Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON TRINITY SUNDAY (1), by JOHN BYROM


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First Line: Co-equal trinity was always taught
Last Line: By its paternal, filial, spirit bliss.
Subject(s): Christianity; Jesus Christ; Trinity Sunday


CO-EQUAL TRINITY was always taught
By the divines most fam'd for pious thought.
The men of learning fill'd, indeed, the page
With dissonant disputes, from age to age:
But with themselves, so far as one can read,
About their schemes are not at all agreed,
When they oppos'd, by reason or by wrath,
This grand foundation of the Christian Faith.

For what more fundamental point, or grand,
Than our ascending Saviour's own command?
"Go, and baptize all nations in the name"—
Of whom, or what? (For thence the surest aim
Of Christian doctrine must appear the most.)
"The name of FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST"—
Our Lord's interpretation here we see
Of "Thou shalt have no other Gods but Me."

For can the phrase, so highly sacred, shew
The name of God to be omitted? No;
By its essential Trinity express'd,
It shew'd what faith Christ will'd to be profess'd:
One God the Jews had own'd; and One Supreme,
With others lower, was the Pagan theme;
How One was true, and how Supreme profan'd,
Our Lord's baptismal ordinance explain'd.

The one Divinity of Father, Son,
And Spirit, teaches christian thought to shun
Both Pagan and Rabbinical mistake,
And understand what holy prophets spake,
Or in the ancient writings or the new,
To which this doctrine is the sacred clue,
That so conducts us to the saving plan
Of true religion, as no other can.

For were the Son's Divinity denied,
The Father's must of course be set aside,
Or be a dark one—How can it be bright,
But by its own eternal, inborn light?
The glory of the Father is the Son,
Of all his pow'rs begotten, or begun,
From all eternity—Take Son away,
And what the Father can delight in, say.

The love, paternally divine, implies
Its proper object, whence it must arise,
That is, the Son; and so the filial, too,
Implies paternal origin in view;
And hence the third distinctly glorious tie
Of love, which both are animated by:
All is One God, but He contains divine,
Living relations, evidently Trine.

So far from hurting unity, that hence
The fulness rises of its perfect sense;
And ev'ry barren, spiritless dispute,
Against its truth, is pluck'd up by the root:
The faith is solid to repose upon,
Father, Word, Spirit, undivided One;
By whom mankind, of threefold life possess'd,
Can live, and move, and have its being blest.

Not by three Gods; or One supremely great,
With two inferiors; or the wild conceit,
God, Michael, Gabriel; or aught else devis'd
For christians, in no creature's name baptiz'd:
But of the whole inseparable THREE,
Whose fertile Oneness causes all to be,
And makes a Heav'n thro' nature's whole abyss,
By its Paternal, Filial, Spirit bliss.





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