propriety can such a term be applied to the infinite essence of the eternal and omnipresent

Last Thoughts, p. 6.

God?

How can that which is infinite be numbered, as externally distinct from other essences of the same kind, which are also infinite? The truth is that Whitby, in applying the term numerical, argues about the nature of God as finite, and then very naturally concludes, that not to conceive of the divine Persons as wholly distinct, would involve him in contradictions. The contradictions however arise from his own error, and belong not to a subject which is infinite, and cannot therefore be a fit object of our numeration.

The question, simply and fairly stated, is resolved into these two: 1. is it contradictory to believe, that God should, by derivation from himself, give being to other Agents, which should consequently possess all the attributes belonging to a divine nature, underived exister.ce alone excepted, because, if this were not excluded, there would be a direct contradiction in terms; and 2. is the human understanding adequate to perceive that, in a case in which the primary and the derived beings are all infinite, as being all possessed of a divine nature with its inherent attributes, there may not still subsist a unity of godhead, however inapplicable such a unity must be to finite existences, derived one from another according to the known laws of generation. When these two questions are thus plainly proposed, it will scarcely be maintained, that any contradic

tion is involved in the former, or that the mind of man is competent to deny the possibility of the unity, which is the subject of the latter.

The inability of the human mind to contemplate infinity is best illustrated from arithmetic, the most distinct of all sciences. It is acknowledged that number, however unbounded, cannot reach to an actual infinity, for no number can be conceived so great, that it may not be increased, and this cannot be true of that which is already infinite. There is indeed a part of this science, which has been named the arithmetic of infinites; but it should rather have been named the arithmetic of indefinites, for the quantities, which it contemplates, are merely greater than any assignable, and therefore are not understood to be actually infinite, but only to have no fixed and assignable limits. Though there are, both in geometry and in arithmetic, problems for determining the sum of an infinite series, yet the quantities are really finite, as these are series of decreasing terms, and the number of the terms is, as has been explained, indefinite, not actually infinite.

It may also be easily shown from a consideration of numbers, how fallacious is the inference from finite to infinite, for the very same principles of calculation, which in finite numbers are strictly and universally true, become fruitful of absurd and contradictory consequences, when an attempt is made to apply them

to cases involving the consideration of infinity. It is in arithmetic an undoubted principle, that every dividend is equal to the product formed by multiplying the divisor by the quotient it is also certain that if, while the dividend is unvaried, the divisor be increased in any ratio, the quotient will be diminished in a corresponding ratio. Let these principles be applied in a case, in which the divisor has been supposed to be augmented to infinity, and consequently the quotient to be diminished to nothing, and the dividend, whatsoever number it may happen to be, must be equal to the product of the same two terms, namely, infinity and nothing. If now the latter be considered as a real term, all numbers would be equal; if, as in finite cases, it be conceived to reduce the product to nothing, the dividend must therefore be nothing, and all numbers would be annihilated. In either case the science of arithmetic is extinguished by the application of its own principles. If it be said, that the ordinary rules of arithmetical reasoning are not applicable to such a case, let * a similar reserve be maintained in contemplating the infinity of the godhead, to

* Locke indeed has represented the idea of God as formed by enlarging with infinity those qualities, which we find in our own minds, and conceive it better to have than to want. Essay on the Hum. Underst. b. 2. ch. 23. §. 33. The expression is however inaccurate, and should have been "by conceiving those qualities to be indefinitely enlarged."

which the properties of limited, and therefore numerical existence, must be not less inapplicable.

sense.

That infinity, which, it is conceived, should preclude men from applying their puny reasonings to the essence of the Divinity, is itself distinctly stated in the creed, though, on account of a change of the signification of a term, the clause is now commonly understood in a different "The Father," we are taught to say, "is incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible." The term is commonly understood to mean, that the three Persons of the Trinity are inconceivable; but this is a vulgar error. The word incomprehensible anciently signified that which cannot be contained, and was accordingly used by Hooker as equivalent to infinite. The original word also of the creed is immensus, which ascertains the true sense of the term used in the translation. We have therefore in the creed itself an explicit statement, that the divine Persons are, not inconceivable, which would render the creed absurd, but infinite, not to be confined within any bounds, to which the mind of man could extend its reasonings.

It may however be urged that, so far as human reasoning can proceed, it is even favourable to the doctrine, which the athanasian creed maintains as the true faith of a christian. All the reasoning, which has been employed to