The Trinity is, 1. the Will; 2. the Reason, or Word; 3. the Love, or Life.
As we distinguish these three, so we must unite them in one God. The union
must be as transcendant as the distinction.
Mr. Irving's notion is tritheism,--nay, rather in terms, tri-daemonism. His
opinion about the sinfulness of the humanity of our Lord is absurd, if
considered in one point of view; for body is not carcass. How can there be
a sinful carcass? But what he says is capable of a sounder interpretation.
Irving caught many things from me; but he would never attend to any thing
which he thought he could not use in the pulpit. I told him the certain
consequence would be, that he would fall into grievous errors. Sometimes he
has five or six pages together of the purest eloquence, and then an
outbreak of almost madman's babble.[1]
[Footnote 1:
The admiration and sympathy which Mr. Coleridge felt and expressed towards
the late Mr. Irving, at his first appearance in London, were great and
sincere; and his grief at the deplorable change which followed was in
proportion. But, long after the tongues shall have failed and been
forgotten, Irving's name will live in the splendid eulogies of his friend.
See _Church and State_, p. 180. n.--ED.]
_May 16. 1830._