78 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



of everything that has soul and life ; and I regard it 

 as immortal, as also bodies in substance are immortal, 

 death being nothing but division and congregation : as 

 the Preacher says, ' The thing that hath been it is that 

 which shall be, and that which is done is that which 

 shall be done ; and there is no new thing under 

 , the sun/" 



Bruno confessed to have doubted the application of 

 the word u persons " to these distinctions within the 

 Godhead, since his eighteenth year ; but he had read in 

 St. Augustine that it was not an old term, but new at 

 that time. To none of his doubts as to the distinction 

 of persons or the Incarnation had he ever knowingly 

 given expression, except in quoting others, Arius, 

 Gabellius, and the like. . . . On the same day, in his 

 prison-house, he was further examined, and repeated 

 that whatever he had written or said contrary to the 

 Catholic faith was not intended as direct impugnment 

 of the faith, but was based on philosophic grounds or 

 on the authority of heretics ; he made clearer also his 

 reason for doubting the applicability of the term 

 " persons " to the distinctions in the Godhead, quoting 

 Augustine's words, " Cum for midine prof erimus hoc nomen 

 personae, quando loquimur de divinis, et necessitate coacti 

 utimur" Especially as to the divinity of Christ he 

 had been unable to understand how there could be any 

 such relation between the infinite, divine substance, and 

 the human, finite, as between any other two things, 

 soul and body, for example, which may subsist together 

 as one reality, but he had only hesitated as to the in- 

 effable manner of the Incarnation, and not as to the 

 authority of the Holy Scriptures which says " The 

 Word was made flesh." Divinity could not be held, 

 theologically speaking, to be along with humanity in 



