[475]. Dial. cum Tryph. p. 252.
[476]. Lib. i. cap. 19; ii. cap. 3.
[477]. Strom. lib. vi. p. 644. Priestley’s Hist. Early Opinions.
[478]. Advers. Prax. c. 13.
[479]. Comment. vol. ii. p. 47.
[480]. Cap. ii. p. 84.
[481]. Lib. iv. sec. 14.
[482]. Orat. iii. con. Arian.
[483]. Cudworth. Intel. Sys. p. 599.
[484]. Inattention to this distinction vitiates the whole reasonings of Dr. Burton’s learned work on the Anti-Nicene Fathers. There is no doubt that the deity of the Son and even of the Holy Ghost is spoken of before the Council of Nice, but always in the Platonic or derived sense, never in the present orthodox sense of co-equal and independent. The word con-substantial proves nothing to the contrary, for a Platonist would not have objected to the application of the word to the second and third persons in his Trinity, as partaking of, or derived from the Essence of the one Supreme. See Cudworth’s argument to this effect (Intel. Sys. p. 597), who contends that by co-essential and consubstantial, the Nicene Council meant nothing more than that the Son was generically God, of the same nature, but numerically different, having his own distinct Essence. See also Dr. Burton on a passage similar to one from Tertullian already quoted, where he is misled by not attending to this distinction.—Theol. Works, vol. ii. p. 89.