Ib. p. 414.

  He represents Tertullian as making the Son, in his highest capacity,
  ignorant of the day of judgment.

Of the true sense of the text, Mark xiii. 32., I still remain in doubt; but, though as zealous and stedfast a Homouesian as Bull and Waterland themselves, I am inclined to understand it of the Son in his highest capacity; but I would avoid the inferiorizing consequences by a stricter rendering of the [Greek:  ei mae ho Pataer].  The [Greek:  monon] of St. Matthew xxiv. 36. is here omitted.  I think Waterland’s a very unsatisfying solution of this text.

Ib. p. 415.

’Exclamans quod se Deus reliquisset, &c.  Habes ipsum exclamantem in passione, Deus meus, Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti?  Sed haec vox carnis et animae, id est, hominis; nec Sermonis, nec Spiritus’, &c.—­Tertull.  Adv.  Prax. c. 26. c. 30.

The ignorance of the Fathers, and, Origen excepted, of the Ante-Nicene Fathers in particular, in all that respects Hebrew learning and the New Testament references to the Old Testament, is shown in this so early fantastic misinterpretation grounded on the fact of our Lord’s reminding, and as it were giving out aloud to John and Mary the twenty-second Psalm, the prediction of his present sufferings and after glory.  But the entire passage in Tertullian, though no proof of his Arianism, is full of proofs of his want of insight into the true sense of the Scripture texts.  Indeed without detracting from the inestimable services of the Fathers from Tertullian to Augustine respecting the fundamental article of the Christian Faith, yet commencing from the fifth century, I dare claim for the Reformed Church of England the honorable name of [Greek:  archaspistaes] of Trinitarianism, and the foremost rank among the Churches, Roman or Protestant:  the learned Romanist divines themselves admit this, and make a merit of the reluctance with which they nevertheless admit it, in respect of Bishop Bull. [2]

Ib. p. 421.

  It seems to me that if there be not reasons of conscience obliging a
  good man to speak out, there are always reasons of prudence which
  should make a wise man hold his tongue.

True, and as happily expressed.  To this, however, the honest Anti-Trinitarian must come at last:  “Well, well, I admit that John and Paul thought differently; but this remains my opinion.”

Query XXVII. p. 427.

  [Greek:  Ton alaethinon kai ontos onta Theon, ton tou Christou patera]. 
 —­Athanas.  Cont.  Gent.

  The just and literal rendering of the passage is this:  ’The true God
  who in reality is such, namely, the Father of Christ.’

The passage admits of a somewhat different interpretation from this of Waterland’s, and of equal, if not greater, force against the Arian notion:  namely, taking [Greek:  ton ontos onta] distinctively from [Greek:  ho on]—­the ‘Ens omnis entitatis, etiam suae’, that is, the I Am the Father, in distinction from the ‘Ens Supremum’, the Son.  It cannot, however, be denied that in changing the ‘formula’ of the ‘Tetractys’ into the ‘Trias’, by merging the ‘Prothesis’ in the ‘Thesis’, the Identity in the Ipseity, the Christian Fathers subjected their exposition to many inconveniences.