At the end of Book 1 of De Trinitate (‘On the
Trinity’), Hilary of Poitiers offers this prayer for help in his effort to explain
and defend the mystery of the Trinity.
Notably, he wants to devote his every word to
God and to be devoted to every word from God. “Grant us, therefore,
precision of language, soundness of argument, grace of style, loyalty to truth…”
I know, O Lord God Almighty, that I owe Thee, as the
chief duty of my life, the devotion of all my words and thoughts to Thyself.
The gift of speech which Thou hast bestowed can bring me no higher reward than
the opportunity of service in preaching Thee and displaying Thee as Thou art,
as Father and Father of God the Only-begotten, to the world in its blindness
and the heretic in his rebellion. But this is the mere expression of my own
desire; I must pray also for the gift of Thy help and compassion, that the
breath of Thy Spirit may fill the sails of faith and confession which I have
spread, and a favouring wind be sent to forward me on my voyage of instruction.
We can trust the promise of Him Who said, Ask, and it shall be given you, seek,
and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you; and we in our want
shall pray for the things we need. We shall bring an untiring energy to the
study of Thy Prophets and Apostles, and we shall knock for entrance at every
gate of hidden knowledge, but it is Thine to answer the prayer, to grant the
thing we seek, to open the door on which we beat. Our minds are born with dull
and clouded vision, our feeble intellect is penned within the barriers of an
impassable ignorance concerning things Divine; but the study of Thy revelation
elevates our soul to the comprehension of sacred truth, and submission to the
faith is the path to a certainty beyond the reach of unassisted reason.
And therefore we look to Thy support for the first
trembling steps of this undertaking, to Thy aid that it may gain strength and
prosper. We look to Thee to give us the fellowship of that Spirit Who guided
the Prophets and the Apostles, that we may take their words in the sense in
which they spoke and assign its right shade of meaning to every utterance. For
we shall speak of things which they preached in a mystery; of Thee, O God
Eternal, Father of the Eternal and Only-begotten God, Who alone art without
birth, and of the One Lord Jesus Christ, born of Thee from everlasting. We may
not sever Him from Thee, or make Him one of a plurality of Gods, on any plea of
difference of nature. We may not say that He is not begotten of Thee, because
Thou art One. We must not fail to confess Him as true God, seeing that He is
born of Thee, true God, His Father. Grant us, therefore, precision of language,
soundness of argument, grace of style, loyalty to truth. Enable us to utter the
things that we believe, that so we may confess, as Prophets and Apostles have
taught us, Thee, One God our Father, and One Lord Jesus Christ, and put to
silence the gainsaying of heretics, proclaiming Thee as God, yet not solitary,
and Him as God, in no unreal sense.