8. I felt that I must spare a little space to
point this out. It has been from no love for amplification, but
that it might serve as a warning. First, I wished to expose the
vague and confused character of this crowd of heresies, whose mutual
feuds turn, as we have seen, to our advantage. Secondly, in my
warfare against the blasphemous doctrines of modern heresy; that is, in
my task of proclaiming that both God the Father and God the Son are
God,—in other words, that Father and Son are One in name, One in
nature, One in the kind of Divinity which they possess,—I wished
to shield myself from any charge which might be brought against me,
either as an advocate of two Gods or of one lonely and isolated
Deity. For in God the Father and God the Son, as I have set them
forth, no confusion of Persons can be detected; nor in my exposition of
Their common nature can any difference between the Godhead of the One
and of the Other be discerned. In the preceding book I have
sufficiently refuted, by the witness of the Gospels, those who deny the
subsistence of God the Son by a true birth from God; my present duty is
to shew that He, Who in the truth of His nature is Son of God, is also
in the truth of His nature God. But this proof must not
degenerate into the fatal profession of a solitary God, or of a second
God. It shall manifest God as One yet not alone; but in its care
to avoid the error of making Him lonely it shall not fall into the
error of denying His unity.