A Golden Chain

The second point to be considered is, that that though these three have but one godhead, and all make but one God: yet they are distinguished one from another: for the father is the father, and not the son, or the holy Ghost: the son is the son, and not the father, nor the holy Ghost: and the holy ghost is the holy ghost, not the father nor the son. This distinction of the persons is notably set forth unto us in the baptism of our Saviour Christ: where it is said, that when Jesus was baptized, he came out of the water:¹ there is the second person: and the holy Ghost descended upon him in the form of a dove; there is the third person: and the father the first person pronounced from heaven, that he was his only beloved son in whom he was well pleased. And we must conceive this distinction in such manner as though these three, Father, Son, and holy Ghost were three names of one God. For the three persons do not in name or word, but really in trueth distinctly subsist in the same divine nature. Neither must we imagine that the three persons are three forms or differences of one God, as some heretics have dreamed, who taught that the father alone is God, and that he is called a father in one respect, the son in another, and the holy Ghost in a third. For this were nothing else but to make the personal proprieties to be nothing but imaginary accidents, which indeed, or at the least in mans conceit, might come and go, and be either in the persons or forth of them. For the personal relations though in ^amind they may be distinguished from the divine essence, yet ^bindeed they are one ⟨p. 204⟩with it. But some will say, if they make this distinction, there is rather a quaternity then a trinity: for the godhead is one, the father an other, the son a third, and the holy Ghost a fourth. Thus some heretics have objected against the distinction of the trinity: but it is untrue which they say. For the godhead must not be severed from the Father, nor from the Son, nor from the holy Ghost: for the father is God or the whole godhead, so also is the son and the holy Ghost: and the godhead likewise is in every one of these three persons, and every one of them subsisting in the godhead, and the godhead must be conceived to be in them all, and not as a fourth thing out of them.