There is a good deal of special pleading in Bull’s _Defence of the Nicene Creed_. Nevertheless he has, in my opinion, clearly and fully established his main point, that a belief in the Divinity of our blessed Lord was common in the ante-Nicene Church. Bull’s views, as they are expressed in these works, are coincident as far as they go with those of Thorndike on the same subjects, but Bull leaves unvisited many fields which Thorndike traversed from end to end. Before leaving this eminent theologian it may be interesting to notice that he was one of those who in this country, in the seventeenth century, revived the ancient and scriptural distinction between soul and spirit; yet he so united the Spirit of God with the spirit of man that his theory amounts to a sort of _tetrachomy_. I may add--Hammond, in his _Paraphrase_ (1 Thess. v. 23), and Jackson _On the Creed_, also insisted upon a distinction between soul and spirit.[401] Another investigator, or rather champion, more comprehensive in his way than Bull, even going beyond Thorndike in variety of discussion, is Peter Heylyn, inferior to them both in all respects. Educated at Oxford, partly under a Puritan tutor, he, within three years after his ordination as a deacon, expressed such extreme ecclesiastical opinions, that he was denounced by Prideaux, the Regius Professor of Divinity, as _Bellarminian_ and _Pontifician_: these very opinions, however, recommended him to the favour of Laud, at the time Bishop of Bath and Wells.