. We cannot attach to the word 'God,' more than three possible meanings; either,
- A person, or self-conscious being;
- Or a thing;
- Or a quality, property, or attribute.
If you take the first, then you admit the contradiction; if either of the latter two, you have not three Persons and one God, but three Persons having equal shares in one thing, or three with the same attributes, that is, three Gods. Sherlock does not meet this.
Let me repeat the difficulty, if possible, more clearly. The argument of the philosophic Unitarians, as Wissowatius, who, mistaken as they were, are not to be confounded with their degenerate successors, the Priestleyans and Belshamites, may be thus expressed. "By the term, God, we can only conceive you to suppose one or other of three meanings.
- Either you understand by it a person, in the common sense of an intelligent or self-conscious being; —or,
- a thing with its qualities and properties; —or,
- certain powers and attributes, comprised under the word nature.
If we suppose the first, the contradiction is manifest, and you yourselves admit it, and therefore forbid us so to interpret your words. For if by God you mean Person, then three Persons and one God, would be the same as three Persons and one Person. If we take the second as your meaning, as an infinite thing is an absurdity, we have three finite Gods, like Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, who shared the universe between them. If the latter, we have three Persons with the same attributes;—and if a Person with infinite attributes be what we mean by God, then we have either three Gods, or involve the contradiction above mentioned. It is unphilosophic, by admission of all philosophers, they add, to multiply causes beyond the necessity. Now if there are three Persons of infinite and the same attributes, dismiss two, and you lose nothing but a numerical phantom."