'We are like ruinous old houses that are falling down on every side. If you prop them up on one side, they fall down on the other. They must be supported in all directions, and renovated from the very foundations, for the whole thing is going to rack and ruin. We are all the same, the perfect and the imperfect alike. History is full of souls that have been lost by the abundance of their graces … Lucifer found the occasion of his ruin in heaven'.

These few phrases, which end with something that sounds like a reminiscence of Gregory the Great, are nevertheless as characteristic of their own author as they are of their period. They form part of an address given by Pierre de Bérulle2 at the opening of his visitation of one of those Carmelite convents for whose existence in France he, more than anyone else, was responsible

In two previous articles I have tried to explore that special conception of Yahweh's encounter with, and presence to Israel which Old Testament theologians call kabod theology. When the Jerusalem temple was destroyed in 586. B.C. the exiled priests finally committed to writing their own sacred tradition of how Yahweh had first encountered Israel in the desert, made himself present to her, and chosen from among her tribes a priestly race to minister to him in the immediate sphere of his holiness. At the roots of this tradition lies the conception of the kabod (glory), the manifestation of Yahweh's holy presence in the form of a radiant and fiery cloud, numinous and death-dealing to all that is profane. The kabod descends at intervals to meet the people at a sacred place chosen by Yahweh himself.

In his introduction to the De Trinitate, Augustine stated his plan, as we saw in the first article, of beginning by establishing what he calls the initium fidei, the starting-point of faith, which he does by showing that the mystery is revealed in Scripture; and then of going on to give reasons for—reddere rationem, which is better translated, perhaps ‘to account for'— the one true God being a Trinity, and for the rightness of saying that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are of one substance or essence. It has been commonly held that the first part of this programme occupies Bks I-VII, in which the dogma is discussed, and that the second part is undertaken in Bks VIII-XV, in which Augustine is thought to look for a sort of proof of the mystery in the created image of the Trinity which is man.