Brevis admonitio Joannis Calvini ad fratres Polonos, ne triplicem in Deo essentiam pro tribus personis imaginando, tres sibi Deos fabricent

that the Word was God, it is detestable sacrilege to fashion a new or different deity. He would also have done better to abstain from that passage in the Psalm, “By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made,” etc.; not that it is pleasing to attack him if he cites Scripture less aptly, but so that he does not boast of his own cleverness to us with such insolence. Also, in that sentence which he produces from the first letter to the Corinthians, “There are distributions of ministries, but the same Lord,” he has not grasped Paul’s meaning. In many places he quibbles childishly, but meanwhile, he betrays his poison. Christ does not say, “I and the Father are one person,” but “one thing,” I admit, because the intention there was not to call himself God one with the Father, but he captiously elicits from it that Christ is a different God from the Father. Similarly, when John says, “These three are one,” he speaks thus because he is not arguing by profession about essence or deity. But here, either the imposter maliciously or the trifler ineptly draws toward the name of God what was said for an entirely different end. He indeed denies in one word that he is setting up three Gods, but he cannot escape this absurdity