18. Thus, when we read, Let Us make man
after Our image and likeness, these two words Us and
Our reveal that there is neither one isolated God, nor yet one
God in two dissimilar Persons; and our confession must be framed in
harmony with the second as well as with the first truth. For the
words our image—not our images—prove that
there is one nature
possessed by Both. But an argument from words is an insufficient
proof, unless its result be confirmed by the evidence of facts; and
accordingly it is written, And God made man; after the image of God
made He him Gen. i. 27.. If the
words He spoke, I ask, were the soliloquy of an isolated God, what
meaning shall we assign to this last statement? For in it I see a
triple allusion, to the Maker, to the being made, and to the
image. The being made is man; God made him, and made him in the
image of God. If Genesis were speaking of an isolated God, it
would certainly have been And made him after His own
image. But since the book was foreshowing the Mystery of the
Gospel, it spoke not of two Gods, but of God and God, for it speaks of
man made through God in the image of God. Thus we find that God
wrought man after an image and likeness common to Himself and to God;
that the mention of an Agent forbids us to assume that He was isolated;
and that the work, done after an image and likeness which was that of
Both, proves that there is no difference in kind between the Godhead of
the One and of the Other.