though I do
not comprehend the fact, I understand 'him'. But the Socinians say;--We
do not understand 'you'. We cannot attach to the word 'God,' more than
three possible meanings; either,

1. A person, or self-conscious being;

2. Or a thing;

3. 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.

1. Either you understand by it a person, in the common sense of an
intelligent or self-conscious being;--or,

2. a thing with its qualities and properties;--or,

3. 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."

The answer to this must commence by a denial of the premisses 'in toto':
and this both Bull and Waterland have done most successfully. But I very
much doubt, whether Sherlock on his principles could have evaded the
Unitarian logic. In fact it is scarcely possible to acquit him
altogether of a 'quasi-Tritheism'.

Sect. II. p. 13.

'For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge
every Person by himself to be God and Lord