In the declaration, then, of this doctrine unto the edification of the church, there is contained a farther explanation of
the things before asserted, as proposed directly and in themselves as the object of our faith, — namely, how God is one, in respect of his nature, substance, essence, Godhead, or divine being; how, being Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, he subsists in these three distinct persons or hypostases; and what are their mutual respects to each other, by which, as their peculiar properties, giving them the manner of their
subsistence, they are distinguished one from another; with sundry other 379things of the like necessary consequence unto the revelation mentioned. And herein, as in the application of all other divine
truths and mysteries whatever, yea, of all moral commanded duties,
use is to be made of such words and expressions as, it may be, are not
literally and formally contained in the Scripture;
but only are, unto our conceptions and apprehensions, expository
of what is so contained. And to deny the liberty, yea, the
necessity hereof, is to deny all interpretation of the Scripture, —
all endeavours to express the sense of the words of it
unto the understandings of one another; which is, in a word, to
render the Scripture itself altogether useless. For if it
be unlawful for me to speak or write what I conceive to be
the sense of the words of the Scripture, and the nature of the thing
signified
and expressed by them, it is unlawful for me, also, to think or
conceive in my mind what is the sense of the words or nature
of the things; which to say, is to make brutes of ourselves, and
to frustrate the whole design of God in giving unto us the
great privilege of his word.
- John Owen, Brief Declaration and Vindication of The Doctrine of the Trinity [source]
Compare that with Francis Turretin's statement:
But it is often found that they who litigate more pertinaciously than others against the words, cherish a secret virus. It is sufficiently evident that those new corruptions of religion condemn the words adopted by the ancients for no other reason that they are unwilling to receive the things designed by them. Knowing that with the words they might abolish the doctrine also, we therefore did right in retaining them and insist on their use being not only lawful, but also beneficial and necessary for repressing the pertinacity of heretics and for bringing them out of lurking places. [Institutes of Eclenctic Theology, vol. 1, 258.]
More Quotations About the Trinity HERE
