I’ve seen this passage quoted by at least three of my favorite Christian philosophers. Unfortunately, they’ve misattributed it to the famous English antitrinitarian John Biddle (also spelled Bidle) (1615-62).
I believe it was Keith Yandell who found it in this old book, where it is misattributed to Biddle. Why did the theologian Leonard Hodgson make this mistake? I’ve seen a copy of the book, the one which is microfiched, in which a “helpful” librarian or someone has written Biddle’s name on the cover page. (No author is named in the book.) While some of Biddle’s tracts were republished towards the end of the 17th century, this isn’t one of them. It was first published in 1687, and sparked a pretty heated trinitarian controversy which lasted about the next ten years or so. Historians have long attributed it to Stephen Nye (1647/8-1719). So, this quote is from his A Brief History of the Unitarians, Called Also Socinians. In Four Letters, Written to a Friend. Whatever you think about the Trinity, you have to admit that it’s a wonderful piece of rhetoric. Here’s the whole paragraph, it all its oddly formatted glory:
To conclude; Theirs [i.e. the unitarians] (they say) is an accountable and a reasonable Faith; but that of the Trinitarians is absurd, and contrary both to Reason and to it self, and therefore not only false, but impossible. For you (say they) teach, there are three almighty, and most wise Persons, and yet but one God; as if every Almighty and most wise Person were not a God, and consequently three such Persons, three Gods. You add yet more absurdly, that there are three Persons who are severally and each of them true God, and yet there is but one true God: This is an Error in counting or numbring; which when stood in, is of all others the most brutal and inexcusable; and not to discern it, is not to be a Man. But we would not (say they) trouble our selves at the at the non-sense of this Doctrine, if it did not impose false Gods on us; by advancing two to be Gods, who are not so: and rob also the one true God of the Honour due to him, and of which he is jealous. (24-5)
Interestingly, there’s something misleading about the quote. It’s attracted Christian philosophers because they’re interested in the apologetic project of fending off people who claim the doctrine of the Trinity is contradictory. But the bulk of the book (letters 2-4) is instead devoted to two other lines of attack, namely that the Bible doesn’t support the doctrine, and that it teaches things inconsistent with it. The above is practically the only “philosophical” objection to the Trinity therein, and it’s almost an afterthought! Most of the rest consists of attempts to knock down trinitarian Bible exegesis in favor of the Unitarian readings. Maybe some day I’ll blog or write about this interesting book and the controversy which ensued (a nice overview of which is in here).
