Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

306 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMhaving one eternity, immensity, infinity, immutability ;one omnipresence, one omniscience, one goodness, onesanctity. Now in the Plotinic Trinity the first processionof the Absolute Unity was the Universal Mind,and the second procession from the Universal Mindwas the Universal Soul, both being successive weakeningsof the First One, and the latter touching alreadyon the world of matter. There was, therefore, no realresemblance between the two. The Plotinic Trinityis as remote from the Christian as the Plotinic Unityis from the One God. It stands, however, to thatUnity as the Christian Trinity stands to the ChristianUnity. For the Plotinic Trinity is an attempt to explainthe origin of things, and is produced in furtherance ofthat attempt; whereas the Christian Trinity is a revelationof the ever-blessed Being of God, His inner Lifeand Blessedness in Himself, independent of creatures.ut the force of the Plotinic conception lay inthe relation which it established between the worldand God ; and here the antagonism with the Christian.Faith comes into yet fuller light. The processionof all things from the Absolute Unity through theMind and the Soul, down to the last particle ofMatter, was as eternal and necessary as the processionof "the Divine " itself; a procession devoid of will, inwhich there was one only substance, and one onlyoperation, under every variety of appearance. utthe Triune Christian God creates all things out ofnothing, and this in a threefold sense. Out ofnothing, because there is no pre-existent matter;again, out of nothing, because non-being precedes innature ; and, once more, out of nothing, because non-being precedes in time.1 And hence is seen the truth1 See Stockl, Philosophic dcs Mittelaltcr*, ii. 542, from St. Thomas,