"By no means," replied Orlando; "he is both three and one. The three persons are co-eternal and co-equal. There is indeed distinction of person, but unity of essence, and equality of majesty. Abraham saw three, but worshipped one. Let us recur to natural things. When the harp sounds, there is the art, the strings, and the hand, yet but one harp. In the almond there is the shell, the coat, and the kernel. In the sun, the body, the beams, and the heat. In the wheel, the centre, the spokes, and the nave. In you, likewise, there is the body, the members, and the soul. In like manner may Trinity in Unity be ascribed to God." "I now comprehend," replied Ferracute, "how God may be three in one, but I know not how he begot the Son." "Do you," answered Orlando, "believe that God made Adam?"--"I do." "Adam himself was not, then, born of any, and yet he begot sons. So God the Father is born of none, yet of his own ineffable grace begot the Son from all eternity."--"Your arguments," said the Giant, "please me exceedingly, but still I am at a loss to know how he that was God became man." "The Creator of heaven and earth, who made all things out of nothing, could certainly," said Orlando, "engender his Son of a pure Virgin, by divine afflation."--"There lies the difficulty," returned Ferracute, "how without human aid, as you affirm, he could spring from the womb." "Surely," said Orlando, "God, who formed Adam from no seed, could form his Son in like manner; and as from God the Father he was without Mother, so from his Mother did he spring without an earthly Father."--"It makes me blush," said the Giant, "to think that a virgin should conceive without a man." "He," answered Orlando, "that causes the worm in the bean, and many species of birds, beasts, and serpents, to engender without the help of the male, could procure God and Man of a pure Virgin without the help of Man. For as his power enabled him to produce the first man from the ground, so could he produce the second from a virgin."--"I grant it," replied the Giant; "he might be born of a virgin; but if he was the Son of God, how could he die, for God never dies?" "That indeed is true," said Orlando; "as God, he could not die; but when he took our nature upon him, and was made man, he became subject to death, for every man dies. As we believe his nativity, so may we likewise believe his passion and resurrection."