The Institution of Christian Religion

If then the names have not ben without cause invented, we ought to take heed, that in rejecting them we be not justly blamed of proud presumptuousness. I would to God they were buried in deed, so that this faith were agreed of all men, that the Father and the Son, and the Holy ghost be one God: and yet that the Father is not the Son, nor the Holy ghost the Son, but distinct by certain property. Yet am I not so precise, that I can find in my heart to strive for bare words. For I note, that the old fathers, which otherwise spake very religiously of such matters, did not every where agree one with an other, nor everyone with himself. For what forms of speech used by the councils doth Hilary excuse▪ To how great liberty doth Augustine sometime break forth? Howe unlike are the Greeks to the Latins? But of this variance one example shall suffice for this time. When the Latins meant to express the word Omoousion, they called it Consubstantial, declaring the substance of the Father and the Son to be one, so using the word substance for essence. Whereupon Hierom to Damasus saith, it is sacrilege to say, that there are three substances in God: and yet above a hundred times you shall find in Hilary, that there are three substances in God. In the word Hypostasis, how is Hierome encumbered? For he suspecteth that there lurketh poison in naming three Hypostases in God. And if a man do use this word in a godly sense, yet he plainly saith that is an improper speech, if he spake unfeignedly, and did not rather wittingly and willingly seek to charge the bishops of the Eastlands▪ whom he sought to charge with an unjust slander. Sure this one thing he speaketh not very truly, that in all profane schools. ousia, ¹essence is nothing else but hypostasis, which is proved false by the common and accustomed use. Augustine is more modest and gentle, which although he say, that the word hypostasis in that sense is strange to latin ears, yet so far is it of that he taketh from the Greeks their usual manner of speaking, that he also gently beareth with the Latins that had followed the greek phrase. And that which Socrates writeth in the sixth book of the Tripartite history, tendeth to this end, as though he meant that it had by unskilful men been wrongfully applied unto this matter.²