Moreover, it may be questioned whether any Ante-nicene father distinctly affirms either the numerical Unity or the Coequality of the Three Persons; except perhaps the heterodox Tertullian, and that chiefly in a work written after he had become a Montanist:[18:1] yet to satisfy the Anti-roman use of _Quod semper, &c._, surely we ought not to be left for these great articles of doctrine to the testimony of a later age. Further, Bishop Bull allows that "nearly all the ancient Catholics who preceded Arius have the appearance of being ignorant of the invisible and incomprehensible (_immensam_) nature of the Son of God;"[18:2] an article expressly taught in the Athanasian Creed under the sanction of its anathema. It must be asked, moreover, how much direct and literal testimony the Ante-nicene Fathers give, one by one, to the divinity of the Holy Spirit? This alone shall be observed, that St. Basil, in the fourth century, finding that, if he distinctly called the Third Person in the Blessed Trinity by the Name of God, he should be put out of the Church by the Arians, pointedly refrained from doing so on an occasion on which his enemies were on the watch; and that, when some Catholics found fault with him, St. Athanasius took his part.[18:3] Could this possibly have been the conduct of any true Christian, not to say Saint, of a later age? that is, whatever be the true account of it, does it not suggest to us that the testimony of those early times lies very unfavourably for the application of the rule of Vincentius? 13. Let it not be for a moment supposed that I impugn the orthodoxy of the early divines, or the cogency of their testimony among _fair_ inquirers; but I am trying them by that _unfair_ interpretation of Vincentius, which is necessary in order to make him available against the Church of Rome. And now, as to the positive evidence which those Fathers offer in behalf of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, it has been drawn out by Dr. Burton and seems to fall under two heads. One is the general _ascription of glory_ to the Three Persons together, both by fathers and churches, and that on continuous tradition and from the earliest times. Under the second fall certain _distinct statements_ of _particular_ fathers; thus we find the word "Trinity" used by St. Theophilus, St. Clement, St. Hippolytus, Tertullian, St. Cyprian, Origen, St. Methodius; and the Divine _Circumincessio_, the most distinctive portion of the Catholic doctrine, and the unity of power, or again, of substance, are declared with more or less distinctness by Athenagoras, St. Irenæus, St. Clement, Tertullian, St. Hippolytus, Origen, and the two SS. Dionysii. This is pretty much the whole of the evidence. 14.