In these sections, Calvin helpfully enumerates various errors in regard to the Trinity and offers applicable correctives to each. One might think that man would come up with something new in his suppression of the truth, but as we are seeing, the errors which we encounter today are the errors that have always plagued God's people, though they appear in contemporary dress.
Modalism: "Meanwhile, he (Servetus) would hold the persons to be certain external ideas which do not truly subsist in God's essence, but represent God to us in one manifestation or another." This seems to differ, and be more philosophically developed, than the normal, run of the mill form of modalism, but it does seem to be a variation. One might also categorize this as a form of the Sabbellian heresy.
Infusionism: "...the Father, who is truly and properly the sole God, in forming the Son and the Spirit, infused into them his own deity." Here, the Father alone is true God, while the Son and the Spirit are created (formed) beings with whom the Father shares his deity.
The number of heresies which serve to deny Trinitarian truth are by no means confined to these two, and yet, it seems that these were the one's most evident in Calvin's day. In his refutation of these, however, we would be well on our way to a refutation of others, as well.
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