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1. WE certainly seek a trinity, not any trinity, but that Trinity
which is God, and the true and supreme and only God. Let my hearers
then wait, for we are still seeking. And no one justly finds fault
with such a search, if at least he who seeks that which either to know
or to utter is most difficult, is steadfast in the faith. But
whosoever either sees or teaches better, finds fault quickly and justly
with any one who confidently affirms concerning it. "Seek God," he
says, "and your heart shall live;" and lest any one should rashly
rejoice that he has, as it were, apprehended it, "Seek," he
says, "His face evermore." And the apostle: "if any man," he
says, "think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he
ought to know. But if any man love God, the same is known of
Him." He has not said, has known Him, which is dangerous
presumption, but "is known of Him." So also in another place,
when he had said, "But now after that ye have known God:"
immediately correcting himself, he says, "or rather are known of
God." And above all in that other place, "Brethren," he says,
"I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do,
forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those
things which are before, I press in purpose toward the mark, for the
prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us
therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded." Perfection in
this life, he tells us, is nothing else than to forget those things
which are behind, and to reach forth and press in purpose toward those
things which are before. For he that seeks has the safest purpose,
[who seeks] until that is taken hold of whither we are tending, and
for which we are reaching forth. But that is the right purpose which
starts from faith. For a certain faith is in some way the
starting-point of knowledge; but a certain knowledge will not be made
perfect, except after this life, when we shall see face to face. Let
us therefore be thus minded, so as to know that the disposition to seek
the truth is more safe than that which presumes things unknown to be
known. Let us therefore so seek as if we should find, and so find as
if we were about to seek. For "when a man hath done, then he
beginneth." Let us doubt without unbelief of things to be believed;
let us affirm without rashness of things to be understood: authority
must be held fast in the former, truth sought out in the latter. As
regards this question, then, let us believe that the Father, and the
Son, and the Holy Spirit is one God, the Creator and Ruler of
the whole creature; and that the Father is not the Son, nor the
Holy Spirit either the Father or the Son, but a trinity of persons
mutually interrelated, and a unity of an equal essence. And let us
seek to understand this, praying for help from Himself, whom we wish
to understand; and as much as He grants, desiring to explain what we
understand with so much pious care and anxiety, that even if in any
case we say one thing for another, we may at least say nothing
unworthy. As, for the sake of example, if we say anything concerning
the Father that does not properly belong to the Father, or does
belong to the Son, or to the Holy Spirit, or to the Trinity
itself; and if anything of the Son which does not properly suit with
the Son, or at all events which does suit with the Father, or with
the Holy Spirit, or with the Trinity; or if, again, anything
concerning the Holy Spirit, which is not fitly a property of the
Holy Spirit, yet is not alien from the Father, or from the Son,
or from the one God the Trinity itself. Even as now our wish is to
see whether the Holy Spirit is properly that love which is most
excellent which if He is not, either the Father is love, or the
Son, or the Trinity itself; since we cannot withstand the most
certain faith and weighty authority of Scripture, saying, "God is
love." And yet we ought not to deviate into profane error, so as to
say anything of the Trinity which does not suit the Creator, but
rather the creature, or which is feigned outright by mere empty
thought.
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