HOPKINS: CHARACTER AND OPINIONS OF WILLIAN LANGI.ANI). 249 



ever given any attention to the attempt of the scholastics to systema- 

 tize and explain, though he necessarily made use of their conclusions, 

 as far as they had become a part of the doctrines of the church. In 

 proceeding with the treatment of this topic, I shall aim to separate 

 the formal and doctrinal from the practical. 



cl. THE SUPERNAL AND THE INFERNAL. 



Th<» Trinity. The. doctrine of the Trinity is repeatedly enun- 



ciated, with profuse illustration. God is Truth, or His throne is 

 Truth, "the trone that trinity ynne sitteth " (C, 11., 134). Belief in 

 the Trinity is the most fundamental of the articles of faith (B, X., 

 230-238). There are three Persons, but each is Ood himself, and all 

 are God, and are "noujht in plurel noumbre;" yet in the act of 

 creation, God though "synguler hym-self " used the plural verb 

 faciamiis, thus implying, Langland says, that a greater agency was at 

 work than His word alone (B, IX., 35). God is without beginning; 

 the Son is the savior from death and the devil; the Holy Ghost is of 

 both; and the Trinity is the Creator of man and beast. This is the 

 summary of the " artikle of the feithe;" but this is hard to under- 

 stand, hence the illustrations elsewhere given. 



God in the act of creation, but without the Son and Spirit, would 

 be as a lord who would write letters but lacked a pen and parchment 

 (Ibid.). The three Persons of the Trinity are the three props of the 

 tree of Charity (C, XIX., 1-52) . Against the world stands Potencia- 

 Dei-Patris: against the wind of the flesh resists Sapicucia-Dci-Patris, 

 which is Christ; and Spiritiis-Saiictus is used to support the tree 

 when shaken by the devil, and also as a weapon to strike him down. 

 Christ's coat of arms, when he jousts in the armor of Piers Plow- 

 man (C, XIX., 188, and parallel passages in B), is three Persons in 

 one banner, each separate from the other, yet one speech and one 

 spirit springeth out of all; there is but one wit and one will, and 

 though "sondry to seo upon, solus deiis he hoteth." The Trinity is 

 like Christ, Christendom, and the Church, or like Adam, Eve, and 

 Abel, that is husband, wife, and child. Eve proceeded from Adam, and 

 Abel was of them both, yet these three are but one in manhood. So 

 is the Son of the Father, and the Holy Spirit of them both (C, XIX., 

 210-240). Abraham states that God appeared to him as three Per- 

 sons "goyinge a-thre right by my gate," and in what follows is a 

 curious adaptation of the grammar to tr.e circumstances. Abraham 

 rose up and reverenced God, and right fair L'reeted //////, and washed 

 their feet and wiped them. After they had eaten. He told Abraham 

 and his wife their inmost thoughts (C, XIX., 245). 



