phrases--three minds, three spirits, three substances--which he had so freely used, needed great care for their proper employment, and were liable to be taken in a heretical sense; that after all, Father, Son, and Spirit, are really of one and the same substance.[262] Sherlock and South did but follow up divergent tendencies of thought and action before the Council of Nicæa--tendencies which that Council sought to check and harmonize. Sherlock followed in the wake of Tertullian, Novatian, Hippolytus, and Origen, whose inquiries mainly pointed to _distinctions_ in the Godhead. South trod in the footsteps of Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Irenæus, and Clement of Alexandria, who leaned towards Monarchianism, and were jealous of any dishonour done to the Divine Unity. [Sidenote: 1693–8.] In this controversy, which divided two men by a distance, in the judgment of some thinkers, infinitesimally small, homage was nevertheless done to the essential importance of truth. The controversy, however, betrayed the utter absence of disposition on the part of each to learn one jot of wisdom from the other. It was literally a _polemical_ affair; a battle, each seeing in his opposite an enemy--in fact the old story of disputes between Church and Church, sect and sect, conformist and nonconformist--war to the knife by mistaken foes, instead of mutual help by friends in council. Of course Unitarians, as they stood by, watched the conflict with eager curiosity, striving to turn it to their own account. In the view of those who had advanced beyond John Biddle, the doctrine of the Trinity and the use of the Word were repugnant; and they traced what they deemed an innovation to the early philosophical schools that had so powerfully influenced the after-history of theological thought. They labelled Cudworth’s theory as the Platonic; Sherlock’s as the Cartesian; South’s as the Aristotelian. Moreover, they connected the scheme of Sherlock with the philosophy of Realism, and the scheme of South with that of Nominalism. With regard to speculations which had been woven around the teaching of Holy Scripture, there was some ground for the nomenclature; but it really forms another instance of the confusion of thought produced when critics identify metaphysical theories with simple conclusions drawn from Scripture, as expressed in the grand old words, “The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and yet there are not three Gods, but one God.” [Sidenote: THE TRINITY.]