The attempts made in the latter half of the second century to pervert the doctrine of Scripture relative to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, probably led to the appearance of the word Trinity in the ecclesiastical nomenclature; for, when controversy commenced, some such symbol was required to prevent the necessity of constant and tedious circumlocution.  One of the most noted of the parties dissatisfied with the ordinary mode of speaking respecting the Three Divine Persons, and desirous of changing the current creed, was Praxeas, a native of Asia Minor.  After having acquired much credit by his fortitude and courage in a time of persecution, he had also signalised himself by his zeal against the Montanists.  He now taught that the Son and Holy Ghost are not distinct Persons, but simply modes or energies of the Father; and as those who adopted his sentiments imagined that they thus held more strictly than others the doctrine of the existence of a single Ruler of the universe, they styled themselves Monarchians. [456:1] According to their views the first and second Persons of the Godhead are identical; and, as it apparently followed from this theory, that the Father suffered on the cross, they received the name of Patripassians. [456:2] Praxeas travelled from Asia Minor to Rome, and afterwards passed over into Africa, where he was strenuously opposed by the famous Tertullian.  Another individual, named Noetus, attracted some notice about the close of the second century by the peculiarity of his speculations in reference to the Godhead.  “Noetus,” says a contemporary, “calls the same both Son and Father, for he speaks thus—­’When the Father had not been born, He was rightly called Father, but when it pleased Him to undergo birth, then by birth He became the Son of Himself, and not of another.’  Thus he professes to establish the principle of Monarchianism.” [456:3] But, perhaps, the attempts of Sabellius to modify the established doctrine made the deepest impression.  This man, who was an ecclesiastic connected with Ptolemais in Africa, [456:4] maintained that there is no foundation for the ordinary distinction of the Persons of the Trinity, and that the terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, merely indicate different manifestations of the Supreme Being, or different phases under which the one God reveals Himself.  From him the doctrine of those who confound the Persons of the Godhead still bears the name of Sabellianism.

It has been sometimes said that the Church borrowed its idea of a Trinity from Plato, but this assertion rests upon no historical basis.  Learned men have found it exceedingly difficult to give anything like an intelligible account of the Trinity of the Athenian philosopher, [457:1] and it seems to have had only a metaphysical existence.  It certainly had nothing more than a fanciful and verbal resemblance to the Trinity of Christianity.  Had the doctrine of the Church been derived from the writings of the Grecian