92. ‘ Sir, can we realize all our minds can grasp ? ’ — No. I can conceive of things I cannot be : the unglorified body is not so agile as the mind.
93. ‘ What is a reasonable man ? ’ — One who is controlled in joy and sorrow, him I call a reasonable man. — ‘ How would you define prayer ? ’ — St Augustine says, prayer is the soul’s detachment from things and attachment to God. — ‘ Tell me. Sir, can we be rid of things at once without any trouble ? ’ — No, it is always accompanied with pain : that indicates the pull of something higher. If it comes without pain it is no matter for rejoicing. True, St Paul lost things all at once, but afterwards he had to conquer them in detail. Conquests made by suffering are lasting.
94. What God has by nature in unity is not denied to any rational creature, by grace, in his individuality. Rejoicing and sorrowing, that is nature. We must expect nature in people.
95. ‘ Sir, are we punished for faults ? ’ — We are punished for sins and hindered by faults. — ‘ But you said that when a man has eternal light he never has anything between and now you say he is prone to sin. Do such people sin and is sin punished w4th fire ? You certainly did say that they have nothing between. How are these two facts to be reconciled ? How is the sin wiped out ? ’ — By the perfect love of the creator to his creature and the creature to his creator : the sin lies between them and in the fire of their love sin burns away.
96. ‘ Those to whom eternal light has come, do they afterwards remain in a state of love and vision ? I am wondering, being established in the one, where there is naught but one, how they manage to be one and other, for there is that in me, when spirit conceives unity, that passes all distinction. Arc grace and vision and light all the same ? ’ — No, not by any means. Take an illustration. The stars are put out by the sun and in the same way grace and vision fade when eternal light is given. The highest of the angels draws a form from God and on assuming it, adapts it further to himself and informs therewith the middle ones who pass it on to those below and the lowest give it to the soul and the fiend can copy it. So they may be deceived. But the soul in whom the heavenly Father speaks his Word does not receive from the lower angels : what the highest of the angels draws from God he pours into this soul without the intervention of the rest. Verily I say, seldom or never do people get through angels apparitions of such things as are given in time and temporalities.
97. ‘ What is the difference between nature and spirit ? ’ — I call that spirit whereby we are aware what we ought to have and what to leave whether we would or no. Spirit makes us do it, willy-nilly. Not to do it because we do not want to would be nature.
98. ‘ When is nature uppermost ? ’ — When we have at heart something we ought to get rid of and will not.
99. ‘ How would you distinguish, Sir, between sin, fault and infirmity ? ’ — It is sin to cleave with desire to anything that does not make for God. By a fault I mean any accidental falling short of God. And infirmity may be defined as not having the mind fixed on God all the time.
100. ‘ O thou fathomless Truth,’ cries St Paul, ‘ thy ways are past finding out ! ’ When he cries O, he is thinking of the hidden hoard of the divine nature. — ‘ What hoard ? ’ — The wisdom of God. Angels’ and souls’ desire is appeased by nothing but the best. The wisdom of God is savoured when all creatures point (us) towards the best. The other hoard is God’s art. Art amounts, intemporal things, to singling out the best. True art loses this altogether and abides in the ground of them all. St Paul was caught up above this wonder and above this O and saw the very thing he is seeing to this day, the bond of life meanwhile persisting in his body as form does in its matter. His higher self received naked eternal light ; body was no hindrance, soul received from God.
101. ‘ When is the soul above O ? ’ — When she gets the simple impression of divine form, of the image which is the Son himself for so the Father is always letting down the apex of the higher world into the one below. — Anyone on earth may be deceived excepting him in whom the Father bears his Son.
102. ‘ What is the sign of the eternal birth ? ’ — While a man is subject to sensible affection he has no conception of eternal truth. When he does conceive the eternal truth no creature can comfort or discomfit him. The time when Paul was felled to earth he heard a voice which said to him, ‘ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ? ’ He said, ‘ Who art thou Lord ? ’ — " I am Jesus of Nazareth.’
The voice was not God : God was speaking through an angel. God can no more lose his nature than utter his eternal Word in sound or image. God said through an angel, I am Jesus of Nazareth. He said /, referring to the impartible I of divine nature. The shows distinction between the Father and the Son. Jesus of Nazareth suggests the union of divine and human nature.
108. St James says, ‘ With the Father of lights is no turning.’ There are three kinds of turning. One of nature, another of will and a third of power. I speak of the first. Turning means changing from one thing to another, becoming more or less, going to and fro. One philosopher says, ‘ Things are all fighting their way back to naught.’ If God withdrew support things would all relapse into primeval chaos. The philosopher says, all created things are fluent. That is fluent which is not stationary in itself. If creature could touch bottom heaven would end and creature would be God. Natural change there is none with the Father of lights. Change is due to a longing for rest. If there were rest in him divine nature would pass away and heaven be at an end. He does not alter. What he has like nature is generation. If generation stopped things would all go back to their primeval nothingness. But of what avail are long discussions of God’s nature if we are not aware of his image in us ?
104. ‘ Pray Sir, what makes the soul unchangeable ? ’ — Stability of soul depends upon three things. First on her having her body well- controlled : what the soul wills, that her body must do without question. If Adam had preserved his natural perfection he could have done whatever he desired and creatures would all have beein obedient to him. But when he fell both his own body and all creatures left off obeying him : they were no longer true to him who was untrue to God. — The second thing is to have no attachment to or enjoyment in anything inferior to God. — Thirdly, no quarter must be given to the mortal nature. If Adam had stood firm he would not have become mortal. Adam as God made him on the first day would have survived until the day of judgment. St Paul declares, ‘ From the moment God called me not once have I looked back.’ If Adam had seen God in himself he could not have fallen. He knew that God had made him and what he made -hinifor and this he viewed with carnal pleasure. It was this and nothing else that carried him away.
105. When our Lord Jesus Christ was about to depart to heaven to his Father his disciples were with him at the place of his ascension, distraught and unable to speak or pay attention, so much were they engrossed with the bodily presence of our Lord. And while they stood staring up at the sky there came an angel saying,
‘ Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye here gazing up into heaven ? ’
Why so absorbed in that which, after all, cannot remain with you for ever ? Philosophers tell us that creature does not stay, it is flowing all the time back into its source. If the disciples had been proof to sweetness not one of them would have been distraught. For this the angel chid them saying, ‘ Why stand ye here ? ’ as though to say, why occupy your minds so much with the beloved bodily form of our Lord Jesus Christ ? Ye only waste yourselves on temporal things which, after all, are impermanent. ‘ Why stand ye gazing up into heaven ? ’ God is the form of the soul, the soul’s soul. When spirit is caught up above all images, into the eternal truth, then the soul stops and sees into heaven. It is man’s highest happiness that she cannot rest until, being rid of images, she is reflected back into the naught where she has been eternally without herself. Soul becomes Son when she is thus transported over all into the open where God is ; then soul draws out of God and when she is as we have said she is standing at the door. She loses her own nature drinking out of God, on the threshold of gnosis, where nothing enters into her except the eternal. Eternal rest, then, is not given her except by him.
106. Aristotle says, everything partial is painful ; the most united is most painful when divided.
107. Three kinds of people receive God. The first receive him for pleasure. God is sweet to them in anticipation so they entertain him selfishly and to their cost, with little genuine profit. The second receive him of necessity, in discarding sins, for without God they have no power to do it. The third lose desire and desiring naught receive him wisely and with real benefit. The benefit is this ; they recognise each fault with rue and in true penitence contrive that he shall find in us the reflection of what we seek in him ; thus getting him to dwell in us as we do in him we attain to angelic life : the upward flight, the simple glance into God’s nature, and at each ending of the act the steady reflection of God so that in multitudinous things like bodily necessity, she is not debarred from the eternal but in multiplicity is still united.
108. ‘ Pray Sir, is it possible for mere creature to partake of God’s nature ? ’ — No, for as St Augustine argues, God is remote from matter and that which has no matter has no parts and is indivisible. Creature can receive no part of God’s nature because God is impartible by nature. — ‘ I do not mean part. Sir, in the sense of fragment ; I mean part in the sense of community of spirit with spirit in divine nature. That was my idea in asking.’ — You must make allowance for the difference in creatures. One is united, another separated. See how one is united. The will of the Father and the obedience of the Son seized, with the power of their common Spirit, in the bare chamber of the virgin heart of their chosen vessel Mary, her most pure blood-stream and therefrom, with all his members, wrought one faultless man and poured therein a soul complete with powers and this by the power of the Godhead. When, out of chaos (having brooded there for aye) a shining spiritual soul emerged, straightway all imperfection was removed and by the Spirit itself this soul was admitted to the rank of spirit and, sponsored by the soul, the body was received as well. Such is the mode of union of united creatures. — ‘ And how do separated creatures participate God’s nature ? ’ — St Peter says that creatures according to their natures partake of God in three ways ; as being, as life and as grace. As being, creatures all without exception. As life, receptive creatures, from angels and men downwards. Mark how the Father by his generative power created by the propagation of his Word. From his interior Word burst forth their common mind, by nature the one angel of all creatures. Him he commanded to pour his mobile power into the sun and from the solar energy there showered upon earth, increased and multiplied, trees, beasts and all mankind. As regards the soul, the heavenly Father draws up with his power the lower powers of the soul ; the Son lights up the middle ones and the Holy Ghost impinging on the sharpness of her mind, flashes it back to the absolute zero of the Tri-unity. I say to zero ; to the boundary line between united and separated creatures. Christ namely, as he was in his first light, bereft of personality which the middle Person of the Trinity preserves therein, where in essential wisdom he is transfixed, confused with God’s allperfection. Further, the soul gets light from God’s essential revelation. This is her aught and his causeless incomprehensibility. There her aught abides, graven in a point, mounted in the splendour of his eternal love-nature. In this sense mere creature receives and partakes of the divine nature.
109. ‘ When do we lose God altogether ? ’ — How do you mean, lose ? What is your idea in asking this ? — ‘ I mean lose in the sense of knowing God one without other : free from matter and form and exempt from creatures, which are matter and form, one and other. So that creature conveys to her not one whit of God for all they say that God is in all creatures. How is this loss to be accounted for ? ’ — I answer : Three sorts of people are deprived of God. One in material creatures, another in spiritual substances, the third above creature and below God. In the first case there is loss in creatures of gross material nature. This happens when, her senses being sated ‘with their objective forms, she escapes from their separateness to their perfect whole. Thus she loses the dense part of their nature and there remains to her only the sweetness of their innate nobility. In the second case, since no caused thing is superior to its cause and the aforesaid sweetness is derived from creatures whereas the soul proceeds from God, like though not of his same nature, therefore the soul being sated, not stinted, with this sweetness will acquire a fresh thirst, for ineffable sweetness, a longing for her first felicity. This finally detaches her from material nature and drives her to pure knowledge of herself and spiritual substances in general. Now she seeks delight in the enjoyments of her kind but finds it not for creatures are all dry and like no better than its like : abiding actuality is the only thing to quench her parching thirst. — In the third case she loses her activity. It happens thus. All spiritual substances act instantaneously though not at any instant of time. Losing instantaneously her materiality she loses each and every use of her separated nature. The thirst is followed by the loss of all variable activities and approach to the outskirts of eternity. Here she awaits the love-light wherein she secs the Trinity. This waiting is personified in Mary, Mary standing without at the sepulchre, waiting in her outward helplessness the embrace of the eternal nature. She saw two angels one at the feet and another at the head. Sight is light-perception. The angel at the head stands for the omnipotence of the majesty of God ; the one at the feet, for his subtile nature. They asked her, ‘ Whom dost thou seek ? ’ For the incomprehensibility of God and her passionate desirenature would form no satisfying union. The question is one of incapacity for his incomprehensible nature ; she wants to embrace the whole extent of him and is not able to. She said, ‘ Jesus of Nazareth ! ’ He is the keeper in this solitude. Turning, she sees him standing in the likeness of a gardener : in the in-graven nature of the Person imaged in the ground of unity. He questionfid her,
‘ Whom seckest thou ? ’ This is the blinding transcendental light, the glory in the midst of the Trinity, which eclipses her own dim understanding and the aforesaid light. ‘ If thou hast borne him hence, tell me, ’ she says. She has lost her wits in the overwhelming light of the immediate truth. He says, ‘ Mary ! ’ using her own name. When the Father, departing from his essential personality, begets out of himself in otherness of Person his Word, the perfect reproduction of himself, he grasps with his paternal hand his impartible, beatific nature and harking back in spirit to himself is with himself as Son well-nigh in otherness. This is her name of whose child David cries, ‘ Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee.’ She would have touched him. Now behold and marvel at her love of God ! Not satisfied with rising beyond all creaturely conception she desires to sink into the undifferentiated oneness of the essence of the Three, of Gk)d with God, nature with nature, ftnd lose the creature-nature that is hers e’en though that would not be for her own highest happiness. For in oneness she would lose her knowledge, her love and her enjoyment, in other words, the actual goal of creatures. Hence his warning, ‘ Touch me not ! ’ for this touching means the refunding into God of separated natures, whereas it is to creatures full of love and feeling that the consciousness of unbroken oneness brings supreme felicity. If she runs into God or God runs into her, either way hers is the loss because of the immensity of his essential nature and the insignificance of her creaturchood. As a dewdrop to the ocean are all creatures as compared with their creator. He bids her ‘ Go to Galilee to my disciples and tell them of my resurrection ; there they shall see me as I said.’ Truly a bitter blow ! She, who was not satisfied with God in the likeness of the second Person, who wanted to merge into his oneness, and Jesus bids her go to Galilee to bring word of his presence to mere creatures : her, who was impatient of the universal Word in eternal unity ! She obeys him and goes thither. To Galilee, submissive to Jesus. Galilee means crossing (or transition). There is no temporal life but has to yield to physical necessity. Her watchword then must be, ‘ I no longer live but Christ liveth in me.’ She came to Jesus’ brethren who are three. Uninterrupted union ; perfect correspondence with the mirror of eternity, without any discrepancy whatever ; complete submission of the soul -powers and loss of all activity in the actual power of God in the essential nature of the body and the soul. Lo, she loses God in the limiting value of creature.
110. Love God with all thy soul. — ‘ What do you mean by loving God with all one’s soul ? ’ — Ascending naked to God with nothing between, that I call whole-souled love. The soul’s life is love, the soul’s love is gnosis and her gnosis is her being. The soul’s real being is delight. The soul is never so near to God but God stands one side soul the other. Being belies not itself. Augustine says, God is the soul’s soul and being.
114. ‘Pray Sir, can one be moved without sinning?’ — When the animal passions are stirred the movement comes from without, not from within. Like a tree blown about by the wind and not torn up from the ground because the roots hold. In a case of agitation allowance must be made both for the person and the cause.
115. ‘ Can one remain the same in good and ill ? ’ — Your bodily nature must always be the sport of joy and sorrow ; that it can never lose. But will remains the same in fortune and misfortune, without resentment in the depths of woe. The power of impatience is taken from the recipient of eternal light.
116. ‘ How do you megn Sir the power ? Pray explain.’ — I am using power here with reference to two things. On the one hand there is loss of the power of resentment. And on the other hand the power to be upset is removed from those who are vouchsafed eternal light. To lose their equanimity would be to them hell-torment and impossible. Joys and sorrows are not grown in the ground of eternal truth ; none of creatures’ nurslings are truth’s seedlings and that is the key to this matter of dispassion.
117. ‘ There is another thing that needs explanation. You say that power is withdrawn and they are not able for it. Is this inability of nature or of grace ? ’ — Nature acts differently. Were it a natural disability then effort would be vain, which it is not. It is an inability of grace ; the soul is caught in the blaze of divine light and held by the majesty of God in the reflection of the essential good of the third Person. There personal distinction disappears merged in the oneness of the Three. There she is lost to the multiplicity of creatures. That answers your inquiries about the loss of power in pious souls and how they are impotent to lose their equanimity. Now, at last, they are omnipotent.
118. ‘ For the love of God, Sir, expound to me one statement you are fond of making.’ — What is that ? — ‘ You say that inability to live up to one’s lights shows the absence of eternal light. The man who has eternal light can put his theories into practice. She only has to see a thing and lo, it is as though it had not been and she is free from it, which alarms me somewhat for I am never guilty of the most venial fault but first it is suggested to my mind and this does not prevent me from committing it. Tell me, Sir, what is her essential power ? ’ — Essential power is one. Her essential power is will-and-love and this is not a prey to images bodily or ghostly, so she is essentially potential and that is what I fnean when I call her really free from (passive to) it.
119. ‘I crave your counsel. Sir : In the throes of intellectual conception, at the actual moment of it, I would fain be absolutely free.’ — It is impossible ; gross matter forbids. Soul is volatile by nature, body is made of dense material. That this dense material should be as nimble as the psychic is not to be expected in the unglorified body. To the eye colour, to the car sound. There is no harm in that nor is it any barrier to eternal truth. We ought to disregard them it is true, but that cannot be. Yet one thing I can tell you for your comfort : no will or love is lost on these disturbers of the peace. Furthermore I say, the power to will and love being absent, her power is what I call essential power. It is a certain test of essence when nothing wrought from without gives any reaction within.
120. In the image-bearing form of God which impartibly contains the form of all things there shines the universal form unformed in oneness, which radiates one single light into all spirits variously : the highest spirits, as becomes their stable nature, without reflection and souls in this body according to their fitness in this passing time. Mark how this image-bearing light, which the soul receives from its reflection, carries her beyond this mode of changing time into eternity, to the level of the highest spirits. When a mind habitually dwells in its eternal image, God to wit, with more delight than in itself, to such a mind the image-bearing light appears in its eternal form. Then the mind is transported over these manifold and changing things which exist in time and inhabits these rather than itself. Remember, we are dealing here with spirit not with essence.
121. The image-bearing light of divine unity is impartible and yet both essence and nature. Now the question is, how is it essence and how is it nature ? The answer is as follows. As essence it subsists in permanent, immanent stillness. It appears as all things in impartible mode ; not in the mode of any creature : it is a mode of its own in that same absolute stillness. There the distinctions of the Persons are sublimed to this simple modeless mode. Behold it now the essence of the Persons and of all things : the essence of the Persons it is by nature but of creatures by grace. For consider. It contains the form of all things impartibly, as essence. In this form it is ingrained in all things. This same impartible form (or image) is also nature and as nature it preserves its one-being in the Trinity and the Trinity its one-being in the unity. And as this one-being in the Trinity it is the impartible potentiality of the Trinity : the nature of the Persons but not that of all things. For if it were the nature of all things it would reproduce itself in all the things in manifestation in its own potential nature. Then things would all be God in the same sense that God is God. Now that is not the case. This shows that it is not the nature of all things but only the nature of the Persons and there exists no thing but has its own appropriate nature.
122. Since the impartible image-bearing light behaves as essence and also as its nature, has it then, I ask, the idiosyncrasies of each or not ? — No, assuredly not. There is no more than one. Its chief idiosyncrasy is that it is shining by itself and is manifest only to the Persons. But in that this image-bearing light falls upon all things and the only thing that shows it is itself, you see it has the character of light. This character belongs to essential essence and it also belongs to its nature’s nature. Here essence and nature are shown to be one being with one idiosyncrasy not two idiosyncrasies ; for supposing there were two then one idiosyncrasy would cause the other ; which is impossible : the essential stillness behaves as simple essence and nature’s radiant Trinity as well.
128. Hence arises the question, in the essence and its nature do things all appear in impartible fashion or no ? — The answer is, Yes, they appear in the essence in immanent stillness and impartible mode : essence and nature one light in light’s summit. The essence is light’s source and centre. As such it is essence. Also in the Trinity nature shines with the light of all things in the same impartible way. But there is stillness in the depths of essence.
124. But how nature in the Trinity is one and three proceed from one is not to be deduced from the impartibility of the first cause. Augustine says, the Persons are one in nature. Hence nature and Persons are alike eternal. Intellect is by nature perfectly intelligible to itself in the light of nature and its conception of itself is other than this intellect. Intellect is not begotten ; it is the paternal Person who begets the knower in perfectly conceiving his own Person. Lo, on a sudden, the eternal birth ! Now there are two Persons and in the very act of the Son’s proceeding from the Father, the knower looking back, leaps to the perfect understanding of his Father whence he sprang. In that same origin these two natures know each other with one knowledge. The knowing is the same as the knower himself. Therein they know themselves one love in the omnipotence of the Father whence the knower sprang. This love is their common spiration : in this love they are one. It is the third Person. It starts with the rebirth, the reposing of the knower on the heart of the omnipotent Father. Thus the first river originates the second river, in conjunction with the original source. Hence the several natures are all one in nature and this nature is the same in the several natures. That is to say, Persons.
125. ‘ But what enjoyment do the Persons get out of their natural essence ? ’ — Well, as you may prove, the Persons are in their nature and their nature in the Persons : their nature keeps the Persons quite distinct while at the same time preserving them in unity. As preserving them in one, nature is simply the power of the Persons. In this same power the three Persons disappear into their nature. For essence and nature form one light in light’s summit, the impartible image of God, essence passing into nature ; moreover all the Persons being clapt into their nature vanish into the dim silence of their interior being. There they retain no personality for with this confinement goes entire loss of property. Lo, God de-spirited ! The fathomless deep is fathomed by the mastermind of God. The delight and satisfaction and perfection found therein no nature can describe. That is how the three Persons enjoy their natural essence.
126. ‘ Tell me, when the spirit runs back into its source, does it remain in its original source or in the naught of its idea ? ’ — Its proper habitation is its source. The naked spark of spirit is the mens. Mens is the natural image of the spirit. But mind is never perfect spirit till it passes into its exemplar and is lost to its own selfhood, escaping in that same natural image into its ideal nature. In this sense its abode is in the naught of its idea rather than in its source. But its origin is its real abode.
127. How is the Son re-born in the Father once he has come forth ? — In this way. The Father grasps the light of his own understanding and bears it into the ground of his essence. Thus the knower is reflected back into the light of his Father’s heart.
128. ‘I should much like to know, about the appearance of the paternal Person in the unity, where it is all-conceiving.’ — When the Father conceiving the impartible idea of all things in the unity, appears to himself in Person and essence, lo, the paternal Person vanishes in this mysterious unity and there is an end of the Father and of all distinctions. Unity conceiving all as one, nothing but one appears and communes with itself. But sinee logieally speaking there is Person in the unity, it is in this unity that it conceives its nature, appearing and calling itself Person and there too the paternal Person must conceive his unity, as the unity the Person, since both of them have the same nature.
129. Mark how conception differs. There is ideal conception and real concejtion. Ideal conception is the nature’s general conception of the Persons, all the three. But the real conception is the special conception of each particular Person in its own proper nature in the nature.
130. ‘ Tell me, when God conceives the soul does he conceive her by ideal conception or by real conception ? ’ — He conceives her by ideal conception for this general idea embraces all in one ; supposing he conceived her by particular conception she would be bereft of the flower of her nature for in a particular conception nothing is conceived besides the special nature of the thing itself. In other words, its nature as a unit, an expression, not its innate nobility.
131. Mark the noble lineage of the Persons. They are uncreated and without beginning and infinite and inconceivable and are possessed of property which comes to them in the course of nature. Not so with the soul : she is created and has a beginning and is man and has possessions and not property for to her it is all given.
182. ‘ Is the seer as free as the will ? ’ — No, not by any means. If it were it would be always in the naked Godhead. But it is not ; it has to be doing its work, the ordering and management of the various powers. Will has not got this to do : it bids and forbids.
188. ‘ Now what I want to know is this : why has the Godhead a feminine name and no feminine function and the Person of the Father on the other hand a masculine name and a feminine function ? ’ — The explanation is this. The Godhead contains all things impartibly and the thing in which another is contained is called mother in virtue of this content. It has, however, no maternal act since it docs not as such give birth to anything. The Father, again, has a masculine name and a feminine function and the reason is that the Father in Person docs not contain things in him, he begets them out of him by the power of his Person. The Father in his proper personality is empty of the content which he impartibly contains. But also he plays a mother’s part, the unity providing him with all that ho brings forth. In this bringing forth he is functioning as mother ; as being free from content in his personal nature he retains his masculine name. The birth of the Son shows the Father travailing. But the Father is Father in that he begets.
134. ‘ Then there is this question : Is the Son born or is he not born or is he still to be born ? ’ — Let us consider. There are three Persons and that shows the Son is born for each of the Persons has its own peculiar nature. They could none of them have this if the Son had not been born. This proves the Son is born. But the Father changes not at all in his eternal childbirth : could we attribute to him any deed at all it would be in the sense that anything he docs he is doing now and what he is doing now he has always done, for with him there is no past nor future. This proves the Son has not been born : he is now this instant being born and this now is an ever-becoming ; as the Father himself says, ‘ To-day have I begotten thee.’ To-day is the etern&l now. It is in this now that his birth is taking place.
135. Remember, the eternal Word is both unborn and born. This is a hard saying, but being in the Trinity the Word must needs be born ; it cannot there be called the unborn Word. Taking the eternal Word as Person, it is born ; but take it in its essence and the Word is non-existent. Here the Word has to be born.