If 'conceit' here means conception, the remark is most true; for the Trinity is an idea, and no idea can be rendered by a conception. An idea is essentially inconceivable. But if it be meant that the Trinity is otherwise inconceivable than as the divine eternity and every attribute of God is and must be, then neither the commonness of the language here used, nor the high authority of the user, can deter me from denouncing it as untrue and dangerous. So far is it from being true, that on the contrary, the Trinity is the only form in which an idea of God is possible, unless indeed it be a Spinosistic or World-God. Ib. c. iv. 1. p. 264. But now that we may lift up our eyes (as it were) from the footstool to the throne of God, and leaving these natural, consider a little the state of heavenly and divine, creatures: touching angels which are spirits immaterial and intellectual, &c. All this disquisition on the angels confirms my remark that our admirable Hooker was a giant of the race Aristotle 'versus' Plato. Hooker was truly judicious,--the consummate 'synthesis' of understanding and sense. An ample and most ordonnant conceptionist, to the tranquil empyrean of ideas he had not ascended. Of the passages cited from Scripture how few would bear a strict scrutiny; being either, 1. divine appearances, Jehovah in human form; or 2. the imagery of visions and all symbolic; or 3. names of honor given to prophets, apostles, or bishops; or lastly, mere accommodations to popular notions! Ib. 3. p. 267. Since their fall, their practices have been the clean contrary unto those before mentioned. For being dispersed, some in the air, some on the earth, some in the water, some among the minerals, dens, and caves, that are under the earth; they have, by all means laboured to effect a universal rebellion against the laws, and as far as in them lieth, utter destruction of the works of God. Childish; but the childishness of the age, without which neither Hooker nor Luther could have acted on their contemporaries with the intense and beneficent energy with which, they (God be praised!) did act. Ib. p. 268. Thus much therefore may suffice for angels, the next unto whom in degree are men. St. Augustine well remarks that only three distinct 'genera' of living beings are conceivable: 1. the infinite rational: 2. the finite rational: 3. the finite irrational: that is, God, man, brute animal. 'Ergo', angels can only be with wings on their shoulders. Were our bodies transparent to our souls, we should be angels. Ib. c. x. 4. p. 303. It is no improbable opinion therefore which the arch-philosopher was of.