It is somewhat remarkable that although in the interval which elapsed between the publication of these and of his first work the Trinitarian controversy in England had been assuming larger proportions and awakening a wider interest, Bull never entered into the arena with his countrymen.  But the fact is, his point of view was different from theirs.  He confined himself exclusively to the historical aspect of the question, while other defenders of the Trinity were ’induced to overstep the boundaries of Scripture proof and historical testimony, and push their inquiries into the dark recesses of metaphysical speculation.’[434] Chief among these was Dr. W. Sherlock, Dean of St. Paul’s, who in 1690 published his ‘Vindication of the Trinity,’ which he describes as ’a new mode of explaining that great mystery by a hypothesis which gives an easy and intelligible notion of a Trinity in Unity, and removes the charge of contradiction.’  In this work Sherlock hazarded assertions which were unquestionably ‘new,’ but not so unquestionably sound.  He affirmed, among other things, that the Persons of the Godhead were distinct in the same way as the persons of Peter, James, and John, or any other men.  Such assertions were not unnaturally suspected of verging perilously near upon Tritheism, and his book was publicly censured by the Convocation of the University of Oxford.  On the other hand, Dr. Wallis, Professor of Geometry, and the famous Dr. South, published treatises against Dr. Sherlock, which, while avoiding the Scylla of Tritheism, ran dangerously near to the Charybdis of Sabellianism.  Like all his writings, South’s treatise was racy, but violently abusive, and such irritation and acrimony were engendered, that the Royal authority was at last exercised in restraining each party from introducing novel opinions, and requiring them to adhere to such explications only as had already received the sanction of the Church.

Chillingworth, in his Intellectual System, propounded a theory on the Trinity which savoured of Arianism; Burnet and Tillotson called down the fiercest invectives from that able controversialist Charles Leslie, for ’making the Three Persons of God only three manifestations, or the same Person of God considered under three different qualifications and respects as our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier,’ while Burnet argued that the inhabitation of God in Christ made Christ to be God.

Thus at the close of the seventeenth century the subject of the Trinity was agitating the minds of some of the chief divines of the age.  It must be observed, however, that so far the controversy between theologians of the first rank had been conducted within the limits of the Catholic Faith.  They disputed, not about the doctrine of the Trinity itself, but simply about the mode of explaining it.