Chapter 22.—How Great the Unlikeness is Between the Image of the Trinity Which We Have Found in Ourselves, and the Trinity Itself.

42. But since these are in one person, as man is, some one may say to us, These three things, memory, understanding, and love, are mine, not their own; neither do they do that which they do for themselves, but for me, or rather I do it by them. For it is I who remember by memory, and understand by understanding, and love by love: and when I direct the mind’s eye to my memory, and so say in my heart the thing I know, and a true word is begotten of my knowledge, both are mine, both the knowledge certainly and the word. For it is I who know, and it is I who say in my heart the thing I know. And when I come to find in my memory by thinking that I understand and love anything, which understanding and love were there also before I thought thereon, it is my own understanding and my own love that I find in my own memory, whereby it is I that understand, and I that love, not those things themselves. Likewise, when my thought is mindful, and wills to return to those things which it had left in the memory, and to understand and behold them, and say them inwardly, it is my own memory that is mindful, and it is my own, not its will, wherewith it wills. When my very love itself, too, remembers and understands what it ought to desire and what to avoid, it remembers by my, not by its own memory; and understands that which it intelligently loves by my, not by its own, understanding. In brief, by all these three things, it is I that remember, I that understand, I that love, who am neither memory, nor understanding, nor love, but who have them. These things, then, can be said by a single person, which has these three, but is not these three. But in the simplicity of that Highest Nature, which is God, although there is one God, there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

CAPUT XXII.

42. Quanta dissimilitudo inter repertam in nobis imaginem Trinitatis et ipsam Trinitatem. Verum haec quando in una sunt persona, sicut est homo, potest nobis quispiam dicere: Tria ista, memoria, intellectus, et amor, mea sunt, non sua; nec sibi, sed mihi agunt quod agunt, imo ego per illa. Ego enim memini per memoriam, intelligo per intelligentiam, amo per amorem: et quando ad memoriam meam aciem cogitationis adverto, ac sic in corde meo dico quod scio, verbumque verum de scientia mea gignitur, utrumque meum est, et scientia utique et verbum. Ego enim scio, ego dico in meo corde quod scio. Et quando in memoria mea cogitando invenio jam me intelligere, jam me amare aliquid, qui intellectus et amor ibi erant et antequam inde cogitarem, intellectum meum et amorem meum invenio in memoria mea, quo ego intelligo, ego amo, non ipsa. Item quando cogitatio memor est, et vult redire ad ea quae in memoria reliquerat, eaque intellecta conspicere atque intus dicere, mea memoria memor est, et mea vult voluntate, non sua. Ipse quoque amor meus cum meminit atque intelligit quid appetere debeat, quid vitare, per meam, non per suam memoriam meminit; et per intelligentiam meam, non per suam, quidquid intelligenter amat, 1090 intelligit. Quod breviter dici potest: Ego per omnia illa tria memini, ego intelligo, ego diligo, qui nec memoria sum, nec intelligentia, nec dilectio, sed haec habeo. Ista ergo dici possunt ab una persona, quae habet haec tria, non ipsa est haec tria. In illius vero summae simplicitate naturae quae Deus est, quamvis unus sit Deus, tres tamen personae sunt, Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus sanctus.