And here there appears a second contrast with the ways of ordinary speculations. When once the use of human terminology is criticized, as by Xenophanes, or by H. Spencer, the whole falls into discredit. We begin to talk in negatives of infinites and absolutes and so on; forgetting that the denial of such attributes as these words deny may be as irrelevant as to say that virtue is not square. The denial tells us nothing; it may possibly have no real meaning whatever. But the Catholic condemnation of the formula of Arius did more than this. It not only denied the truthfulness of certain statements, and the applicability of certain ideas, but it did so on definite grounds, in face of definite facts, and with a definite meaning. It asserted the generation, but denied that it occurred in time. But it will be said, that this is only a parallel to what Platonism did in establishing its scheme of the evolution of the world. According to Plotinus the world emerged from an overflow of the life resident in the first Principle, and yet the process did not occur in time.1 But apart from the fact that the temporal associations are very rarely consistently kept at a distance, the exclusion of them brings us more or less into conflict with facts as they are. The time idea is excluded by Platonism not from the nature of God only, but from creation. Instead of being able to separate the nature of God from that of created things in this respect, we are reduced to combining both in an immanent process which always remains the same. The world as well as God had no beginning and can have no end. quite parallel after all.

The cases, therefore, are not In the Catholic definitions we have a limit put upon human logic in a certain con1 ἐκποδὼν δὲ ἡμῖν ἔστω ἡ γένεσις ἡ ἐν χρόνῳ. Enn. v. 1, 6. Cf. v. 2, 1.

nexion, for a particular reason, to preserve intact a particular collection of facts. In Platonism, the difficulty of allowing the notion of time to enter into relation with God is felt as a part of the general failure to express Divine truth in human language; but the effort made to avoid this difficulty is such as virtually to contradict human experience. It is not, then, by means of metaphysical speculation that we escape from the trammels of our venture.

And the difficulty of which we are speaking presses even more hardly when we come to consider the evidence of the moral sense as to the nature of God. We saw in Chap. I. that the moral sense demands a personal ideal; that the facts of conscience point to a Personal God. But in the first place we pointed out that the moral ideal is capable of as little definite proof as the ideals of thought-the First Cause, etc.; it must always remain a hope rather than a certainty. And, secondly, do we, by contemplating it, get any nearer deciding whether a given Doctrine of God is satisfactory or not? When we think of it in connexion, let us say, with Trinitarianism, can we really maintain that it offers any suggestions which can reasonably be regarded as pointing towards plurality of persons? Our notion of Personality is for the most part single and individual, excluding all others who belong to the same class. What do we mean, after all, by saying that God is Personal? Does it carry any definite information, or is it only a negative idea, simply implying that mechanical views of God do not square with morality? It must be admitted that difficulties. like this will press and be hard to settle, and that on this level of inquiry there is strong reason for saying that man's knowledge of God is not of such a kind as

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to allow him to decide in favour of the Trinitarian view.

But, if it be true that the Trinitarian account of the Divine nature is simply an expansion and formulated statement of the truth which the Incarnation tells, and true also that the Incarnation has indeed occurred, the argument of which we have been speaking vanishes. For the Incarnation involves certain facts as to the nature of God, and these are susceptible of some form of intellectual utterance. Or, if this be not possible in full, it will be at least within our powers to notice and point out where the language we use is inadequate, where natural inferences from it are to be restrained, where the facts we have to deal with seem to allow of expression. The Agnostic argument, for this is what we have really had before us, has a great deal to be said for it within the lines of natural religion. When man starts off independently to seek God with the aid of his own faculties only, he may find them inadequate to the search. He cannot tell why or how; but he may know that he cannot criticize them or their utterances sufficiently to make his knowledge worth having.

if his aspirations and hopes are met half way by so powerful and significant a revelation of God's nature as is involved in the Incarnation, he cannot reasonably object to the Catholic doctrine of God, either as transcending the powers of the intellect, or as dealing presumptuously with the nature of God. For these arguments arise at a much earlier stage; they have nothing to do with Trinitarianism, if that part of the Creed be approached in logical and historical order.

First of all, then, let us gather together some of the passages in the Gospels in which our Lord's words seem to

involve a Trinitarian Theology. In the course of His ministry He alludes to the Father and the Holy Spirit in such a way as to establish the fact that He was different from them, and yet in some sense the same. The passages are, of course, most clearly marked in S. John's Gospel, but there are some few in the Synoptists which will be worth consideration. Let us consider first the evidence of the Synoptic Gospels to the existence and separate Personality of the Father: (1) Our Lord speaks constantly of 'My Father' in a special and distinctive sense. This is frequent from the time of His answer to His parents when they found Him in the Temple: 'Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?' (S. Luke ii. 49). (2) He makes relationship to Himself depend on obedience to the will of the Father: 'Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, he is My brother, and sister, and mother' (S. Matt. xii. 50; S. Mark iii. 35; cf. S. Luke viii. 21). (3) To the Father He ascribes the ultimate order of all things, especially in matters of revelation: Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in heaven' (S. Matt. xvi. 17), which in a measure excludes Himself. So in the great outpouring of thankfulness. after the return of the Disciples: 'I confess to Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in Thy sight' (S. Matt. xi. 26; S. Luke x. 21). And again: 'Every plant which My Heavenly Father planted not shall be rooted up' (S. Matt. xv. 13). 'It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish' (S. Matt. xviii. 14). And there is the great passage about the

hour of the judgment, of which we have already spoken (S. Matt. xxiv. 36; S. Mark xiii. 32). (4) So our Lord's mission is determined by the Father, and has certain limits: To sit on My right hand, and on My left hand, is not mine to give; but it is for them for whom it hath been prepared of My Father' (S. Matt. xx. 23; S. Mark x. 40). But, at the same time: 'All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father: and no one knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him' (S. Matt. xi. 27 ; S. Luke x. 22). Therefore He is able to say: 'For the elects' sake He shortened the days' (S. Mark xiii. 20); and again: 'I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven' (S. Matt. xviii. 10). So he can assure men that the Father will hear prayer (S. Matt. xviii. 19); that He knows the things we need (S. Matt. vi. 8-34); that He will forgive sin, if the sinners themselves forgive trespasses against themselves (S. Matt. vi. 14, 15). In all these passages our Lord never identifies Himself with the Father, though He claims unique knowledge of Him and unique relations with Him. And there can be no question that the Father of whom He spoke was God. To these should be added the twofold witness of the Father to the Son-at the Baptism and Transfiguration.

On the subject of the Person and Divinity of the Holy Ghost we have a number of passages of which the collective import is not wanting in clearness: (1) The being of the Holy Ghost is brought before us chiefly in His connexion with the Incarnation of Christ. Our Lord is Incarnate by the Holy Ghost (S. Luke i. 35). He comes upon Christ at His baptism (S. Matt. iii. 16;