Breviloquium

First, therefore, concerning the Trinity of God, three things are to be considered,¹ namely, how the unity of substance and nature² stands together with the plurality of persons; second, how it stands together with the plurality of apparitions; third, how it stands together with the plurality of appropriates.

Concerning the plurality of persons in the unity of nature, therefore, right faith dictates that this must be held: namely, that in the unity of nature there are three persons, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, of whom the first is from no one, the second from the first alone by generation, the third from the first and the second by spiration or procession; so that the trinity of persons does not exclude from the divine essence supreme unity, simplicity, immensity, eternity, immutability, necessity, and even primacy; rather, it includes supreme fecundity, charity, liberality, equality, kinship, conformity, and inseparability; all of which sound faith understands to be in the most blessed Trinity.³

The reason for this truth is as follows: faith, since it is the principle of the worship of God and the foundation of the doctrine that is according to piety,⁴ dictates that God is to be thought of in the highest and most pious way. It would not think of him in the highest way if it did not believe that God could communicate himself supremely; it would not think of him in the most pious way if it believed that he could but would not; and therefore, in order that it may think of him in the highest and most pious way, it says that God communicates himself supremely, eternally having a beloved and a co-beloved, and thus that God is one and triune.

To this faith, insofar as it dictates that God is to be thought of in the most pious way, all Sacred Scripture, which is called doctrine according to piety, bears witness: for it confesses that God has offspring, whom he supremely loves, a Word coequal with himself, which « from eternity he begot, in which he ordered all things »;⁵ through which he produced and governs all things; through which also, having been made flesh, for supreme goodness he redeemed man with his most precious blood and fed the redeemed; through which also, at the end of the world, bestowing supreme mercy, he will free them from all misery, so that through Christ all the elect may be sons of the Most High Father, in whom there will be the whole consummation of piety, both of God toward us and, conversely, of us toward God.

Insofar as faith dictates that God is to be thought of in the highest way, not only does Sacred Scripture bear witness to it, but every creature as well, according to what Augustine says in the fifteenth book on the Trinity, chapter four:⁶ « For not only does the authority of the divine books proclaim that there is a God, but the whole nature of things itself that surrounds us, to which we also belong, proclaims that it has a most excellent Creator, who gave us a natural mind and reason, by which we judge living things to be preferred to non-living, things endowed with sense to things without sense, things endowed with understanding to things without understanding, immortal things to mortal, powerful things to powerless, just things to unjust, beautiful things to deformed, good things to evil, incorruptible things to corruptible, immutable things to mutable, invisible things to visible, incorporeal things to corporeal, blessed things to miserable. And hence, since without doubt we place the Creator before created things, we must confess that he both lives supremely and senses and understands all things, and cannot die, be corrupted, or changed, nor is he a body, but a most omnipotent, most just, most beautiful, best, and most blessed spirit. » — Behold, these twelve include the highest nobilities of the divine being. But afterward, as he himself shows,⁷ these twelve are reduced to three, namely, eternity, wisdom, and blessedness; and these three to one, namely, wisdom, in which are included the generating mind, the Word as offspring, and the love joining both, in which faith dictates that the most blessed Trinity consists. And since supreme wisdom posits the Trinity, it nonetheless also posits all the noblest conditions previously mentioned, namely, unity, simplicity, and the others that follow; it is necessary that all the aforesaid nobilities of the divine being stand together with the most blessed Trinity.