But on the other hand, the Schoolmen, though they allow a person to be an individual substance, and say that there are three such persons in the Godhead, yet they commonly deny three individual substances, in any sense: and assert that the Divine Nature is absolutely a single substance utterly exclusive of three; as the nature of a single Angel is a simply individual substance: which is a manifest deviation from the doctrine of the Fathers, and is in effect to say, that three persons are but one person; which without a great deal of subtlety and nice unintelligible distinctions, will hardly be freed from a contradiction.

Others there are, who have still refined upon the Schoolmen's notion and more corrupted the genuine sense of Anti quity, by introducing new and foreign senses of the term person, which were never heard of in the Catholic Church before. So that the very words are now become a matter of dispute and controversy, and almost as much a mystery as the very mystery they were designed to unfold.

In order therefore to contribute something towards the clearing this controversy, I shall propose these four things to be the subject of this and another discourse.

1. To consider the notions which some modern authors have given of the term person, and shew how unfit it is in their sense to explain the distinction which both Scripture and Antiquity put betwixt Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

2. To shew that the Fathers did believe the Three Persons to be three distinct individual substances in one sense, as well as one substance in another.

3. That this notion is most agreeable to the sense of Scripture.

4. That it is very consistent with any notion the Fathers had of the Unity of the Godhead.

And this I conceive will be a just exposition and intelligible account of the Apostle's words, " There are three, &c." but at present I can only dispatch the two first.

And here I purposely omit all disputes concerning the original and authority of this text, as no way relating to the business in hand: since no one, with whom we are at present concerned, can pretend to raise any scruple about it.

And the learned Dr. Hammond will give any man sufficient satisfaction concerning it; who shews that it was anciently read in the copies used by Cyprian and Tertullian, which was long before Arianism was ever set on foot in the world or dreamed of: and that the first corruptors of the text were the Arians themselves, as he proves from the testimonies of St. Ambrose and St. Jerome, who charge them with the erasing of it.

I omit likewise all direct proofs of the Divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, as a thing presupposed by all good Catholics, and no ways necessary to be insisted on in an enquiry of this nature, which takes it for granted that they are truly divine, and upon that supposition proceeds to enquire, whether according to the representation made us in Scripture and Antiquity it can be rationally conceived and understood, that there are Three who are truly distinct from one another and yet truly One without a contradiction; that the thing is possible and conceivable, is what I hope clearly to evince.

But first we are to consider the notions which some modern authors give of the term person, and shew how unfit it is in their sense to explain the distinction of the Trinity.

Some Protestant authors, no doubt in their zeal for Christianity, thinking to confute their Socinian adversaries and force them to own three Persons in the Godhead, have forsaken the ancient ecclesiastical notion of the term person, and taken up with the antiquated and foreign sense of it; that I mean so much contended for by Laurentius Valla,* in the sixth book of his Elegancies 34th Chapter, as the only true Latin notion of it: in which acceptation it signifies, not a substance but only a mode, an office, an habitude or quality; in which sense one and the same man (to go no further for an instance) may sustain no less than an hundred or a thousand persons: i. e. as many persons as there are different relations, circumstances or capacities, under which he may either act or be conceived.

Valla Elegant. 1. 6. c. 34.

Now it is true, this is one very proper and ancient signification of the word person in the Latin tongue, and may very well be allowed in criticism; but it is to be feared, it will not so well answer the end of religion, nor give us that true distinction which the Scripture seems to put betwixt Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. For according to this hypothesis, the Father alone may sustain three persons and the Son as many, and the Holy Ghost as many: and so instead of a Trinity we shall have an endless number of persons multiplied in infinitum. It is easy to conceive one single person to be three persons in this sense, which if we allow, it is as easy to tell what heresies have gained their point. This opens a way to those ancient heresies so often condemned by the Primitive Church under the names of Praxeas, Noetus Samosetenus and Sabellius: and this is not to confute the Socinian, but really to yield up the cause to him, who will not scruple here to join issue with us, and profess it in his creed, that he believes three persons in the Godhead, if we will once give it under our hands, that by person we mean no more than this. [This, if I mistake not, is however the very thing, which Sabellius of old contended for, and made the first article of his creed: i. e. taking person to signify an individual or particular substance, so there was but one single person in the Godhead; but roíа прóσшжα, and tres personæ, let Sabellius have the interpretation of them himself to make them signify only office or mode or quality, in this sense they were his own terms; and he could safely allow three persons or more in one single substance without any detriment to his own hypothesis.] And this I think is sufficient reason to discard this notion of the word person from the doctrine of the Trinity: because if closely followed and maintained, it must bring us at last to those very heresies, which we most studiously design to avoid.

Another disallowable notion, taken from some of the Schoolmen and not much unlike the former, is, that the Three Persons are only one single substance under three modes of subsisting i. e. That the same single individual Divine substance is in the Father as quid ingenitum, in the Son as quid genitum, in the Holy Ghost as quid procedens. These

men take substance in the strictest sense of that word, as it signifies a single substance utterly exclusive of three in any

sense.

But then this hypothesis is only words, that leave us more in the dark than we were before, and labours under very great absurdities: for to say that one single substance, in their sense of substance, subsists in three persons by three modes of subsisting, is what no man clearly understands. Besides that it makes the persons only three modes [at least two of them as distinct from the first must needs be mere modes], and not tres res subsistentes; to deny which is Sabellianism, because it confounds the persons into one. And further it will reduce us to this difficulty, and oblige us to say, that the same single substance, or person, is both genitum and ingenitum, both Father and Son, which cannot be freed from a contradiction.

I know indeed this hypothesis is usually fathered upon the author of the Expositio Fidei, under the name of Justin Martyr for the critics are agreed that that treatise is none of his. That author says, that the three persons in the Trinity do not differ in nature, but only by three different Tρоπоi váρžεws, or different modes of subsisting; hence some very illogically concluded, that person and Tρóπos úπάρęεws were synonimous terms; as if three persons were merely three. abstracts and not three things, as well as three modes of subsisting, whereas that author gives no countenance to such a wide conclusion. For his notion is quite different, but, as he explains it, very rational and intelligible. For he tells us, in the explication of it, that Adam and those that came of him (suppose Eve and Seth) do not differ in nature, but only by a different rρóros váρews, by having that common nature three different ways.

Adam, suppose, had his existence from God alone by immediate creation out of dust ; and that was his τρόπος υπάρξεως: Eve had the same nature, but by a different mode of existing, and that was by being created out of the rib of man and Seth had the very same nature, but by a different way from them both, viz. by being begotten, not created immediately by God as they were. This, though I have somewhat en

VOL. VIII.

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larged and paraphrased the words, is that author's notion of τроTOS ÚTάρžεws, common to him with many others; whence a man might as well conclude, that Adam and Eve and Seth were three mere modes of the same single substance, as that the three Persons in the Trinity are only three modes of subsisting; for he says the same of both.* It is plain therefore that author meant, by nature, common nature, of which several individual substances might partake; and by persons, three such substances partaking of that common nature; and by трожое vпáρews, the different ways that three such beings might partake of one common nature: so that in his sense he might rationally say, the three Divine Persons (meaning three divine individual substances) did not differ in nature, but only by different rрóπо ÚTάρEεws, by partaking of that one common nature three different ways: the Father's τρόπος being άγεννησία, or existing from none: the Son's yέvvnou, as receiving his Being from the Father, and the Holy Ghost's Kópevac, as receiving Being from both. This is a rational and intelligible account of three persons in one nature, and agreeable to the sense of all the primitive Fathers; who took not nature for a single individual substance, but for a common nature or substance, that might be contained without division in many particular individuals, so that they, who fix this notion, of three persons being merely three modes of subsisting without three substances that distinctly subsist, upon this author, do manifest injury both to him and all antiquity; as I come now more particularly to prove, by proceeding in the

2nd place to shew, that the Fathers by three persons always understand three distinct individual substances really distinct from one another, though at the same time they

• Pseudo. Just. Exposit. id. p. 374. Ὡς γὰρ ὁ Ἀδὰμ, και τοι γέννησιν μὴ προσηκάμενος, τοῖς ἐξ ἀυτῷ γεννηθεισι κατὰ τὸ τῆς ἐσίας ταυτὸν ἐις κοινωνίαν συνάπτεται, ὕτως ἐδεὶς λόγος τὸ κοινὸν τῆς ἐσίας τῦ Πατρὸς πρὸς τὸν Υιόν και τὸ Πνέυμα διασπασᾶι διὰ τὸ ἀγέννητον δυνήσεται, h. e. As Adam, though he was himself unbegotten, yet partakes of the very same nature with those that are begotten of him, by an identity, or sameness of substance; so the community of substance, which is betwixt Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is not destroyed by the Father's being unbegotten.