Magician taught that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost were only manifestations and forms of the self-same person, and that the one God, in the capacity of Father, had revealed himself to the Samaritans; in the capacity of the Son, as Christ, to the Jews; in the capacity of the Holy Ghost, to the pagans; (b) in the second century, Praxeas affirmed that one and the same God, as concealed in himself, was the Father, but as having appeared in the work of creation and later, in the redemption, was the Son Christ; (e) in the third century, Noetus, who also recognized the Father and Son as one person, one God, who had become incarnate and had suffered torment and death; Sabellius, who had taught that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost were only three names, three actions (ἐνέργεια) of one and the same person, God, who had been incarnate and had suffered death for us; and Paul of Samosata, according to whose words the Son and the Holy Ghost were in God, as mind and strength were in man; (d) in the fourth century, Marcellus of Ancyra and his disciple Photinus: they preached, after Sabellius, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost were only names of the selfsame person in God, and after Paul of Samosata, that the Son, or the Word, was the mind of God, and the Holy Spirit, the power of God.” (pp. 162 and 163.)
Here is the conception of other heretics:
“The common idea of all these was that although the divine persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, were of one substance, they were not one in substance, and that they had one nature, but had it each separately, as, for the example, three persons of the human race, and so were three Gods, and not one God.” (p. 163.)
Without having the question answered whether the teaching of the heretics was true or false, I am unable to say that I understand what they have been saying. Similarly, without entering into a discussion as to whether
