But the favourite way of propounding this doctrine is the following: that God is three in one sense, and one in another; Three in Person, but only One _Individual_, _Subsistence_, or _Being_. The sense, then, if I understand aright, of the word _Person_, is different from the sense of the words _Individual, Being, or Subsistence_; and if so, I may ask what the respective senses are, and wherein they differ from each other. In reply I am assured, that by _person_ is to be understood “a subject in which resides” “an entire set or series of those properties which are understood to constitute personality; viz. the property of _Life_, that of _Intelligence_, that of _Volition_, and that of _Activity_, or _power of Action_.”[166] Very well; this is distinct and satisfactory; and now for the _other sense_, viz. of the words _Individual_, _Being_, and _Subsistence_. About this an ominous silence is observed; and all information is withheld respecting the _quite different meaning_ which these terms contain. Now I say, that their signification is the _very same_ with that of the word Person, as above defined; that when you have enumerated to me a complete “set of personal attributes,” you have called up the idea of an _Individual_, _Being_, or _Subsistence_; and that when you have mentioned to me these phrases, you have made me think of a complete set of personal attributes; that if you introduce me to two or three series of personal attributes, you force me to conceive of two or three beings; that a complete set of properties makes up an entire subsistence, and that an entire subsistence contains nothing else than its aggregate of properties. To take, for example, from Dr. Tattershall’s list of qualities which are essential to personality; tell me of two _lives_, and I cannot but think of two individuals; of two _intelligences_, and I am necessitated to conceive of two intelligent beings; of two _wills_ or powers of action, and it is impossible to restrain me from the idea of two Agents; and if each of these lives, intelligences, and volitions, be divine, of two Gods. The word substance, in fact, will _hold no more_ than the word person; and to the _mind_, though not to the ear, the announcement in question really is, that there are three persons, and yet only one person. Thus men “slide insensibly,” to use the words of Archbishop Whately, “into the unthought-of, but, I fear, not uncommon, error of Tritheism; from which they think themselves the more secure, because they always maintain the Unity of the Deity; though they gradually come to understand that Unity in a merely _figurative_ sense; viz. as a Unity of substance,—a Unity of purpose, concert of action, &c.; just as any one commonly says, ‘My friend such-an-one and myself are one;’ meaning that they pursue the same designs with entire mutual confidence, and perfect co-operation, and have that exact agreement in opinions, views, tastes, &c., which is