The title _Son of God_, again, Servetus maintains is nowhere to be found in the Scriptures otherwise applied than to a man--to the man Jesus in particular; and the word _Person_ he insists is always to be understood in the sense of the Greek προσῶπον and the Latin _persona_, a mask, an appearance, and not any _real_ or individual thing. With this style of exposition the Reformers could of course by no means agree. They had adopted all the symbols of their predecessors of the Church of Rome; and it seems to have been Servetus’ insistance on his own divergent interpretation of the language of John and the creeds that more especially aroused the enmity of Œcolampadius, Bucer, Calvin, and the rest, they holding that to be accounted a Christian it was necessary not only to acknowledge Christ to be the Son of God, which Servetus was quite ready to do, in the way he understood the filiation, but to acknowledge him to be the Logos or Word of St. John, consubstantial and coeternal with the Father--which, to Servetus, was impossible. It is probable that the way and manner in which in any conceivable fashion such coeternity and consubstantiality could be apprehended was among the topics on which Servetus craved enlightenment from Œcolampadius; and as he could obtain none, pique and personal dislike, opposition and enmity, took the place of dispassionate and friendly discussion; precisely as happened in later years and mainly on the same subjects between our author and Calvin. In his attempt to develope and explain his own conception of the mystery of the Trinity--for it is a mistake to suppose that Servetus was opposed to something of the kind--he does not set out like the writer of the Fourth Gospel from the transcendental Word, but starts with the historical Jesus, the man, the reputed son of Joseph the Carpenter, but verily or naturally, as he says, the Son of God. To this son the name Jesus was given at the time of his circumcision, the title Christ being conferred by his disciples; whilst it was only at his baptism that he was designated Son of God. The Holy Spirit and power of the Highest overshadowing the Virgin Mary, and acting in her as generator or generative dew, Jesus the Son of God and her Son was engendered. It is not the Word consequently, but Jesus the Son of Mary who is a Son of God: ‘The holy thing that shall be born of thee,’ says the angel addressing the Virgin, ‘shall be called a Son of God.’ ‘They therefore plainly err,’ says Servetus, ‘who speak of the Word as the Son of God: the man Jesus was the Son of God, not the Word; the man Jesus engendered, as stated above, by God in the womb of the Virgin.’ ‘All the Trinitarian errors,’ he concludes, ‘have arisen from not understanding the true nature of the Incarnation.’