THE ORIGIN OF THE
DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
A POPULAR EXPOSITION

REN DEL HARRIS

Manchester: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY
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1919

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THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF
THE TRINITY

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THE ORIGIN OF THE
DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
A POPULAR EXPOSITION

BY
RENDEL HARRIS

Manchester: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY
London, New York, Chicago, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras
19*9

PREFACE.
I have been asked more than once why I do not at
tempt to present in popular language the results which
we claim to have reached in Christian Literature and in
Christian Doctrine, according to which we establish the
existence of a lost book of the first age of Christianity,
made up out of quotations from the Old Testament,
and also the existence of a lost Christian doctrine of the
first century, according to which Jesus was defined as
the " Wisdom of God ".
It seems that there are Christian people who cannot
follow an inquiry, such as that in the book called Testi
monies (which is in course of production by my friend
Vacher Burch and myself), because the argument fre
quently requires a close acquaintance with ecclesiastical
writers in Greek, Latin and Syriac ; and the same thing
is true of the little book on the Origin of the Prologue
to St Joan's Gospel, which I recently published.
For some reasons I should have preferred to post
pone any such popular treatment, until we had com
pleted the discussion of Testimonies by publishing the
second part of that work. But as I know the interest
that is being provoked by these investigations is not
limited to the erudite, I have consented to try and ex
plain what is going on in the world of Christian thought,
without any reference to Greek or Latin. Hence this
little tract or lecture in the English speech.
5

PREFACE
It is a bold flight to remove the centre of gravity
of Christian thought from its normal position in the
fourth century to the first century, but perhaps it may
turn out that the change of position will help us all to
a better understanding of the one whose nature is the
object of our enquiry, and to a more intimate fellowship
with him, as a result of that better understanding.

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE
TRINITY
It has been suggested to me that I should say some
thing to you on the subject of a discovery in Christian
literature which lies chronologically behind those books
which make up our New Testament. I suppose that
we were many of us brought up in the belief that the
New Testament is the beginning of the Christian litera
ture, and if at any time the belief was shaken by the
attachment of dates to any particular books of the New
Testament, we were usually able to find an explanation
for the fact that the New Testament did not begin quite
as early as we had at first supposed it to do. I do not
forget that there are still some people who are anxious
to prove that the Gospels were written in part in the
lifetime of our Lord. But these are usually belated
examples of an unscientific spirit, and we do not need
to pay attention to them until they come into the fold
by the door, that is to say, by the correct scientific
method. In the New Testament itself, we had our old-
time ideas rudely shaken because we started from the
natural idea that the books were produced in the order
in which they are commonly printed and edited. And
we did not naturally take to the thought that the Pauline
Epistles were written before the Gospels, nor that the
Gospel of Mark, which stands second amongst the four,
was really the first in the order of production. But
when we had made a preliminary reconstruction of the
times when the books were written, and the order in

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
which they stood, we found ourselves with an immense
literary lacuna at the beginning of the Christian history.
I am going to show you that it is unscientific to believe
in the existence of such a lacuna, just as unscientific as
it would be to make a map of the world with America
undiscovered. The first attempt to fill the void was
made by those people who spoke of the first Christian
period as the period of oral tradition — which is very
much Hke making an early map of America and labelling
it terra incognita. I shall endeavour, without turning
aside to minutiae, to recover for you one lost book and
one lost doctrine of the time to which we refer. We
will begin with a brief statement of the Christian belief
in the Trinity. I.
In the following pages, then, I am proposing to my
self a task which I have never undertaken before, which
might perhaps have been deemed unnecessary, and
which may be productive of serious misunderstanding
between Christian people. The task is the determina
tion of the origin of the doctrine of the Trinity: The
doctrine of the Trinity has been from almost the earliest
days of the Christian Church a settled affair with a
settled formula. Catholic Christianity expresses itself
in the terms of this doctrine, and when we say " Catholic
Christianity " we include Evangelical organisations as
well as Anglican or Roman. Even if they do not all
recite the Qreeds — especially the Nicene Creed, and the
Creeds of later Councils which amplify and explain the
Nicene Creed — these Creeds are for the most part ac
cepted by evangelical believers everywhere as an exact
expression of the Christian conscience with regard to the
most stupendous of Christian doctrines — the discovery
8

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
that God exists in three persons, and is, nevertheless,
one God.
The reason for this general acceptance lies in the
fact that the doctrine is found in the New Testament
itself, sometimes clearly stated in personal confessions,
and in the doxologies of the visible or invisible Church
(for it must be remembered that the Church doxologised
before it defined, and that even the most rigid of dog
matic statements on the subject have been evolved out
of the praises of the Church), and sometimes adumbrated
by terms which, while they do not compel, may at least
be said to invite the Trinitarian definition.
If, on the other hand, there are passages in the New
Testament which seem to teach an opposite doctrine,
;and to express the relation of the Son to the Father in
lower terms than co-existence from eternity, and con-
substantiality, the ancient doctors of the Church have
found ways to explain these inconsistencies, and the
modern doctors, by calling for the aid of that, magic word
Evolution, have been able to express themselves without
a shadow of a doubt as to the revelation which has been
made, with regard to the Divine nature and the Divine
attributes. What the modern exegetes do not appear
to realise is, that when one appeals to evolution for the
^explanation of the history of a doctrine, one must go to
evolution consistently, and not merely invoke the prin
ciple as an occasional witness to explain how the terms
of the Trinitarian belief have been arrived at from the
premises of the primitive confession.
However, something has been gained by the ad
mission that evolution is really a factor in Christian
belief, and we owe it to John Henry Newman that he
liberated the Catholic mind for further investigation into
Christian origins, and that, while requiring the belief that
9

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITi
all the Christian faith is potentially involved in the
primitive confessions, he left it open to the Catholic, who-
believes that things have always been the same from the
first, to study carefully how they come to be so different
from what they were at the beginning. If evolution had
been applied a little more courageously, and if Newman
had had1 a few more facts to which to apply his incisive,.
logical mind, he might easily have been what some
persons have thought him to be, the Darwin of religion.
in general and of Christianity in particular.
Without some new facts, it would seem to be a very
serious task to examine into the origins of the Christian
Trinity. Some of the greatest minds in the world have
been engaged throughout the centuries in the discussion
of the matter without adding anything sensibly to the
conclusions which resulted from the first application of
Greek thought to Palestinian belief. It is precisely
because there are fresh facts to be considered in the
area which was supposed to be incapable of them that I
am writing, in popular language, some fresh considera
tions on the subject of the Christian Trinity.
Now first of all let us state, in the language of the
Creeds as far as possible, what the Christian doctrine is.
In its simplest form it amounts to this : that God exists
in three persons, which are the same in being and in-.
honour and in eternity of existence. And these three
persons constitute one God. No one has succeeded in>
making it quite clear what is meant by " persons " in
1 jthe Trinity ; but at least they mean that there is a
multiplicity in the Godhead, as well as a unity. The
Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit.
The first great conflict in the world of Christian belief
arose out of the affirmation that the Second Person of
the Trinity had taken human flesh of the Virgin Mary„
IO

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
and had thus ineffably united humanity to Deity in His
own person. From this incarnation of God in human
flesh the Greek theologians taught that there resulted
a corresponding elevation of man into the Divine
Nature. So that man became immortal, and sometimes,
they said, deified, in consequence of the Incarnation of
the Son of God. The Triune Deity has now attached
to it a Divine humanity which has been carried to
Heaven in the form of the glorified body of Jesus, who-
is said, in another obscure phrase, to be seated at the
right hand of the Father.
All of this is very difficult to understand. It con
stitutes the chief of the Christian mysteries. What is
important to remember is that Christ, the Incarnated
one, has been defined to be one with the Father from
all eternity, equal with Him in glory, the instrumental
cause by which all created things were made, and at
'the same time, in no degree inferior to the primal cause
of Creation in consequence of the Second Person being"
the instrument of the First. And we are especially
warned in the formula of the Church never to think of
the Father as having a prior existence to the Son, nor
the Son as having an inferior rank to the Father. And
when these points had been decided for the Second
Person of the Trinity, they were practically conceded
for the Holy Spirit also, who, with the Father and
Son, is glorified and worshipped.
If anyone has any doubt about the fact of the evolu
tion of Christian doctrine, he should compare what we
call the Apostles' Creed — which is very nearly the same
as the early Roman Creed of the second century — with
the Creed of Nicaea, established by the 318 Holy
Fathers, who met there in a.d. 325 under the presidency
of Constantine ; or with the final definitions of the:
u

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
Council of Chalcedon in the year 431. For instance
it is a very simple thing to say : —
" I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker
of Heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ His
only Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the
Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, etc."
And a much more highly evolved thing to say : —
" I believe in one God, the Father Almighty,
Maker of Heaven and earth, and of all things
visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus
Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten
of His Father before all worlds, God of1 God,
Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten
not made, being of one substance with the Father,
by whom all things were made. Who for us men
and for our salvation came down from Heaven,
and was incarnated by the Holy Ghost of the
Virgin Mary."
-which is the form used in the Anglican Communion
'Service, and is itself somewhat modified from the Creed
of the Council of Nicaea. And the question naturally
arises : How did the one form give birth to the other ?
And why were the explanations made? For even if
we admit that the explanations made by the extended
matter were implicit in the first confession, there must
be some order of mental procedure by which the shorter
statements gave place to the longer, and the simpler to
the more complex.
What we propose to do is to show that by the dis
covery of two fresh facts the whole matter of the evolu
tion of the Trinity is put in a new light. To these two
facts we shall now address ourselves. In the beginning,
the investigation appears to take us away from the sub-
1 i.e. from.
12

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
ject. None of the statements that we make will at first
sight be recognised as having anything to do with the
matter in hand. But as soon as we have established
our two new facts it will be easy to proceed in the ap
plication of them to the evolution of Christian doctrine ::
for these two facts are chronologically prior to the whole
of the Christian literature as it exists up to the present-
II.
The first fact to which we draw attention is that the
Christian Church was in possession of an Apostolic
document, involving Apostolic doctrine, some time be
fore any of the documents of the New Testament that
are known to us were in existence. The period before
the Gospels and Epistles has commonly been spoken of
as the period of the Church's oral tradition, on the as
sumption that all Christian doctrine was transmitted by
word of mouth from those who had been with Jesus to
those who were, or might become, His followers in the
days after His removal from earth. And that there
must have been such oral tradition lies in the very
nature of the case. It was not necessary to take a pen
in hand in order to say that " what things our hands
have handled of the Word of Life we declare unto you "».
The declaration could be made, and no doubt was made
at the first, without any transcription at all. And there
are some traces of a preference amongst sub-Apostolic
people for the voices of Apostolic men over their actual
written compositions. Papias, who wrote in the early
part of the second century, says positively that he pre
ferred the living voice ; by which it is supposed he
means the testimony of those who had themselves i seen
the Lord, or who had seen and conversed with persons-
who had seen the Lord. 13

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
When, however, we reflect that the period which
-elapses between the death of Christ and the first known
Christian document covers a whole human generation,
it must be clear to any thoughtful person that^ such a
generation could not have passed away without written
records of the history which they were relating, and
the truths that they were emphasising. We see this,
perhaps, more clearly to-day than formerly, because we
are the less disposed to regard the primitive Christians
as being unlearned and ignorant to the extent of not
being able to read or write. Recent excavations in
Egypt, at any rate, have shown us how much more
liberal was the education of the people under Roman
rule, in the first Christian centuries, than we might
otherwise have imagined. And in a community where
most people could read and write, it is not to be thought
that the Christian tradition was propagated without the
aid that is furnished by reading and writing. We ought,
therefore, to be certain that the first Christian period,
and perhaps even the time when our Lord Himself was
teaching, had its own written memorials of Christian
history and Christian doctrine.
The next thing that we may be reasonably certain
about is that the first documents of the faith, prior to
the New Testament, must have arisen out of the exi
gencies of the first Christian propaganda. They were
composed, indeed, in order to express in an intelligible
form what the new doctrine was, and what the new
Jewish sect stood for. The first statement of Christian
doctrine would, therefore, in all probability be its differ
ence from Judaism, rather than its agreement with the
same. A document became necessary when the Church
• and the Synagogue stood at the parting of the ways.
For this reason we should expect that, apart from cer-
14

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
tain definite historical statements as to the existence,
miraculous life, and ignominious death of Jesus, the first
official statements which the Christians made, would,
of necessity, be anti-Judaic in character. Christianity is
made up out of Judaism and anti- Judaism. In so far
as it is Judaism, its documents, both historical and doc
trinal, were already written. It is when it becomes
anti- Judaic, either by boldly claiming the right of aban
doning Jewish ceremonies, or of rewriting and expand
ing Jewish doctrines, that the Christian literature,
properly so-called, will arise. It will be controversial
in character, and it will undertake to prove its New
Testament, which it wishes to affirm, by the use of the
Old Testament, which it wishes to contradict.
So long, then, as nascent Christianity is making its
way in a Jewish environment, it does so as a sect of
Judaism, accepting the whole of the inspired Jewish
¦documents, and re-interpreting them in the light of
what it holds to be a larger revelation. It will not ap
peal, that is, to the light of nature, nor to the teachings
of philosophy, nor to great names in other religions,
Eastern or Western, but it will do as the Jews did ; it
will say " Moses said in the Law," " David says in the
Psalms," or " Isaiah prophesies thus ". And upon the
use of such quotations, with appropriate interpretations
attached, it will base its propaganda of the new religion.
Thus the kind of book that would be required would
be a book of Anti- Judaic quotations. And since quota
tions in Greek are known by the name of " Martyr
words," or " Testimonies " (the original martyr being a
witness or a testifier), they called their first issued book
by the name of Testimonies \Martyrice\ Against the
Jews; an alternative title appears to have been Extracts
Against the Jews. And it is one of the discoveries of
is

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
modern times that some such book underlies practically
the whole of the early Christian literature.
This result may be arrived at in a number of ways-
First of all it may be shown that there are traces of the;
use of such a compilation in the New Testament itself.
Next, such a document will by its transcriptional errors
explain curious readings in the earliest copies of the
New Testament ; third, traces of the use of such a book
may be observed over practically the whole of the early
Patristic literature, in which, as in the New Testament,
the mistakes of the transcribers of the original document
are often conserved, and the prefaces and the headlines
of the primitive book are, often, still extant. Fourth,.
actual collections of Testimonies, obviously derived from
a common lost original, occur in the literature of the
Church from the early years of the third century down
to the invention of printing.
We may illustrate briefly the points in question in
order that the argument may be as lucid as possible,
without actually quoting Greek or Latin documents.
i. The comparison of the second chapter of the ist
Epistle of Peter with the ninth chapter of the Epistle to
the Romans, will show a common argument underlying
the two writers. Both of them affirm that Christ is the
Stone spoken of by the prophets. Each of them illus
trates the statement from Isaiah xxviii. 16, and Isaiah,
viii. 14. These passages are taken to show that Christ
is the Foundation Stone laid in Zion, and at the same
time the Stone at which the Jews, those unwise builders,
have stumbled. So striking is the coincidence here, in
the treatment of the subject, between St. Paul and
St. Peter, that it has been taken as a final proof of
the dependence of Peter upon Paul, and as a conclu
sive argument for the reconciliation of the two great
16

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
early Christian teachers. The difficulty is that we find
similar arguments in early Patristic literature in writers
who are not dependent upon the Epistle to the Romans ;
and that we also find the fundamental position that
" Christ is the Stone," sometimes in the form that
" Christ is the Stone and the Rock," in the early collec
tions of Testimonies which are extant. For instance,
in the collection of Testimonies made by Cyprian
against the Jews, one of the leading sections is devoted
to the establishment of the doctrine that "Christ is the
Stone," and the Old Testament is ransacked for possible
illustrations of the Christ-Stone or Christ-Rock.1 It is
therefore reasonable to affirm that it was from such a
collection that Peter and Paul took their doctrine and
the quotations in proof of it, and not that either of them
was borrowing from the other. Each of them is anti-
Judaic, as may be seen by studying chapters ix.-xi. of the
Epistle to the Romans (the most anti- Judaic section, in
spite of a number of sympathetic terms, in the New
Testament), or the context of the quoted words in the
Epistle of Peter.
2. The assumption of such a primitive collection of
proof texts against the Jews helps us to understand
certain mistaken references to the Prophets which are
made in the New Testament itself, and which have
caused much perplexity to its interpreters.
For example, in the opening of the Gospel of Mark,
where the mission of John the Baptist is described, we
are told in the oldest copies that it is written in Isaiah
1 Another such identification may be seen in i Cor. x. 4, where
St. Paul says that the Rock in the wilderness of which the Israelites
drank, was Christ. He then betrays the anti-Judaic feeling of a
Book of Testimonies by the remark that " with many of them God was
not well-pleased ! " 17 2 ,

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
that the Lord will send His messenger before His face,
and that there is, the voice of one crying in the wilder
ness. Strictly speaking, it is only the second of these
quotations that belongs to Isaiah, the first of them should
have been referred to Malachi. Consequently, later
transcribers have judiciously altered the words, " In
Isaiah the prophet," to " In the prophets ". It is easy
to see that such mistakes in reference were almost in
evitable in the use of the primitive Bible text-book,
especially if the authorities were marked in the margin
instead of in the text. Where a quotation, on the other
hand, was composite, it was very easy to refer to a
single prophet what should have been divided between
two. In such a case as that in which the Gospel of
Matthew, chapter xxvii. v. 9, refers to Jeremiah the
prediction of Judas and the thirty pieces of silver, the
quotation is really made up out of Zechariah and Jere
miah, and it would have been better, if a single reference
was made, to refer it to Zechariah only. The reference
to Jeremiah has caused much searching of heart and
not a little dishonest exegesis. The trouble arose when
Matthew took the quotation out of his text-book, and
we need not assume that an evangelist was inspired to
the extent that he could not make a mistake in a Biblical
or quasi-Biblical reference.
3. We will now give a specimen of the way in which '
the prophetical Testimonies were employed by the early
Fathers, so as to betray the use of a common lost docu
ment. Here is a simple instance. In Justin's First
Apology, chapter xxxii., he makes the following state
ment : " Moses, who was the first of the prophets, says
expressly as follows : ' A ruler shall not fail from Judah,
nor a leader from his loins, until he shall come for whom
it is reserved. And he shall be the expectation of the
18

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
Gentiles, binding his colt to a vine, washing his robe in
the blood of the grape' It is yours, then, to make an
accurate investigation^ and .to learn until whose day
there was among the Jews a Ruler and King of their
own." Half a century later, we find in Irenaeus a similar
line of argument, as follows : —
" Moses had manifested the advent of Christ by
saying : ' A Ruler shall not fail in Judah, nor a Leader
from his loins until he was come for whom it was re
served, And he is the hope of the Gentiles, binding to
the vine his colt, and to the ivy the colt of an ass. He
was washing his robe in wine, and his coat in the blood of
the grape. His eyes are more joyful than wine, and his
teeth more white than milk.' Now let those inquire
who are set to investigate everything, the time in which
the Chief and the Ruler failed from the tribe of Judah."
When we compare these two passages, we find that
both writers have agreed in ascribing the prophecy of
Jacob to Moses, and that each of them concludes his
quotation with an appeal to the Jews to make an in
vestigation of the time of the cessation of the Jewish
monarchy. The natural explanation is that the text
book had referred the passage to Moses, and had ac
companied it by an argumentum ad hominem for the
Jews whose kingdom had passed from them. And the
curious thing is that when Justin came to write the
Dialogue Against Trypho the Jew, he makes the same
quotation, but recognising that the prophecy was not
really due to Moses, he says, " It was Jacob who pro
phesied it, but Moses who wrote it down ".
When we come down to the fourth century, we find
no less a person than Athanasius making the very same
mistake, for he tells us that Moses prophesies that the
19

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
kingdom of the Jews should last until Christ's time.
And here the scribes of Athanasius' MSS. have for the
most part erased Moses and written in Jacob !
These illustrations will serve to show how wide
spread was the use of the text-book, and how firmly
fixed even its errors were in its traditional use by the
Church. 4. The lost original document has been preserved
for us in a number of what we may call Recensions, or
editions, both in Greek and Latin. Of these, the most
famous is one that is due to Cyprian the Martyr, the
Bishop of Carthage in the third century. Cyprian
writes three books of quotations against the Jews, and
of these, the first two are evidently derived, although
written in Latin, from a lost Greek original. These
books of Cyprian's are of the highest importance for our
study. It is clear they are not Cyprian's own work ex
cept for a few trifling variants. The argument of the
book and the proofs are certainly pre-Cyprianic, and can
be paralleled in the writings of Justin Martyr, Irenseus,
and others. They are the common property, indeed, of
the Church. Cyprian's First Book is concerned to
prove that the Jews have fallen out of the Divine
favour, and have been replaced by the Christians ; that
a new covenant has been introduced with new sacrifices,
a new priesthood, and so on.
In the Second Book Cyprian comes more directly
to the question of Christology. The arrangement of
the matter surprises us. He does not begin to prove
Jesus to be the Messiah ; he is not concerned, in the
first instance, to show that He is the Son of God ; his
Christology is of an earlier type which has almost dis
appeared from the New Testament. His first heading
is that Christ is the First-born, the Wisdom of God, by
20

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
whom all things were made. And this is followed by a
second section to prove that Christ is the Word of God.
And then He proves that Christ is the Hand and Arm
of God, that He is called Angel, and God, and so on,
until he comes to the proof that Christ is the Stone,
which we find mentioned in ist Peter, and in Romans.
Now this is just what we should not have expected.
We should have said that the first emphasis would be
Messianic in character. It is something quite different.
And we begin now to see the traces of an earlier theo
logy than that which lies on the surface of the New
Testament. Behind the doctrine that Christ is the
Word of God, we see looking out at us from the pages
of the Testimony Book the statement that Christ is the
Divine Wisdom. But of this more presently. The
point we have reached is that the lost book of Christian
Testimonies against the Jews has come down to us in a
variety of forms, and that its first structure can be de
fined by a careful Study of Books of Testimony which
are still extant, assisted by a study of Patristic references
made in confutation of the Jews.
Do we know anything more about the book in ques
tion ? The answer is in the affirmative. In the early
part of the second century, Papias tells us definitely
that Matthew wrote the Oracles in the Hebrew dia
lect, and that everybody translated them to the best
of his ability. And the same Papias is said to have
written five books of Commentaries upon the Dominical
Oracles, which must mean either Oracles of the Lord, or
about the Lord, and can hardly be separated from the
Matthew Book which he says was written in Hebrew.
Around this supposed Matthew Book, and Papias' com
ment upon it, there has been a long continued contro
versy. Papias' writings have perished, except for a few
21

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
fragments. If we had his Book of Commentaries, we
could easily see what he was commenting upon. But
as the books are lost, it is not surprising that various
explanations were made as to the underlying text. It
has been the fashion for all Christian Apologists, down
to quite modern times, to assume that Papias was refer
ring to our Gospel of Matthew when he talked about
Dominical Oracles, and that this Gospel of Matthew in
our canon was originally written in Hebrew or some re
lated dialect. The evidential value of such a statement
is very great, if the interpretation of the Oracles be
rightly made. For if Papias was commenting upon the
Gospel of Matthew, say in the Greek form, in the early
years of the second century, the book itself upon which
he commented, and which he or someone else had trans
lated out of Hebrew, must have been one of the very
early products of the Christian literature. Christian
tradition, as judged by the writings of the early Fathers,
is unanimously on the side of those who, misunderstand^
ing Papias, say that our Gospel of Matthew was written
in Hebrew. No doubt the Fathers copy statements
thoughtlessly from one another, and they are almost
entirely destitute of a critical faculty in the modern
sense. And what the Fathers have said on the subject,
the modern Apologists have repeated. Almost univer
sally it was laid down that Matthew wrote in Hebrew,
and that Papias wrote on Matthew. ,
Some, however, hesitated to identify the Dominical
Oracles with Matthew, and said that the title rather
described a collection of our Lord's sayings, known as
Logia or Oracles, of which Matthew may have made
use in his Gospel. And it is only in modern times that
these opinions have been challenged and successfully
contradicted. 22

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
In illustration of these points a few quotations may
be of use. For instance, Lardner, in the Credibility of
the Gospel History (vol. ii. 117), translates the passage
in Eusebius, where Papias is spoken about, as follows :
" Papias says this Gospel was written in Hebrew ". Of
course Papias never said anything of the kind. What
Papias said was that the Logia were written in Hebrew.
Again, in his History of the Gospels and the Evange
lists, book v. chapter v., Lardner says, " In his five
books entitled 'Explications of the Oracles of the
Lord,' which seemed to have been collections of ancient
stories and traditions, Papias makes express mention of
Matthew's Gospel, and says that he wrote the Divine
Oracles in the Hebrew tongue". Here there is the
same illicit equation between Matthew's Gospel, and
the, Matthaean Logia. And it is in the same strain that
Westcott, in his Canon of the New Testament (7th edi
tion, 1896, p. 73), says: "It was an exposition of
Oracles of the Lord ; not of the Oracles of the Lord —
such a summary as, for instance, St. Matthew com
posed ". Here we have the same attempt to equate St.
Matthew and his Gospel with the Matthaean Oracles,
without saying exactly, that the Dominical Oracles or
Logia are the Gospel itself.
Others went further, and from the use of the word
Oracles, which might properly be thought to belong
to the Old Testament, attempted to prove that the
word was used of the Matthaean Gospel, in order to
show the authoritative position which that Gospel had
attained in the Church by the time when Papias was
writing. As extreme a statement in this direction as is possible
may be found in Dr. Salmon's Historical Introduction to
the New Testament (8th edition, 1897, pp. 89-90), as
23

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
follows : " In the New Testament Logia has its classical
meaning, Oracles. I consider a true conclusion to be
that, as we find from Justin, the Gospels were put on a
level with the Old Testament in the public reading of
the Church, so we find from Papias that the name Logia,
the Oracles, given to the Old Testament Scriptures,
was also given to the Gospels, which were called the
Dominical Oracles. The titles of Papias' own work I
take as simply meaning an exposition of the Gospels ;
and his statement about Matthew I take as meaning
that Matthew composed his Gospel in Hebrew, the
word ' Oracles ' implying its Scriptural authority."
The only thing that appears to be correct in this
statement is a recognition of the fact that the term
" Oracles " belongs in the first instance to the Old
Testament. Its identification of the Gospel of Matthew
with the Matthaean Oracles was rendered even more
difficult by the consensus of modern scholars against the
belief in a Hebrew origin for the first Gospel. It is
certain that this Gospel is a Greek Gospel, and that it
is to a large extent based upon another Greek Gospel
coinciding closely with the Gospel of Mark. The
" Oracles," of which Papias speaks, cannot possibly be
equated with the first of the four Gospels. The ancient
view, however, continued to be upheld. Lightfoot
came to the assistance of Westcott, and in his contro
versy with Mr. W. R. Cassels, the author of Super
natural Religion, did his best and strongest in the
defence of the ancient views. It is not necessary to
show in detail that Lightfoot was altogether wrong, and
in the main, Mr. Cassels, his antagonist, was very
nearly right. Had it not been for Lightfoot's defence
of the ancient position, we should long ago have reached
a. clearer understanding on the subject. An anonymous
24

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
writer, indeed, now known to be a certain Dr. Gregory,1
stated the case correctly in a work which he published
on the Oracles of Papias, wherein he showed that the
right explanation of these Oracles was that they were a
collection of Old Testament prophecies used in the
Christian propaganda. For various reasons the book
was never properly appreciated, although we can see
now that it was a contribution of very great critical
value. I have talked of recovering the lost book of the
Oracles of Matthew upon which Papias commented.
But there is a sense in which the book was never lost at
all, it was simply re-edited and re-written. Cyprian's
Testimonies is one form of it, but I think that I have,
perhaps, discovered the book itself in a later edition, a
MS. on Mount Athos, which certainly contains a great
deal of the primitive matter which looks out at us all
over the pages of Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and
Cyprian. It is early yet to say whether we have actu
ally got the Matthew book ; it is certainly headed by
the name of Matthew, but then the editor Lambros says
this is Matthew the Monk, and there may be such a
person writing in the fifteenth century against Judaism.
But the book also has at its head Greek verses describ
ing the Matthew book. These verses run as follows : —
Here Matthew curbs the boldness of the Jews,
With five- fold bridle of his five-fold book,
And whoso knows their error to confute,
By the same curb convicts all heresies,
For Jewish strife is mother of them all.
These Greek verses are very well written, and I shall
be slow indeed to believe that they are the work of a
*Not to be confused with Dr. Caspar R. Gregory of Leipsic,
whose death in the German ranks at Arras has recently been reported.
25

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
monk of the fifteenth century. I am inclined to believe,
though here again I am not in a position to prove the
hypothesis, that they are the work of Pothinus, the
Bishop of Lyons, who had prefixed them to his copy
of the Testimony Book: but of course, if they are the
work of Pothinus, or anybody of an early date, then
Matthew is the real Matthew, and the fivefold division
of the MSS. corresponds to the five books on which
Papias commented. In any case, the discovery of the
Testimony Book stands sure. And since it antedates
the New Testament, it is the true foundation of Chris
tian doctrine. What that book says about Jesus Christ
is our real Creed ; and if I had time, I could show you
that all the existing Creeds flow from it.
III.
Assuming, then, that we have arrived at a correct
conclusion with regard to the nature of the Dominical
Oracles upon which Papias commented, and have shown
that they were the primitive collection of Testimonies
implied in the Christian propaganda of the first period,
let us now pass on to the dogmatic discovery, which was
indeed involved in the former, although it can be, and
actually was, arrived at quite independently.
We pointed out that the Book of Testimonies, where
it could be successfully restored, is our first authority for
Christian doctrine, its Christology being of necessity at
an earlier stage of evolution than what we find in the
New Testament or the sub- Apostolic Fathers. It has
been the fashion for those who suspected the existence
of the Book of Testimonies to argue that its foundation
in doctrine was the belief that Jesus is the Messiah, and!
that the whole book might be regarded as a collection of
Messianic Prophecies. Now it is not to be disputed
26

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
that there are some things in the primitive Testimony
Book which may properly be described as Messianic.
Such things, for example, as the time and place of the
coming of Christ, His miraculous works, and the details
of His death and resurrection.
But it is equally clear that Messianism is not the
starting point for the collector of the quotations from the
Old Testament. His point of departure is the doctrine
that Jesus is the Wisdom of .God. Perhaps it may be
urged that this is not the exact form in which the Testi
mony Book presents matters. It says that Christ is the
Wisdom of God ; and if this is taken to be a translation
from an Aramaic or Hebrew original, since Christ stands.
for Messiah, then in that sense the book may be called
Messianic. But it is not Messianic in a way that we:
are ordinarily accustomed to recognise. We should
certainly have never dreamed that a Christian propa
ganda with regard to the Founder of the Faith would
have started from the statement that Christ was the
Wisdom of God. Still less should we have expected
that such a statement could have been carried back into
the Apostolic circle, and have on it, perhaps, the official
seal of Matthew the Publican/
Now it is possible for us to arrive at this result more
or less completely without reference to the Testimony
Book at all.
Everyone knows that one of the greatest Christian
buildings in the world is the Mosque of the Holy Wis
dom, the Aya Sophia at Constantinople — the building
in which the Emperor Justinian thought he had rivalled
and out-distanced the glory of Solbmon himself. How
did the Christians of Justinian's time come to erect this
superb building in honour of the Holy Wisdom ? The
answer appears to be that it was built upon the founda-
27

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
tion of an earlier structure, bearing the same name, and
going back to the days of Constantine ; and that at the
time it was built the Holy Wisdom was an alternative
term for Christ Himself. Alongside of this basilica of
Constantine, Eusebius tells us that there stood another
dedicated to Dynamis or Power : the conjunction shows
that the builders were honouring Christ as the Wisdom
of God and the Power of God. It was the architectural
equivalent of i Cor. i. 24. It would be easy to show
that this identification was widespread in the Eastern
Church, and that it affected the literature as well as the
architecture of Christianity. To take a single illustration
almost at random ; in a passage in which Caesarius, the
brother of Gregory of Nazianzum, discourses upon the
darkening of the sun and moon at the time of the
Crucifixion, he says that the moon was the sister of the
sun, and sprung from the same mother as the sun, namely,
from Wisdom, who is Christ. And she, the moon,
could not bear the insults that were being wrought
against Christ by the godless. Now here we have two
curious statements : (1) that Sophia is the mother of
the sun and moon, and (2) that she is Christ. The
connection is not evident at first sight in either case.
But lopk a little closer at the words. The first state
ment means that created things, to which the sun and
moon belong, owe their origin to the Divine Wisdom.
This takes us back at once to the Old Testament, to the
passage in which God is said to have made all things in
or by Wisdom ; and more especially to the great hymn
in honour of Wisdom in the 8th chapter of Proverbs,
where Wisdom is represented as being with God as a
master workman, engaged in the artifice and ordering^
of all created things. It is clearly to such creative
Wisdom that Caesarius is referring. And we may
28

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
therefore infer that in equating Wisdom with Christ, his
fundamental thought was thatr Christ was the Wisdom
of God, because all things had been made by Him,
or conversely, that all things had been made by Him,
because He was the Wisdom of God. This is not a
new statement belonging to the fourth century. It is
the opening chapter in the Christology of the Matthew
Book, that Christ is the First-born of God, and that
He is the Wisdom by whom all things were made.
And the proof that is given in the Testimony Book is
precisely the passage in Proverbs to which we were just
referring. There are innumerable instances of a similar equation
between Christ and Wisdom, but they have been gener
ally misunderstood by those who have written on the
subject. They noted the parallel between the Wisdom
by whom all things were made, and the Logos by whom
all things were made, of whom St. John writes in the
opening verses of his Gospel, and drew the conclusion
that Sophia was an after-thought of Logos, and that the
Old Testament had been brought in to reinforce the
New, and the Sapiential Books to back up the Gospel.
It does not seem to have occurred to anyone to ask
whether this was the right order of things, and we shall
see presently that so far from the Sophia-doctrine being
a pendant to the Logos-doctrine, it is the Logos-doc
trine that is derived from Sophia. And everything that
is said in the New Testament of the Logos has been
arrived at from a series of previous statements which
had been made of the Divine Wisdom.
Now this is of the highest importance. It helps us
at once to understand why, in the New Testament, we
have in the Pauline Epistles a doctrine so closely coin
ciding with that of the Fourth Gospel, without the
29

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
language of the Fourth Gospel. How was it possible, for
instance, that St. Paul, in the ist chapter to the Colossians,
should make the series of statements with regard to
Christ's pre-eminence, pre-existence, authority, and cre
ative work, and yet never use the term " Word of God "
in the Johannine sense ? The answer is that St. Paul
preached the Wisdom of God, and not the Word of
'God. And whatever he says in Colossians, in the great
Christological passage referred to, is a deduction from
a previous identification which has been made between
Christ and Sophia. Anyone who studies the writings
of the Fathers carefully, or the rituals of the Early
Church, will see that where Logos and Sophia come in
together, it is Logos that is the afterthought and the
intruder. To take a single illustration which came recently
under my notice. The Serbian church, when celebrating
their Easter Festival, according to their ancient rite,
conclude their Paschal Canon in the following words :
"O the greatest, the most Holy Passover, Thou who
art Christ the Wisdom and the Word of God, and
the Power!" Comparison with the ist chapter of the
Epistle to the Corinthians, where Paul speaks of Christ
as the Wisdom of God and the Power of God, will
show that the Logos, or Word, has here been intro
duced into the Pauline formula. And this simple
instance can be paralleled, as we have said, all over
Patristic literature.
The same thing is evident when we notice that in
the Book of Testimonies, as Cyprian presents it to us,
we pass from the statement that Christ is the Wisdom
of God to another statement that Christ is the Word of
•God. The Testimony Book shows that Sophia, Wisdom,
had priority over Logos, Word. We may therefore
3«

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF, THE TRINITY
replace those statements in which Christ is affirmed to
be the Word of God, by an earlier series of statements
in which He is equated with the Divine Wisdom. ' And
it is not difficult to see why the change was made. For
Sophia is the Hebrew way of expressing what the
Greeks describe by Logos, and the substitution of one
term for the other is due to the supremacy of Greek
influence in the early Church, accompanied by a sense
of difficulty which was felt in giving to Christ a feminine
title. x
This supremacy of Greek influence, however, did
not obliterate the Divine Wisdom from the dogmatic
statements of the Church. It had, as we stated, a
literary validity as well as an architectural representa
tion. The Greek Church did not forget their origin ;
they built in, and built up, the Holy Wisdom. There
is not a single controversy with regard to the Nature of
the Trinity, as far as we know, which does not involve
the doctrine that Christ is the Wisdom of God as its
starting point, and the Old Testament definitions of
that Wisdom as its proof-text. Indeed, we may say
boldly that Christianity as a dogmatic system is founded
upon two things : first, the identification of Jesus with
the Wisdom of God, and second, the description of
Christ so identified with Wisdom, in terms that are
borrowed from the Sapiential literature. One passage
more than any other has contributed to the development
of Christian thought, and that is the passage in which
Wisdom praises herself in the 8th chapter of the
Book of Proverbs. And in that description the prin
cipal statement for the production of dogma is the verse
which runs in the Hebrew in the form, " The Lord
possessed me [in the] beginning of His way, and before
His works of old," and which, in the Greek of the LXX,
31

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
appears as " The Lord created me the beginning of His
way, for His works ".
The importance of these passages may be seen from
the consideration that in every controversy of the Church
with regard to the Person of Christ — whether against
the Arians, who denied the Consubstantiality and Co-
eternity with the Father, or the Sabellians, who merged
Jesus Christ's personality, including His sufferings, into-
the personality of God the Father — the proof texts on
either side are the same, and it is only a question of
what is the lawful or possible interpretation to be placed
upon them. Athanasius and Arius are at one, not only
in quoting Proverbs viii. 22, but in quoting it in the
incorrect translation of the LXX. They dispute over
the words " The Lord created me " (that is, Wisdom),
as to whether Christ is a creature, and if so, whether
He is like one of the other creatures. The text had so
great an authority that they did not go back to the
Hebrew to see what stood there as the original of the
Word over which they are disputing, until Eusebius of
Caesarea with his book learning (largely derived from
Origen) comes on the scene, to tell them that none of
the great translators who have revised the LXX will
approve of the word " created," and that if they insist on
that word, the Jews will have none of it. This allusion
to the Jews is very significant, for it intimates to us that
the text over which they were arguing came to both
sides of the different controversies out of a hand-book
of Testimonies against the Jews. But it was only
Eusebius who had the cunning to look into his copy of
Origen's Hexapla and see how the verse was rendered
by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion.
Perhaps a little illustration in detail will help us to
see the importance of this great passage in Proverbs, one
32

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
of the highest flights of all Hebrew poetry, for the de
termination of Christian doctrine. And before doing so,
it is as well to remind ourselves not to put in caveats
and objections against the method, nor to say that we
do not see what the 8th chapter of Proverbs has to
do with the matter at all, for we have shown, from the
tradition of the Church, that all branches of the Church,
orthodox, semi-orthodox, and heretics if we please to
include them, are agreed in the use of a common method.
And it is therefore not in order for us to object to the
method when we are engaged in a problem of historical
theology. In order to understand this more clearly, as
I have said, we take a specimen.
The treatise of Eusebius on the Ecclesiastical Theo
logy was written against Marcellus of Ancyra. Mar
cellus was what we may call a hyper-orthodox person.
He was terrified at the thought of introducing multi
plicity into the conception of the Deity. And in his
reaction from Arianism, he identified Christ so closely
with the flesh of Christ, by a straining of the statement
that " the Word became flesh," and similar expressions,
as to render it doubtful whether he really did hold that
Christ as the Word was consubstantial and co-eternal
with the Father. Now let us make a little summary of
one of the chapters of Eusebius' third book, in order that:
we may see how the matter was presented by Eusebius.
in his reply to Marcellus. He begins by introducing
Sophia, the Divine Wisdom. She speaks in her own
person in the Book of Proverbs. He recites Proverbs
viii. 12, etc., from the words, "I, Wisdom, inhabit
Counsel". He then shows that the whole of this
passage is spoken as from one person, and that no
change of speaker is to be assumed as we read from
point to point. It is Sophia who is speaking, and
33 3

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
Sophia is the same thing as God, the Word. She is
not used in an indefinite sense, as in such passages
where we say " Blessed is the man that findeth Wisdom,"
nor even in the passage that " God, by Wisdom, founded
the earth." That is, she is not a quality of God. When
we are told in another Scripture to say to Wisdom
¦" Thou art my sister," that does not mean that there is
an equation between God over all and human thoughts
when thinking wisely. One must not say of God " Thou
.art my brother," such language would be inharmonious
to our ears ; but we might say it to the Son of God, for
He was the Wisdom, and everything will move smoothly
af we remember what St. Paul says, that " Christ is the
Wisdom of God and the Power of God ". And it
follows that it is in Christ's Person that the words are
spoken, " The Lord created me the beginning of His
ways for His works ". It is not, however, of Christ's
flesh that the words are uttered. We will not, moreover,
says Eusebius, assume that He is a creature like the
rest of the Creation, nor say with the Arians that He
has come into being from non-being : but we will say
that He subsists and lives, that He antedates the whole
of the order of the world, and that He has been said to
rule over all things by the Lord who is His Father.
That is to say, we are to understand the word " created
me the beginning " as "God set me to rule over His
creation ".
Perhaps because Eusebius did not think this would
be finally convincing to Marcellus, he turns the tables
on him by saying : " If anyone were to inquire accurately
of the true meaning of the inspired Scripture, he would
find that the words ' created me ' are not there at all.
There is no sign of it in any of the great translators of
the LXX. Aquila says, ' The Lord possesses me, the
34

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
Headpiece of His way' ; Symmachus says, ' The Lord
possesses me, the beginning of His ways,' and so does
Theodotion almost exactly." And Eusebius then pro
ceeds to play upon the words " Head " and " beginning,"
and quotes Ephesians i. 10, to show that all things were
" brought to a head " in Christ, that He is the Word
and the Wisdom and the Life, and the Pleroma of every
thing good and fair. And so he continues in various
ways to prove that the Son of God and not the Flesh
of the Son of God, was before all things, and that by
Him all things were made. The new rendering, says
Eusebius, with "possessed " instead of " created," is a
better text for proving Divine Sonship, for what fairer
possession could a Father have than a Son ? This kind
of reasoning can, as we have said, be paralleled in almost
every theological discussion of the first five centuries.
We notice that it is only incidentally that the doctrine
of the Trinity is proved from the New Testament. In
every case, or in almost every case, the appeal is to the
Old Testament. And the reason for this proceeding is
clear. The proof was made, in the first instance, for
the Jews, with whom an appeal, to the New Testament
was not valid, and it was made before the New Testa
ment was written. So that to prove the doctrine of the
Trinity, or to establish the Deity of Jesus Christ, which
is the central point of the Trinity, from such passages
as the prologue to John, the ist chapter of the Epistle
to the Colossians, and the ist chapter of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, would be to prove it from passages which
had already drawn their proof from the Old Testament.
Historically, then, the Old Testament is the real court
of appeal. And whatever is said about Jesus Christ in
the Christian creeds, which are the outcome of the
Christian controversies, is a deduction from the great
35

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
passage in the Book of Proverbs, and from certain other
related passages in the later Sapiential Books which
form part of the Old Testament Apocrypha.
It will not do for us to say that this is not the way
in which they ought to have done it. What we have
to notice is that this is the way in which it was done.
We work upstream, as we have suggested, until we find
ourselves behind the Logos of the Fourth Gospel and
in the Sophia of Palestinian believers and of the Book
of Proverbs. But if we do not like this way of study, we may
proceed in the opposite direction, viz. by the method of
hypothesis, and this, indeed, was the way at which we
first arrived at the truth. We made a hypothesis that
one of Christ's titles was His description as "The
Wisdom of God " ; and using that hypothesis we tested
it to see what it would explain. It was easy to see that
it at once explained the major part of the titles given to
Jesus Christ in the New Testament, and nearly all the
dogmatic statements that were made concerning Him
in the Creeds. And since the value of a hypothesis
consists in the explanations which it offers, we are
entitled to claim that under this single assumption we
have found the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity ; and
that from it there flows at once a whole series of proof-
texts from the Old Testament, many of which are in
corporated in the New Testament itself, and are the
backbone of its theology.
At this point we have to stop and ask ourselves
whether it is at all likely that such a title was assumed
by our Lord, or given him by His disciples. We have
always been taught that the two main titles given to Him
in the beginning were, first, that He was the Messiah,
and second, that He was the Son of God. For these
36

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
statements we have His own affirmations, and the con
fessions of His leading disciples. It would be quite
wrong to obscure these points in the history, of Christian
doctrine, but it would be equally wrong to assume that
they exhausted the primitive confession. How Jesus
came to be called either " Christ "or " The Son of
God," involves inquiry in two other directions. What
is certain is, that along with these two recognitions,
there was a third. Historically, the first impression He
made upon His disciples and His compatriots was that
of an abnormal, supernatural Wisdom.

{Proverbs, viii. 22-31 (Hebrew).)
(Wisdom speaks).
The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way,
Before his works of old.
I was set up from everlasting, frpm the beginning,
Or ever the earth was.
When there were no depths I was brought forth ;
When there were no fountains abounding with water.
Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills was I brought forth : (lxx. he begat me) :
While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields,
Nor the beginning of the dust of the world.
When he established the heavens I was there :
When he set a circle upon the face of the deep :
When he made firm the skies above :
When the fountains of the deep became strong.
When he gave to the sea its bound,
That the waters should not transgress his command
ment : 37

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
When he marked out the foundations of the earth :
Then I was by him, as a master workman :
And I was daily his delight,
Rejoicing always before him :
Rejoicing in his habitable earth ;
And my delight was with the sons of men.

The Description of Wisdom.
(Wisdom of Solomon, vii. 22-27.)
There is in her a spirit, quick of understanding, holy,
Only-Begotten, manifold, subtle, freely-moving,
Clear in utterance, unpolluted, distinct, unharmed,
Loving what is good, keen, unhindered,
Beneficent, loving towards men,
Stedfast, sure, free from care,
All-powerful, all-surveying,
And penetrating through all spirits
That are quick of understanding, pure, most subtle :
For Wisdom is more mobile than any motion ;
Yea, she pervadeth and penetrateth all things by reason
of her pureness.
For she is a breath of the power of God
And a clear effluence of the glory of the Almighty ;
Therefore can nothing defiled find entrance into her.
For she is an effulgence from everlasting light,
And an unspotted mirror of the working of God;
And an image of his goodness.
And she, being one, hath power to do all things,
And remaining in herself reneweth all things ;
And from generation to generation passing into holy
souls,
She maketh men friends of God and prophets.
38

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
Wisdom's Praise of Herself.
{Ecclesiasticus, xxiv. 3-9.)
I came forth from the mouth of the Most High,
And covered the earth as a mist.
I dwelt in high places,
And my throne is in the pillar of the cloud.
Alone I compassed the circuit of heaven
And walked in the depth of the abyss.
In the waves of the sea and in all the earth,
And in every people and nation I got a possession.
With all these I sought rest,
And in whose inheritance shall I lodge?
Then the Creator of all things gave me a commandment ;
And he that created me made my tabernacle to rest,
And said, Let thy tabernacle be in Jacob,
And thine inheritance in Israel.
He created me before the beginning of the world,
And to the end I shall not fail-
Cyprian.
{Testimonies against the Jews, Bk. ii. c. 1.)
That Christ is the First-born and that he is the Wisdom
of God, by whom all things were made.
Solomon says in the Proverbs : —
The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for
his works ; before eternity he established me : in the
beginning before he made the earth and before he con
structed the depths, before the fountains of water issued
forth, before the mountains were placed, before all the
hills the Lord begat me. He made the countries and
the uninhabitable lands and the habitable borders under
the heaven. When he was preparing the heaven, I was
39

THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
with him, and when he was setting apart his seat : when
he was making the clouds above strong over the winds,
and when he was laying the fountains established under
heaven, when he was making strong the foundations of
the earth, then was I with him, setting things in order.
I was the one in whom he took delight. Daily was I
joying before his face continually, when he was gladdened
over the finished world.
Also the same Solomon says in Ecclesiasticus : —
I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, the
first-born before any creature. I made the never failing
light to arise in the skies, and like a cloud I covered
the whole earth. I dwelt in the heights and my throne
was in the pillar of the cloud. I encircled the ring of
the heaven, and I penetrated the depths of the abyss,
and I walked amongst the waves of the sea, and I stood
in every land, and in every people and every race I
had the pre-eminence, and by my power I trod on all
hearts, lofty and lowly. All hope of life and power is
in me. Pass over to me all ye who desire me, etc.
The Margent of the Geneva Version of the
Bible at Prov. VIII.
V. 22. He declareth hereby the diuinitie and eter-
nitie of this wisdome, which he magnifieth and prayseth
through this booke : meaning thereby the eternall Sonne
of God, Jesus Christ our Saviour, whom St. John calleth
the Word which was in the beginning.
V. 27. He declareth the eternitie of the Sonne of
God, which is meant by this word Wisdome, who was
before all time, and euer present with the Father.
V. 30. Some reade a chief worke : signifying that
the Wisdome, euen Christ Jesus was equall with God his
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THE ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
Father, and created, preserueth and still worketh with
him, as John v. 17.
V. 31. By earth he meaneth man, which is the
worke of God, in whom wisedome tooke pleasure ; in
so much that for man's sake the Divine Wisdome took
man's nature, and dwelt among us, and filled us with
unspeakable treasures, and this is that solace and
pastime whereof is here spoken.
Spenser.
{An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, 11. 186-206.)
There in his bosome Sapience doth sit,
The soueraine dearling of the Deity,
Clad like a Queene in royal robes, most fit
For so great powre and peerelesse maiesty.
And all with gemmes and iewels gorgeously
Adorned, that brighter than the starres appeare,
And make her natiue brightnes seem more cleare.
And on her head a crowne of purest gold
Is set, in signe of highest soueraignty,
And in her hand a scepter she doth hold,
With which she rules the house of God on hy,
And manageth the euer-moving sky,
And in the same these lower creatures all,
Subjected to her power imperiall.
Both heaven and earth obey unto her will,
And all the creatures which they both containe :
For of her fulness which the world doth fill,
They all partake, and do in state remaine,
As their great Maker did at first ordaine,
Through observation of her high beheast,
By which they first were made, and still increast.
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