Genesis, was too wise to give an opinion upon the subject. He merely says, “God formed (or re-formed) the earth;” the question of its creation from nothing, or its eternity, he did not touch.
Thus the reader sees that from the caves of Upper India, Persia, and Egypt, the doctrine of the Christian Trinity was undoubtedly drawn. But though these countries were the places where this doctrine flourished many ages before Christianity; yet it has been supposed that it was from the Platonists of Greece, who had learned it from these three nations, that the Christians immediately drew their doctrine. And if the keen eye of a modern Thomas Aquinas should discover some minute metaphysical variation between the ancient and modern systems, this will only be what we may expect to arise from the lapse of ages, and the difficulty of conveying ideas, so very abstruse, from one language into another. Nor will it be very surprising if the profound doctrines of philosophers, like Plato and Pythagoras, should happen to have been misunderstood by such philosophers as Papias and Ireneus. And if this should prove to have been the fact, the philosopher of the present day may not think the modern deviation any improvement upon the system.
I shall add no more at present on the subject of the Trinity or Cabala. I shall return to it very often; and it will not be till I come nearly to the end of this volume of my work, that I shall unfold the whole of what I have to disclose on this subject; when several apparent inconsistencies will be reconciled.
