126. Vain, however, is their plea, that they avoid the use of the term, because of the Sabellians; The Sabellians reduced the distinction of Persons in the Trinity to a distinction of three different self-manifestations of one and the same Person, appearing at different times in different aspects or characters, as “one man in his time plays many parts.” They, therefore, would mean, if they said that the Son was ὁμοούσιος with the Father, that He was identical with Him. Another perverse use of the term supervened upon the argument that if the Father and the Son were ὁμοοὐσιοι there must be some οὐσία, identical with neither, but in which both, so to speak, had a share, by virtue of participation in which they existed and were what they were—a theory which adapted the Platonic doctrine of Universal Ideas to expound the mysteries of the Godhead. It was the perverse use of the term by such persons as Paul of Samosata (condemned by the Synod of Antioch, 269 a.d.) that caused it to be received at first with suspicion even by the orthodox at the Nicene Synod in 325 a.d. The true doctrine would be to this effect, that in relation to the Persons, the Godhead is not a separate, more comprehensive entity, existing independently, and the fount of existence to each and all of the Persons—not as the Platonic αὐτάνθρωπος (ideal or archetypal man), for example, to the πολλοὶ ἄνθρωποι (sundry individuals), but is in each of the Persons fully and completely, yet without destruction of its unity. The Godhead is a πρώτη οὐσία, a single, individual substance. So also is each One of the Three Persons—but their inter-relation is such that neither is the Godhead anything apart from them, nor they anything apart from the Godhead or from each other. It is the Three together that constitute the One Οὐσία or Essence, it is the definition of this Essence that applies to Each of them equally, without difference, whilst Each Person retains His Personal characteristics and Personal (not natural or substantial) “differentia.” Speaking logically, the Three Persons are “of one definition;” speaking metaphysically, they are “of one Essence.” Now both “of one definition” and “of one essence” may be rendered by ὁμοούσιοι. whereby they betray their own ignorance, for a being is of the same substance (ὁμοούσιον) with another, not with itself. Rightly, then, do we call the Son “ὁμοούσιος” (of the same substance), with the Father, forasmuch as that term expresses both the distinction of Persons and the unity of nature.