Valentinus Gentilis – The Tritheist Put to Death In Bern, Chapter 6
CHAP. VI.
An Account of his Errors about the Article of the Blessed Trinity.
THE adorable Mystery of the Trinity is the constant Subject that runs thrô all his Writings: A Subject which he handles after such a rate, as that he seems neither to have thought nor wrote of any thing else, for the space at least of 8 Years last past.
In all which his principal design is to advance such a distinction in the Divine Essence, as might make the three Persons three distinct Spirits of different order and degree. As when we say, The Father of our Lord Iesus Christ is a Person in the Individual Trinity, Gentilis will have this to be false, and that we ought to say, The Father of our Lord Iesus Christ is that one God [is God alone.] Again, when we say Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one God Eternal, he here accuses us of Heresie, telling us, The Father alone is God of himself, [foreign,] not begotten, [foreign,] Maker of all things [Essentiator.] But that the Son was made [Essentiatus,] or received his Being from another; is indeed God, but not foreign; and so likewise the Holy Ghost; and by consequence that they are not One but Three Eternals.
Again, when we affirm that one God is to be Worshipp'd in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; this Pious plain Proposition he calls mere *Perhaps he meant Gypsie-Cant and meer Gibberish.Cant, and perfect Sophistry; and plainly affirms, pag. 20. of his Antidotes, That there are three Spirits really Subsisting. There are, says he, Antid. fol. 27, and 28. therefore Three, because *So that we see, Three Eternal Spirits are but an old Story, and Vented long before the Year 1690.three Eternal Spirits. And explains himself, pag. 70. They are (says he) Three Eternal Spirits distinguish'd by a gradual and due Subordination: And though he grants the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to be three Persons of the same Nature, yet he adds, They are distinct in Order, Degree, and Propriety; to explain which, he affirms, That it is proper to the Father, to be styl'd the One only God, by which explication the Son and Holy Ghost are manifestly excluded from the Unity of the Godhead. But he fancies there is a kind of foreign, Self-existence, which belongs to the Father only, that cannot be attributed to the Son. Hence it is, he styles the Father foreign, i. e. God of himself, as he is more eminently, truly, and properly God; but the Son is not foreign, but foreign and foreign, [a secondary and different sort of God;] whence he infers, That the Son is not of himself, but of God the Father, who alone is foreign, God of himself, p. 54. and p. 161. That God the Father is in the Scriptures call'd the only God, Invisible, most High, and the God of Christ or of the Word Incarnate. Again, p. 82. the Son is Subordinate [Essentiatori] to him that gave him Being; and so he makes the Father Essentiator, and the Son Essentiatus; and (by consequence) the Father to be properly God, and the Son only a Subordinate inferiour God.
Whereas we on the contrary do admit of no degrees in the Godhead, and do positively assert, That the Essence of God is but one single Essence, not Subordinate (or capable of Superiority and Inferiority.) However to bring himself clearly off here, he saith, that when he affirms, The Father is the One only God, this ought to be referred wholly to his Self-existence, not to his Numerical Substance. But who can't easily discern, that this pitiful shift is too weak to support his tottering Cause? For still this Absurdity will remain; to wit, That the Son is not Self-existent; and which is yet a plainer contradiction, 'twill follow that the Son with the Father is one God, and yet that the Father alone is this one God; likewise that the Essence, or foreign of the Godhead, is common to all three Persons, and yet Self-existence, or foreign, is peculiar to the Father. Farther, when we say, and yet they are not three Gods, but one God, he cries out upon this as an abominable Errour, forasmuch as these Words, one God, are to be understood of [and applied to] the Father only exclusive of the Son. Antidote 5. he pretends, that we ought not to say these three are one God [Unus Deus] but only Unum. For that all three have indeed but one Godhead, but yet are not all three one God. And shortly after he adds, The Father alone is the One God, and shews, pag. 50. that, the word One belongs not to the Unity foreign of Substance or Essence, but to the Self-Existence, to the foreign of the Father. And then concludes, pag. 59. that Christ is not foreign, or God of himself; and scornfully upbraids us with wresting the Term, Unus, proper only to the Father, to signifie the Unity of Essence belonging to the three Persons, contending that we ought to say, The Father, Son and Holy Ghost are Unum, but they are by no means Unus, or one God. Therefore when we say, [And yet not Three Eternals, but one Eternal;] Gentilis will have this to be a grand mistake; for that they are Three Eternal Spirits, which cannot be One or Unus. Thus I have briefly, and with what plainness I could, collected his Tenets out of his own Writings, which likewise he has frequently own'd and endeavour'd to defend in common Discourse and Conversation.
In short, the Sum of what he asserted, is briefly this; That the Father is one God, the Son another God, and the Holy Ghost a third God; That they are all One, (Unum) yet not unus Deus [one God] but three Subordinate Spirits; that the Father only is properly to be call'd, The One God, who alone is of himself, and strictly foreign.
Here it is to be observ'd, That when we say One God, that Expression may be understood two ways.
First, One foreign, in Essence:
Secondly, One foreign, in Name only.
The first Acceptation he utterly rejects, or else he could never defend *Dr. Sherlock defends the very same.Three distinct intelligent Substances.
The latter he allows of, and recommends by a very pompous Exposition, as that these Three Spirits are *He might have added in Mutual Consciousness too.One in Consent, in Will, in Nature, in Power, in Dominion, in Operations, &c. and to this sense he wrests whatever is said in Scripture concerning the Unity of the Godhead. But the Universal Consent of the Catholick Church teaches us quite otherwise; namely, That God is One in Essence, which one Essence subsists in three Persons. In this sence hath the Church hitherto expounded the Apostles Creed. I Believe in God. But what God do you believe in? Why, in the Father Son and Holy Ghost. Thus the Nicene Creed added the Term foreign, [of the same Substance] to express the Identity of Substance in opposition to the Blasphemies of Arius. And the Creed of Athanasius in express terms tells us, We must confess the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost not to be Three Gods, but One God, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. And in this Trinity (saith he) none is afore or after other, none greater or less than another, but the whole Three Persons are coeternal and coequal; so that in all things a Trinity in Unity, and Unity in Trinity, is to be worshipped. By denying of this, Gentilis hath been the occasion of introducing several dangerous and insufferable Errours into the Church.