Further, we must remove, in this kind of reasoning, all the imperfection of different sexes, as well as time, which is in human generations; and all such gross ideas incompatible with the most pure and perfect divine nature. The whole of this our reasoning further confirms, that the son is necessarily existing. It was necessary for God to be actively good always, and begetting his son was the greatest act of divine goodness, and the first, necessarily. But the word _first_ is absurd, betraying our own imperfection of speech and ideas, when we treat of these matters; for there could be no _first_, where no beginning. And the very names of father and son are but relative and oeconomical; so far useful, that we may be able to entertain some tolerable notion in these things, so far above our understanding. But tho’ it be infinitely above our understanding, yet we reach so far, as to see the necessity of it. And we can no otherwise cure that immense _vacuum_, that greatest of all absurdities, the indolence and uselesness of the supreme being, before creation. And all this the Druids might, and I may venture to say, did arrive at, by ratiocination. And we can have no difficulty of admitting it, if we do but suppose, there were obscure notions of such being the nature of the deity, handed down from the beginning of the world. Whence in _Chronicon Alexandrinum_, _Malala_, and other authors, we read, for instance, “in those times (the most early) among the _Egyptians_ reigned, of the family of _Misraim_, _Sesosiris_, that is, the branch or offspring of _Osiris_, a man highly venerable for wisdom, who taught, there were three greatest energies or persons in the deity, which were but one.” This man was _Lud_, or _Thoth_, son of _Misraim_ or _Osiris_, and for this reason, when idolatry began, he was consecrated by the name of _Hermes_, meaning one of those divine energies, which we call the Holy Spirit. This is a short and easy account of that knowledge which the ancients had of the nature of the deity, deduc’d from reason in a contemplative mind, and which certainly was known to all the world from the beginning, and rightly call’d a mystery. For our reason is strong enough to see the necessity of admitting this doctrine, but not to see the manner. The _how_ of an eternal generation is only to be understood by the deity itself.