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Updated: June 10, 2025
This one principle or power was to him the same as the universe, the substance of which, having existed from all eternity, must necessarily be identical with God; for, since it is impossible that there should be two Omnipresents, so also it is impossible that there should be two Eternals.
For, he says, Charity never faileth; that though prophecies shall fail, tongues cease, knowledge vanish away, charity shall never fail. Now, if a thing never fail, it must be eternal. And if it be eternal, it must be in God. But if charity be not in God, there must be two eternals; God must be one eternal, and charity another eternal; which cannot be.
I shall hold by the Athanasian Creed, my friends, and ask you to think again over the matter: thus If there be but one Eternal, there is but one way of escaping out of our puzzle, which makes two Eternals; and that is, to go back to the old doctrine of St. Paul, and St. John, and the wisest of the Fathers, and say There is but one Eternal; and therefore eternal life is in the Eternal God.
Otherwise it is the thing over again, or it is the definition of the thing and the explanation of the name, and signifies that the thing is composed of these elements. If we say God has many attributes, it will follow that there are many eternals.
And all we can say is that goodness is eternal and everlasting, just as God is: because God was and is and ever will be eternally and always good. But is eternal goodness one thing, and the eternal God, another? That cannot be, again; for as the Athanasian Creed tells us so wisely and well, there are not many Eternals, but one Eternal.
Again, I preferred moments before everlastings, temporals before eternals, to be racked and always slaying before the life that is blessed and endless: here is the sting. Also, this I did against light, against convictions, against conscience, against persuasions of friends and ministers, and the godly lives which I beheld in others: here is the sting.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. And that is the reason we know so much about the thing. "The Father is eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Ghost eternal," and yet there are not three eternals, only one eternal, as also there are not three uncreated, nor three incomprehensibles, only one uncreated, one incomprehensible.
First food, you see, then God's Word, and then a little writing and arithmetic, and then a little love, if it happens to come in the way; but, by the Eternals! there is no use in beginning with love and ending with food. What can you say, now, Marit?" "I do not know." "You do not know what you ought to answer?" "Yes, indeed, I know that." "Well, then?" "May I say it?"
What must be the daily influence on a man who sees in his closest friend, to whom he is joined for life, a passion for the public gaze, a boundless faith in eternals, a complete devotion to the artificial enhancing of ordinary and vanishing charms, combined with a contemptuous neglect of the graces of mind and heart?
But looking about us, we found we had a gracious king, brave parliaments, a stout city, good lord-mayors, honest sheriffs, substantial laws against them, and these we made the object of our hope, quite forgetting the direction in this exhortation, 'Let Israel hope in the Lord. For indeed the Lord ought to be our hope in temporals, as well as in spirituals and eternals.
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