And thus it chanced that valour, peerless knight,
Who ne’er to king or kaiser veiled his crest,
Victorious still in bull-feast or in fight,
Since first with mail his limbs he did invest,
Stooped ever to that anchoret’s behest;
Nor reasoned of the right, nor of the wrong,
But at his bidding laid the lance in rest,
And wrought fell deeds the troubled world along,
For he was fierce as brave, and pitiless as strong. 
—­SCOTT’S “Don Roderick,” xxix. xxx.

Let us next consider an heretical view of the Trinity attributed to Migetius (circa 750).  According to the rather obscure account, which has come down to us,[1] he seems to have regarded the Three Persons of the Trinity, at least in their relations with the world, as corporeal, the Father being personified in David, the Son in Jesus, and the Holy Ghost in Paul.  It is difficult to believe that the doctrine, thus crudely stated by Elipandus, was really held by anyone.  We may perhaps infer[2] that Migetius revived the error of Priscillian (itself a form of Sabellianism), and reducing the Three Persons of the Trinity to one, acknowledged certain [Greek:  energeiai], or powers, emanating from Him, which were manifested in David, Jesus, Paul respectively.  As the first and last of these three recipients of the Divine powers were confessedly men, it follows that Migetius was ready to strip Jesus of that Divinity, which is the cardinal doctrine of Christianity, and which more than any other doctrine distinguishes it from the creed of Mohammed.  Accordingly he appears to have actually denied the divinity of the Word,[3] and in this he made an approach to Mohammedanism.[4]

    [1] Elipandus to Migetius, sec. 3.  See Migne, vol. 96, p. 859.

    [2] With Enhueber.  Dissert, apud Migne, ci., p. 338 ff., sec.
    29.

    [3] Enhueber, sec. 32.

[4] Neander, v. 216, n., says, Migetius held that the [Greek:  Logos] became personal with the assumption of Christ’s humanity; that the [Greek:  Logos] was the power constituting the personality of Christ.  Hence, says Neander, he was accused of asserting that Christ, the son of David according to the flesh, and not Christ, the Son of God, was the Second Person of the Trinity.

A similar, but seemingly not identical, error was propagated by those who, as we learn from a letter of Alvar to Speraindeo, did not believe the Three in One and One in Three, “denying the utterances of the prophets, rejecting the doctrine of learned men, and, while they claimed to take their stand upon the Gospel, pointing to texts like John xx. 17, ‘I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, unto my God and your God,’ to prove that Christ was merely man."[1] In his answer to Alvar’s letter, Speraindeo says, “If we speak of the Trinity as one Person, we Judaize;” he might have added, “and Mohammedanize.”  These heretics, according to the abbot, spoke of three powers (virtutes)