To this they replied: 'It is not removed at all, because the three Persons have one essence, and the Divine Essence is God. In the world we were guardians of the Trinity of Persons, and the ward whom we protected was our faith, according to which each Divine Person has been given His own role to play. The role of God the Father is to impute and grant, of God the Son to intercede and mediate, and of God the Holy Spirit to carry out the services of imputation and mediation.'

[2] 'What,' I asked, 'do you understand by the Divine Essence?' 'We understand,' they said, 'omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immensity, eternity, and equality of majesty.'

To which I replied: 'If that essence can make a number of gods into one, you could add more still, as for example a fourth, who is mentioned by Moses, Ezekiel and Job under the title of God Shaddai. The ancients in Greece and Italy did the same, assigning similar attributes and a like essence to their gods, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Apollo, Juno, Diana, Minerva, even Mercury and Venus. Yet they were unable to say that all those were one God. The three of you, as I can tell, are equally learned and share the same essence in that respect, but you cannot combine yourselves into a single scholar.'

They laughed at this, and said: 'You are joking. It is different with the Divine Essence, which is one and not divided into three, so it is individual and undivided; it cannot admit partition and division.'

[3] To this I answered: 'Let us go down into this arena and do combat.' I asked: 'What do you understand by 'Person'? What does this word mean?'

'The word Person,' they said, 'does not mean any part or quality in another, but what exists in its own right; that is how all the Fathers of the church define Person, and we follow them.'

'Is this,' I said, 'the definition of Person?'

'Yes,' they answered.

To this I retorted: 'Then there is no part of the Father in the Son, nor of either in the Holy Spirit. From this it follows that each has His own judgment, rights and powers, and there is nothing to link them except the will, which is peculiar to each individual, and so can be communicated if desired. Then are not the three Persons three separate gods? Listen to this: you have defined Person as that which exists in its own right; consequently you are saying that there are three substances, into which you split the Divine Essence. Yet this, as you too say, cannot be split, since it is one and undivided. Moreover you attribute to each substance, that is, each Person, properties distinct from another's, and which cannot be shared with another, namely, imputation, mediation and working. What can result from this but that the three Persons are three gods?'

At this they withdrew saying: 'We will discuss these points and reply when we have discussed them.'

[4] A wise man was standing near, who on hearing these things said: 'I do not wish to subject a matter of such supreme importance to such subtle refinements, but these subtleties apart I can see perfectly clearly that your thought contains the idea of three gods. But since you are ashamed to say this publicly before the whole world - for if you did, you would be called crazy and fools - you find it expedient to have the profession of one God on your lips in order to avoid disgrace.'

At this, however, the three still clung to their opinion and paid no attention, and as they went away they were muttering some terms borrowed from metaphysics; this told me that that was the oracle whose responses they wished to give.