In the Trinity there is, 1. Ipseity. 2. Alterity. 3. Community. You may
express the formula thus:--
God, the absolute Will or Identity, = Prothesis. The Father = Thesis. The
Son = Antithesis. The Spirit = Synthesis.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge's admiration of Bull and Waterland as high theologians was
very great. Bull he used to read in the Latin Defensio Fidei Nicaenae,
using the Jesuit Zola's edition of 1784, which, I think, he bought at Rome.
He told me once, that when he was reading a Protestant English Bishop's
work on the Trinity, in a copy edited by an Italian Jesuit in Italy, he
felt proud of the church of England, and in good humour with the church of
Rome.--ED.]
* * * * *
The author of the Athanasian Creed is unknown. It is, in my judgment,
heretical in the omission, or implicit denial, of the Filial subordination
in the Godhead, which is the doctrine of the Nicene Creed, and for which
Bull and Waterland have so fervently and triumphantly contended; and by not
holding to which, Sherlock staggered to and fro between Tritheism and
Sabellianism. This creed is also tautological, and, if not persecuting,
which I will not discuss, certainly containing harsh and ill-conceived
language.
* * * * *
How much I regret that so many religious persons of the present day think
it necessary to adopt a certain cant of manner and phraseology as a token
to each other. They must _improve_ this and that text, and they must do so
and so in a _prayerful_ way; and so on. Why not use common language? A
young lady the other day urged upon me that such and such feelings were the
_marrow_ of all religion; upon which I recommended her to try to walk to
London upon her marrow-bones only.
* * * * *
_July_ 9. 1827.