Howe took part in the bewildering dispute, and has been supposed by some to have advocated Sherlock’s side. But it seems to me that what I have been saying accords with his views, and that he counted such an opinion as that expressed by Sherlock only as a theory for obviating objection to a fact, whilst another theory might be held in perfect consistency with a sincere faith in the truth to which both theories apply. In his _Calm and Sober Inquiry Concerning the Possibility of a Trinity in the Godhead_, the utmost he asserts is, that such a mode of triune existence as Sherlock attributes to the Divine Being is _possible_, and to his mind the most reasonable; but he did not think another hypothesis of a different kind altogether indefensible. He adopted what is called the _personal_ theory; but he did not deem a _modal_ theory, like South’s, either absurd or heterodox.[263] Evidently he considered that different hypotheses are at hand not fully to elucidate the mode of the Divine existence, but to obviate objections, by showing that a threefold distinction in that existence can be imagined, so as not to involve any contradiction whatever.[264] [Sidenote: 1693–8.] Amidst this war of words, in which reason and tradition had a share, secular authority interfered. On the 3rd of January, 1694, the Lords spiritual and temporal ordered their Majesties’ Attorney-General to prosecute the author and printer of an infamous and scandalous libel, entitled, _A Brief but Clear Confutation of the Doctrine of the Trinity_.[265] This was a State condemnation of Unitarianism, and the same year a tract printed by the Unitarian Society was seized by authority, and the writer apprehended. On the 25th of November, 1695, the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Houses at Oxford decreed it to be false, impious, and heretical, contrary to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and especially the Church of England, to say that there are three infinite, distinct minds and substances in the Trinity, or that the three Persons are three distinct, infinite minds or spirits. This was a condemnation by the University of the doctrines enunciated by Sherlock and supported by Bingham. The latter, in consequence of the storm raised by his sermon, resigned his fellowship, and withdrew from the University; but others, who thought with him, asserted, that what the Heads of Oxford had condemned as heretical, really expressed the Catholic faith; that the decree virtually accused of error the Nicene Creed and the Church of England, and exposed both to the scorn and triumph of the Socinians. Sherlock declared “that he would undertake, any day in the year, to procure a meeting of twice as many wise and learned men to censure their decree.”[266] Out of this state of things also arose the new Royal injunctions I have noticed. They prohibited every preacher from delivering any other doctrine concerning the Blessed Trinity than what is contained in the Holy Scriptures, and