Son, and Holy Spirit as three self-existent subsistences, — which is neither more nor less than Tritheism; in others, as if the Son and the Spirit derived their peculiar properties from the Father, which involves the doctrine of One Supreme Being and two unequal and dependent Gods; and in the passage just quoted, as if the Father, Son, and Spirit were only manifestations of the one God, just as the sun, moon, and stars, or any other object in creation, are manifestations of the Deity, or are the Divinity himself, which is either Sabellianism or Pantheism. In the following passage (book i. chap. xiii. 18), if the former part of it be interpreted by the latter, CALVIN will be thought to reason as if the terms Father, Son, and Spirit signified, not distinct intelligences in the Godhead, but merely attributes or operations of the Deity,-"Father" meaning a principle of action; "Son," wisdom, counsel, and arrangement; "Spirit," power or efficacy: "To the Father is attributed the principle of action, the fountain and source of all things; to the Son, wisdom, counsel, and the arrangement of all operations; and the power and efficacy of the action is assigned to the Spirit. Moreover, though eternity belongs to the Father, and to the Son and Spirit also, since God can never have been destitute of his wisdom or his power, and in eternity we must not inquire after any thing prior or posterior; yet the observation of order is not vain or superfluous, while the Father is mentioned as first; in the next place, the Son, as from him; and then the Spirit, as from both. For the mind of every man naturally inclines to the consideration, first, of God; secondly, of the wisdom emanating from him; and, lastly, of the power by which he executes the decrees of his wisdom."

To find out the true sense of the word "person," as applied to the Trinity, we are to consider what was the true sense of the word persona in approved Latin authors. It did signify the state, quality, or condition of a man, as he stands related to other men. Hence are those phrases frequent: Personam imponere, to put a man into an office, or confer a dignity upon him; inducre personam, to take upon him the office; sustinere personam, to bear an office, or execute an office; disponere personam, to resign the office; so agere personam, to act a person. So that there is nothing of contradiction, nothing absurd or strange, for the same man to sustain divers persons, or divers persons to meet in the same man, according to the true and proper notion of the word "person." Thus Tully: Sustineo unus tres personas; meam, adversarii, judicis, "I, being one and the same man, sustain three persons; that of my own, that of my adversary, and that of the judge." And David was, at the same time, son of Jesse, father of Solomon, and king of Israel. Now, if three persons, in the proper sense of the word "person," may be one man, what hinders but that three divine persons, in a sense metaphorical, may be one

God? And what hinders but that the same God, distinguished according to these three considerations [those of God the Creator, or God the Father; God the Redeemer, or God the Son; and God the Sanctifier, or God the Holy Ghost], may fitly be said to be three persons? Or, if the word "person" do not please, three somewhats, that are but one God ? DR. JOHN WALLIS: Three Sermons, pp. 58-61.

Other remarks, of a similar kind, by Dr. WALLIS, will be found quoted in the first Appendix to WHATELY'S "Elements of Logic," and seemingly approved by the archbishop.

Self-consciousness is not the formal reason of personality in the three divine persons. The divine persons are three relatives (or one simple being, or essence, under three distinct relations), and consequently differ from one another, not wholly and by all that is in them, but only by some certain mode or respect peculiar to each, and upon that account causing their distinction. . . . " Person" here imports only a relation, or mode of subsistence in conjunction with the nature it belongs to; and therefore a multiplication of persons, of itself, imports only a multiplication of such modes or relations, without any necessary multiplication of the nature itself to which they adhere; forasmuch as one and the same nature may sustain several distinct relations, or modes of subsistence. In God, besides essence or substance, we assert that there is that which we call mode, habitude, and relation; and, by one or other of these in conjunction with essence or substance, we give account of all the acts, attributes, and personalities belonging to the divine nature, or Godhead.. A mode is properly a certain habitude of some being, essence, or thing, whereby the said essence or being is determined to some particular state or condition, which, barely of itself, it would not be determined to. And, according to this account of it, a mode in things spiritual and immaterial seems to have much the like reference to such kind of beings that a posture has to a body, to which it gives some difference or distinction, without superadding any new entity or being to it. In a word, a mode is not properly a being, either substance or accident, but a certain affection cleaving to it, and determining it from its common general nature and indifference to something more particular. ... As, for instance, in created beings, dependence is a mode determining the general nature of being to that particular state or condition, by virtue whereof it proceeds from, and is supported by,

another; and the like may be said of mutability, presence, absence, inherence, adherence, and such like, viz., that they are not beings, but modes or affections of being, and inseparable from it so far that they can have no existence of their own, after a separation or division from the things or beings to which they do belong. As every mode essentially includes in it the thing or being of which it is the mode, so every person of the blessed Trinity, by virtue of its proper mode of subsistence, includes in it the Godhead itself, and is properly the Godhead as subsisting with and under such a certain mode or relation. ... The divine nature, subsisting under, and being determined by, such a certain mode, personally differs from itself, as subsisting under and determined by another; forasmuch as the divine nature, or Godhead, so subsisting and determined, is properly a person. . . . There is one, and but one, self-existing, infinite, eternal, &c., being, nature, or substance, which we call God. . . . This infinite, eternal, self-existent being or nature exists in, and is common to, three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of which the Son eternally issues from the Father, by way of generation; and the Holy Ghost, jointly from both, by way of spiration: which three divine persons superadd to this divine nature, or Deity, three different modes of subsistence, founding so many different relations; each of them belonging to each person in a peculiar, uncommunicable manner; so that, by virtue thereof, each person respectively differs and stands distinguished from the other two; and yet, by reason of one and the same numerical divine nature or Godhead equally existing in and common to all the three persons, they are all but one and the same God, who is blessed for ever. If there be any distinction in God, or the Deity, it must be either from some distinct substance, or some accident, or some mode of being. . . . But it cannot be from any distinct substance, for that would make a manifest composition in the divine nature; nor yet from any accident, for that would make a worse composition: and therefore it follows that this distinction must unavoidably proceed from one or more distinct modes of being. -DR. ROBERT SOUTH: Animadversions on Sherlock's Vindication, pp. 91, 120–1, 217, 241–2, 246-7, 285.

According to him [to SABELLIUS], the whole Trinity is God revealed; but the Divine Being, as he is in and of himself, and in his simple unity, is God concealed or unrevealed.. SABELLIUS admitted only threе πрóσπα [persons], because, as a Christian, he acknowledged only three ways in which God had specially revealed

himself; and these three he separated definitely from each other. It would seem that SABELLIUS maintained the Trinity to exist, as such, only in relation to the various methods and spheres of action belonging to the Godhead. In governing the world, in all its various operations on finite beings, the Godhead is Father; as redeeming, by special operations in the person of Christ and through him, it is Son; as sanctifying, and in all its operations on the community of believers, and as a Unity in the same, the Godhead is Spirit. SCHLEIERMACHER, as translated by Stuart in Biblical Repository for July, 1835; vol. vi. pp. 61, 67, 70.

The sum of SCHLEIERMACHER'S opinion. . . is, that the Unity is God concealed, and the Trinity is God revealed. The Unity or Movàs, as he supposes, is God in seipso, i.e. simply and in and by himself considered, immutable, self-existent, eternal, and possessed of all possible perfection and excellence. But, as to the Trinity, the Father is God as revealed in the works of creation, providence, and legislation; the Son is God in human flesh, the divine Logos incarnate; the Holy Ghost is God the Sanctifier, who renovates the hearts of sinners, and dwells in the hearts of believers. The personality of the Godhead consists in these developments, made in time, and made to intelligent and rational beings. Strictly considered, personality is not in his view eternal; and, from the nature of the case, as thus viewed, it could not be, because it consists in developments of the Godhead to intelligent beings; and those developments could not be made before those beings had existence. SCHLEIERMACHER'S Sabellianism, as represented by Moses Stuart in Biblical Repository for April, 1835; vol. v. pp. 316-17.

This has very much the appearance of a kind of Unitarianism, though to us it does not seem to resemble that either of the Old Testament or of the New. Stuart, however, regards SCHLEIERMACHER as a Trinitarian, and says (p. 268) that he can truly say he has "met with scarcely any writer, ancient or modern, who appears to have a deeper conviction of, or more hearty belief in, the doctrine of the real Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

What is personality ? Is it essence or attribute? Not the first, one might answer; for essence in the Godhead is numerically one and the same. Not the second, in an essential and fundamental sense; because, as we have seen, all the attributes that are of this description belong to the one substance or essence of the Godhead. “But, if personality be neither substance nor attribute," some one may exclaim,

"then can it be any thing, or have any existence at all?"... It is possible that there may be in the Godhead some distinctions which do not consist in a difference of substance; and which, moreover, do not consist in the high and peculiar and exclusive attributes of that substance which constitute Godhead, but which are, as TURRETIN avers, modal; or they may be of such a nature that we have no language to describe them, and no present ability even to comprehend them if they could be described. . . . There may be distinctions in the Godhead that lie beyond all our present logical and metaphysical conception or power of definition; distinctions which are co-eternal with the Godhead itself, and which, though neither essence nor essential attribute in the highest sense, may still have an existence that is real and true. The full sense of the words Father, Son, and Spirit, can be made out only by reference to God revealed. But the distinction in the Godhead itself, in which this revelation has its basis, is eternal: the development of it was made in time. . . . Why should it ever have any more been overlooked, that the names Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are names that have a relative sense, relative, I mean, to the developments of the Godhead as made in the economy of redemption, or as preparatory to it, than that such names as Creator, Governer, Redeemer, Sanctifier, Most High, and others of the like kind, have, and from their very nature must have, a relative sense, i.c. a sense which connects itself with the developments of the Godhead in relation to creatures ? MOSES STUART, in Biblical Repository for June, 1835; vol. vi. pp. 90–1, 99, 100.

The only difference between SABELLIUS or SCHLEIERMACHER and STUART Seems to be, that the former regarded the trinal distinctions in the Godhead - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as having had a beginning; the latter, that they were eternal, and had their ground or foundation in the divine nature itself, in the same way as the attributes of creatorship and lordship; the development, however, of all these distinctions or qualities being equally made in time. But the fair inference to be drawn from either of these views is, that there is no more reason for calling God three persons or distinctions than for extending the number so as to comprehend all the relations which he bears to his creatures, as, for instance, those of Benefactor, Preserver, King, and Judge, as well as of Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.

Thus we have three persons, or impersonations, all existing under finite conditions or conceptions. They are relatives, and, in that view, are not infinites; for relative infinites are impossible. And yet, taken representatively, they are, each and all, infinites; because they stand