Three Treatises on the Trinity and the Incarnation

so the new man might become the recipient of a new love, and stone might be placed upon stone, and a shoot might be grafted into a tree of the same kind, and a new commandment might begin in the new generation, and make it grow. And when the new man has received this new commandment of love which Christ gave, then love begins to enter into the knowledge of natures, and to acquire an understanding of spirits proper to itself, which is not accustomed to be acquired through discipline, but beholds the things themselves face to face and, along with their natures, investigates their underlying reasons, firmly laying the foundation and building rightly. Only he, therefore, who has attained this degree, is fit to discuss the question of the divinity. I, however, have been asked by you, although I have not even begun to walk on this path, to speak about those things which are placed at the end of the path, and about that city to which this path leads, and about all its goods, and also about the King who dwells in this city. But because grace can draw the mind along any path it wishes, and, without the path of labor, can lead a man to the vision of truth along another path of faith, we will treat of those things which we have received through grace by means of faith. For we shall not now discourse through knowledge, which is accustomed to arise only from spiritual love, but through the movements of faith which is the beginning of the path of morals. Indeed, a discourse concerning the nature of the Essence original: "Essentiae" must be conducted. Yet only He can understand Himself, who revealed His nature to the earlier original: "hominibus" [men] and His persons to the later ones i.e., nature in the Old Testament, persons in the New Testament. Therefore, as we have learned, so also do we believe that there is one divine nature which is alone, the creator of all things, nor was it created by another. Wherefore it alone is the true nature, and the immutable essence original: "essentia immutabilis". We have learned that it exists solely; but in what manner and where it exists, neither the mind can attain, nor speech can tell. For if the intellect were capable of knowing this, this nature, I believe, would not have emulated the creatures to reveal itself. For it desired in its immense love to reveal to us whatever could be known about itself; but because it knows that the created nature cannot perceive anything except its existence, it hid the mode of its existence and revealed to us only that it exists. For not even it, I believe, could know how it exists, if it were not the supreme being original: "ens supremum". For it pertains to the essence alone to know even how it exists; a rational creature, however, possesses this, and this alone is given to it, that it might know...