A calm and sober enquiry concerning the possibility of a Trinity in the Godhead…

And tho' I will not use the expressions, as signifying my formed judgment, that there are three things, substances, or Spirits in the Godhead (as you that there are three somewhats) yet, as I have many Years thought, I do still think that what the learned W. J. doth but more lightly touch of the Son, and the Holy Ghost being produced (which term I use, but reciting it, as he doth) not by a voluntary external, but by an internal, necessary, and emanative Act, hath great weight in it.

In short my sense hath long lain thus, and I submit it to your searching and candid Judgment, viz. That tho' we need not have determinate thoughts, how far the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are distinguished; yet we must conceive them in the general to be so far distinguished, ⟨p. 124⟩as is really necessary to the founding the distinct attributions which the Scriptures do distinctly give them. And that whatever distinction is truly necessary to that purpose, will yet not hinder the two latter's participation with the first in the Godhead, which can be but one, because that tho' we are led by plain Scripture, and the very import of that word, to conceive of the Father as the Fountain, yet the Son being from him, and the Holy Ghost from them both, not contingently, or dependently on will and pleasure; but by eternal, natural, necessary promanation, these two latter are infinitely distinguished from the whole Creation. Inasmuch as all Creatures are contingent beings, or dependent upon will and pleasure, as the Character is given us of created things, Rev. 4. 11. Thou hast made all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. But that whatever is what it is necessarily is God. For I have no doubt but the Dreams of some, more anciently, and ⟨p. 125⟩of late, concerning necessary matter, and the Sophisms of Spinosa and some others, tending to prove the necessity and identity of all substance are (with what they aim to evince) demonstrably false.