“The Father is so intimately near the Son and Spirit, that no finite or created natures or unions can give a just resemblance of it. We talk of the union of the sun and his beams, of a tree and its branches: but these are but poor images and faint shadows of this mystery, though they are some of the best that I know. The union of the soul and the body is, in my esteem, still farther from the point, because their natures are so widely different. In vain we search through all the creation to find a complete similitude of the Creator. “And in vain may we run through all parts and powers of nature and art, to seek a full resemblance of the mutual propensity and love of the Blessed Three towards each other. Mathematicians, indeed, talk of the perpetual tendencies and infinite approximations of two or more lines on the same surface, which yet never can entirely concur in one line: and if we should say that the Three Persons of the Trinity, by mutual indwelling and love, approach each other infinitely in one Divine nature, and yet lose not their distinct personality, it would be but an obscure account of this sublime mystery. But this we are sure of, that for three Divine Persons to be so inconceivably near one another in the original and eternal spring of love, goodness, and pleasure, must produce infinite delight. In order to illustrate the happiness of the Sacred Three, may we not suppose something of society necessary to the perfection of happiness in all intellectual nature? To know and be known, to love and to be beloved, are, perhaps, such essential ingredients of complete felicity that it cannot subsist without them. And it may be doubted whether such mutual knowledge and love, as seems requisite for this end, can be found in a nature absolutely simple in all respects. May we not then suppose that some distinctions in the Divine Being are of eternal necessity, in order to complete the blessedness of Godhead? Such a distinction as may admit, as a great man expresses it, of delicious society. ‘We, for our parts, cannot but hereby have in our minds a more gustful idea of a blessed state, than we can conceive in mere eternal solitude.’