A short history of Valentinus Gentilis, the tritheist tryed, condemned, and put to death by the Protestant reformed city and church of Bern in Switzerland, for asserting the three divine persons of the Trinity, to be [three distinct, eternal spirits, &c.] / wrote in Latin, by Benedictus Aretius, a divine of that church, and now translated into English for the use of Dr. Sherlock ... (1696)
Benedictus Aretius and Robert South (may be translator)
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A25775.0001.001?view=toc
http://archive.org/details/shorthistoryofva00aret
https://books.google.com/books?id=nrI8AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA45
https://books.google.com/books?id=nrI8AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA50
p. 45 "three are one"
p. 49-50
p. 92 - begotten God
Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie (1995)
Leonard Williams Levy
https://books.google.com/books?id=zZu63qz85nsC&pg=PA70
P 229
In 1696 , someone put into an English translation
Aretius’s Latin book of 1567, which was published in Bern in justification of the Calvinist execution of Valentinus Gentilis , the Tritheist *; what made the English edition ...
Antitrinitarian Biography: Or Sketches of the Lives and Writings of Distinguished Antitrinitarians : Exhibiting a View of the State of the Unitarian Doctrine and Worship in the Principal Nations of Europe, from the Reformation to the Close of the Seventeenth Century ; to which is Prefixed a History of Unitarianism in England During the Same Period ; in Three Volumes, Volume 2 (1850)
Robert Wallace
https://books.google.com/books?id=tT9BAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA104
John Valentine Gentilis, (Ital. Gentile,) the son
of Francis Gentilis, was a native of Cosenza, in the king-
dom of Naples, and suffered death at Bern, on account of
his religious sentiments; “ his only error ” being, in the
words of Mosheim, “ that he considered the Son and Holy
Spirit as subordinate to the Father.”
....
Benedict Aretius extracted from the writings of Gentilis
the following propositions. 1. The Trinity is a mere
human invention, unknown to the Catholic Creeds, and
diametrically opposed to evangelical truth. 2. The Father
alone is that God, who in Scripture is called the One, and
the Only God. 3. The Son is not of himself, but of the
Father, to whom, as deriving his essence from him, he is
subordinate. 4. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are
distinct, not only as regards their persons, but their essence.
5. The Son was begotten of the Father, according to his
essence, as a subordinate Spirit, different from the Father.
G. There are three Eternal Spirits, each of whom is a god
of himself. *7. These three Spirits are distinct in order,
degree, and essential properties.
Archetypal heresy: Arianism through the Centuries -(1996)
Maurice F. Wiles
http://books.google.com/books?id=4NkNrCnzHgcC&pg=PA58
https://vdoc.pub/documents/archetypal-heresy-arianism-through-the-centuries-6lua2oaff1e0
Despite Gentile's explicit differentiation of his own position from that of Arius, Aretius, one of those involved in his execution, argues for a significant similarity between the two. He acknowledges that Gentile asserts that 'the Word was begotten of the substance of the Father, and is consubstantial with him', whereas Arius describes the Son as 'made out of nothing'. But end p.58 both, he argues, are agreed that 'as to his substance the Son is numerically distinct from the Father'. In this respect, and also in their understanding of the Son's generation as belonging to the temporal order, the two can, he claims, be said to share the same, wholly unacceptable view. 33 33 B.
Aretius, A Short History of Valentinus Gentilis the Tritheist (London, 1696), 58-63. This work was originally published in Geneva in 1567 under the title Valentini Gentilis justo capitis supplicio Bernae affecti brevis historia, et contra eiusdam blasphemias orthodoxa defensio articuli de S. Trinitate.
The production of an English translation and the choice of its title were part of a campaign against
William Sherlock in the 'tritheist' controversy in England at the end of the 17th century. Protestant orthodoxy shared with its Catholic counterpart a strong urge to associate any heretic in the area of Trinitarian doctrine with the name of Arius.