PART ii THE TRINITY 295 



Love, the creating, vivifying force of the Universe (the 

 Comforter or Holy Spirit). It is quite clear that he 

 did not accept as " philosophically " true the dis- 

 tinction of Persons, or the special divinity of Christ 

 Only once, perhaps, does he write seriously of Christ as 

 the Son of God, and that in one of the posthumous 

 works, the Lampas Triginta Statuarum. 1 " Charity is 

 the most perfect and consummate harmony, by which 

 the soul in us becomes so harmonious in itself that it is 

 attuned both to God and to all men equally, not only 

 to friends but even to enemies ; to this perfection we 

 are drawn, impelled, invited by the Son of the all- 

 mighty God, to raise us up to the likeness of the 

 Father, * who maketh His sun to rise upon good and 

 evil, and sends His rain upon the just and the unjust/ 

 uplifting us from the savage condition of life common 

 to brutes and to the uncivilised, who love their friends 

 and neighbours, but hate strangers and enemies." On 

 the other hand, this very law is elsewhere spoken of as 

 coming not from the " evil spirit or genius of any one 

 race," but from God, the Father of all, as being in 

 harmony with universal nature, and as teaching a 

 general philanthropy ; " that we should love our very 

 enemies, not be like brutes and barbarians, but trans- 

 form ourselves after the image of Him who makes His 

 sun to rise upon good and evil, and makes the rain of 

 His mercies to fall upon just and unjust. This is the 

 religion which I observe, as beyond all controversy, 

 and above all disputation, both from the conviction of 

 my mind, and in accordance with the custom of my 

 fatherland and race." 



What Bruno rejected in Christianity was the whole 



1 Op. Lat. iii. 158. 

 2 Op. Lat. i. 3. 4 (Letter to Rudolph II., prefixed to the Art. adv. Math.). 



