Again, the Arians use the word _Person_; but these have run into another extreme, inasmuch as that, whilst they avoid Sabellianism, they would lay themselves open to the charge of Tritheism, did they not deny the proper Deity of the Son and Spirit; for they suppose that every distinct Person is a distinct being, agreeable to the sense of personality, when applied to men; but this, as has been before considered, is to be abstracted from the idea of personality, when applied to the Persons in the Godhead. These also understand the oneness of these divine Persons, in a sense agreeable to their own scheme, and different from ours, and therefore they speak of them as one in will, consent, or design, in which respect God and the creature may be said to be one: accordingly Arius, and his adherents, in the council at Nice, refused to allow that the divine persons were Ὁμοουσιοι consubstantial, and, with a great many evasions and subterfuges, attempted to conceal their sentiments: all that they could be brought to own was, that the Son was Ὁμοιος, or Ὁμοιουσιος, which amounts to no more than this, that whatever likeness there may be, in some respects, yet he has not the same proper divine nature with the Father and Holy Ghost. Which leads us to consider the sense in which it is generally used by those who defend what we think to be the scripture-doctrine of the Trinity. There are some, it is true, both among ancient and modern writers, that attempt to explain what they mean by the word _Person_, who are so unhappy as to leave the sense thereof more dark than they found it, when they have given a definition thereof, agreeable to what is used by metaphysicians and schoolmen, to this effect, that it is a _suppositum_, endowed with reason; or that it is one entire, individual, incommunicable, rational subsistence: and when they define Personality, some tell us, that it is a positive mode of a being terminating and compleating its substantial nature, and giving incommunicability to it, which words need to be explained more than the thing defined thereby. And here I cannot but take notice of that warm debate which there was between the Greek and Latin church about the words _Hypostasis_ and _Persona_; the Latin, concluding that the word _Hypostasis_ signified substance or essence, thought, that to assert that there were three divine _Hypostases_, was to say that there were three Gods: On the other hand, the Greek church thought that the word _Person_ did not sufficiently guard against the Sabellian notion of the same individual being sustaining three relations; whereupon each part of the church was ready to brand the other with heresy, till by a free and mutual conference, in a synod at Alexandria, A. D. 362. they made it appear, that it was but a mere contention about the grammatical sense of a word; and then it was allowed, by men of temper on both sides, that either of the two words might be indifferently used.[86] But what signifies the