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| The Unity of God. He is the Supreme Being, and There Cannot Be a Second Supreme. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
III.—The Unity of God. He is the Supreme Being, and There Cannot
Be a Second Supreme.
The principal, and indeed2360
the whole, contention lies in the point of number: whether two
Gods may be admitted, by poetic licence (if they must be),2361 or pictorial fancy, or by the third process,
as we must now add,2362 of heretical
pravity. But the Christian verity has distinctly declared this
principle, “God is not, if He is not one;” because we more
properly believe that that has no existence which is not as it ought to
be. In order, however, that you may know that God is one, ask what God
is, and you will find Him to be not otherwise than one. So far as a
human being can form a definition of God, I adduce one which the
conscience of all men will also acknowledge,—that God is the
great Supreme existing in eternity, unbegotten, unmade without
beginning, without end. For such a condition as this must needs be
ascribed to that eternity which makes God to be the great Supreme,
because for such a purpose as this is this very attribute2363 in God; and so on as to the other
qualities: so that God is the great Supreme in form and in
reason, and in might and in power.2364
2364 We subjoin the
original of this difficult passage: Hunc enim statum æternitati
censendum, quæ summum magnum deum efficiat, dum hoc est in deo
ipsa, atque ita et cetera, ut sit deus summum magnum et forma et
ratione et vi et potestate. | Now, since all
are agreed on this point (because nobody will deny that God is in some
sense2365 the great Supreme, except the man who shall
be able to pronounce the opposite opinion, that God is but some
inferior being, in order that he may deny God by robbing Him of an
attribute of God), what must be the condition of the great Supreme
Himself? Surely it must be that nothing is equal to Him, i.e.
that there is no other great supreme; because, if there were, He would
have an equal; and if He had an equal, He would be no longer the great
Supreme, now that the condition and (so to say) our law, which permits
nothing to be equal to the great Supreme, is subverted. That Being,
then, which is the great Supreme, must needs be unique,2366
2366 Unicus. [Alone of his
kind.] | by having no equal, and so not ceasing to be
the great Supreme. Therefore He will not otherwise exist than by the
condition whereby He has His being; that is, by His absolute
uniqueness. Since, then, God is the great Supreme, our Christian
verity has rightly declared,2367
2367 As its first
principle. | “God is not,
if He is not one.” Not as if we doubted His being God, by saying,
He is not, if He is not one; but because we define Him, in whose being
we thoroughly believe, to be that without which He is not God; that is
to say, the great Supreme. But then2368 the great
Supreme must needs be unique. This Unique Being, therefore, will
be God—not otherwise God than as the great Supreme; and not
otherwise the great Supreme than as having no equal; and not otherwise
having no equal than as being Unique. Whatever other god, then, you may
introduce, you will at least be unable to maintain his divinity under
any other guise,2369 than by ascribing
to him too the property of Godhead—both eternity and supremacy
over all. How, therefore, can two great Supremes co-exist, when this is
the attribute of the Supreme Being, to have no equal,—an
attribute which belongs to One alone, and can by no means exist in
two?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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