If it be asked, What! was God a _solitary_ Being? Did he exist alone, before this exertion of his glorious power? Formed as we are for society, we have no conception of any satisfaction arising from a state of absolute loneliness; nor can we conceive that the Deity should rest _inactive_ from eternity, and not exert those amazing powers of which the stupendous creation proves he is amply possessed? There are some particulars naturally deducible from questions like these, which we cannot solve. We have no adequate apprehension of eternity; we are lost in the idea. And when we attempt to contemplate God existing from eternity without _cause_ or as _beginning_ to exist, we are utterly lost in the speculation; for among all the objects that come within the reach of our senses, we see nothing existing that has not had a cause to produce it. We frequently smile at children, when they ask their little simple questions, as we deem them; but we are mere children ourselves, in this profound ocean of wonder. But something very observable strikes an attentive reader in the Mosaic account of the creation, which suggests that the Deity is not a solitary Being, existing in such an absolute _unity_ as to exclude all degree of personality or communion. For אלהימ _Elohim_, as we have already observed, the very first name by which Moses calls God, being plural, shows that though he exists in an undivided unity of nature, yet in a Trinity of Persons. And this notion of a plurality, so far from being contrary to reason, is more agreeable to it than any opinion of the absolute _unity_ of the Divine nature. For conceive we only three Divine persons mutually to partake of the Divine essence or nature, to be united by the same perfect will, and to possess the same infinite powers and perfections; and all our apprehensions of the loneliness of solitary existence immediately subside; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, consummately happy in each other, have been from eternity reciprocal objects of complacence, and will remain such for ever. Let this argument be fairly and impartially considered, and the notion of a Trinity of Subsistences in a Unity of the Divine Nature, will appear far more consonant to reason, and liable to less objections, than that of mere solitary and absolute unity.[22] [_A further consideration of the suggestion in the close of the last paragraph._ Although nothing can be clearer than that the Divine Essence is _one_, simple, and indivisible; _yet_ this does not prevent it from subsisting in _personality_, i.e. _in a plurality of persons_. It must be carefully observed, that the plurality has regard to the _persons_, not to the Essence. We cannot say there is a plurality of Essences; but we can say, the Living, Rational, Benevolent, and Spiritual Essence _subsists in three persons_. This then is the MODUS EXISTENDI of the Divine Being.