any such probole (offspring) as Valentinus imagined, drawing out his Eons the one from the other. Why must I give up the word in a right sense, because heresy uses it in a wrong? besides, heresy borrowed it from us, and has turned truth into a lie. . . . . This is the difference between the uses of it. Valentinus separates his probola from their Father; they know Him not. But we hold that the Son alone knows the Father, reveals Him, performs His will, and is within Him. He is ever in the Father, as He has said; ever with God, as it is written; never separated from Him, for He and the Father are one. This is the true probole, the safeguard of unity, sent forth, not divided off" Soon after Tertullian thus defended his use of the word probole, Origen in another part of the Church gave it up, or rather assailed it, in argument with Candidus, a Valentinian. "If the Son is a probole of the Father," he says, "who begets Him from Himself, like the birth of animals, then of necessity both offspring and original are of a bodily nature2." Here we see two writers, with exactly the same theological creed before them, taking opposite views as to the propriety of using a word which heresy had corrupted 3.

But to return to the word consubstantial: though Origen gave up the word probole, yet he used the word consubstantial, as has already been mentioned. But shortly after his death, his pupils abandoned it at the

Tertull. in Prax. 7, 8, abridged.

[Periarch. iv. p. 190.]

3 Vide an apposite note of Coustant. Epp. Pont. Rom. p. 496, on Damasus's Words: "nec prolativum, ut generationem ei demas."]

4 [But he was not consistent. Vide Hieron. contr. Ruff. ii. 19. Also the dissertation in Jackson's preface to Novatian, p. xlviii, &c.]

celebrated Council held at Antioch (A.D. 264) against Paulus of Samosata. When they would have used it as a test, this heretic craftily objected to it on the very ground on which Origen had surrendered the probole. He urged that, if Father and Son were of one substance, consubstantial, there was some common substance in which they partook, and which consequently was distinct from and prior to the Divine Persons Themselves; a wretched sophism, which of course could not deceive Firmilian and Gregory, but which, being adapted to perplex weak minds, might decide them on withdrawing the word. It is remarkable too, that the Council was held about the time when Manes appeared on the borders of the Antiochene Patriarchate.

The disputative school of Paulus pursued the advantage thus gained; and from that time used the charge of materialism as a weapon for attacking all sound expositions of Scripture truth. Having extorted from the Catholics the condemnation of a word long known in the Church, almost found in Scripture, and less figurative and material in its meaning than any which could be selected, and objectionable only in the mouths of heretics, they employed this concession as a ground of attacking expressions more directly metaphorical, taken from visible objects, and sanctioned by less weighty authority. In a letter which shall afterwards be cited, Arius charges the Catholics with teaching the errors of Valentinus and Manes; and in another of the original Arian documents, Eusebius of Nicomedia, maintains in like manner that their doctrine involves the materiality of the Divine Nature. Thus they were gradually silencing the Church by a process which legitimately led to

Pantheism, when the Alexandrians gave the alarm, and nobly stood forward in defence of the faith 5.

It is worth observing that, when the Asiatic Churches had given up the consubstantial, they, on the contrary, had preserved it. Not only Dionysius willingly accepts the challenge of his namesake of Rome, who reminded him of the value of the symbol; but Theognostus also, who presided at the Catechetical School at the end of the third century, recognizes it by implication in the following passage, which has been preserved by Athanasius. "The substance 6 of the Son," he says, "is not external to the Father, or created; but it is by natural derivation from that of the Father, as the radiance comes from light (Heb. i. 3). For the radiance is not the sun, . . . and yet not foreign to it; and in like manner there is an effluence (άπòppoiα, Wisd. vii. 25.) from the Father's substance, though it be indivisible from Him. For as the sun remains the same without infringement of its nature, though it pour forth its radiance, so the Father's substance is unchangeable, though the Son be its Image7."

4.

Some notice of the θελήσει γεννηθέν, or voluntary generation, will suitably follow the discussion of the

5 [Parallel to the above instances is Basil's objection to yévvnμa, when used of the Son, which Athanasius and others apply to him. Vide Ath. Tr. vol. ii. p. 396.]

6 [It may be questioned, however, whether the word substance in this passage is not equivalent to hypostasis or subsistence; vide Appendix, No. 4.]

Athan. de Decr. Nic. 25.

consubstantial; though the subject does not closely concern theology. It has been already observed that the tendency of the heresies of the first age was towards materialism and fatalism. As it was the object of Revelation to destroy all theories which interfered with the belief of the Divine Omniscience and active Sovereignty, so the Church seconded this design by receiving and promulgating the doctrine of the "He that is," or the Divine "Being" or "Essence," as a symbol of His essential distinction from the perishable world in which He acts. But when the word substance or essence itself was taken by the Gnostics and Manichees in a material sense, the error was again introduced by the very term which was intended to witness against it. According to the Oriental Theory, the emanations from the Deity were eternal with Himself, and were considered as the result, not of His will and personal energy, but of the necessary laws to which His nature was subjected; a doctrine which was but fatalism in another shape. The Eclectics honourably distinguished themselves in withstanding this blasphemous, or rather atheistical tenet. Plotinus declares, that "God's substance and His will are the same; and if so, as He willed, so He is; so that it is not a more certain truth that, as is His substance or nature, so is His will and action, than, as His will and action, so is His substance." Origen had preceded them in their opposition to the same school. Speaking of the simplicity and perfection of the Divine Essence, he says, "God does not even participate in substance, rather He is partaken; by those, namely, who have the Spirit of God. And our Saviour does not share in holiness, but, being holiness itself, is shared by the

holy." The meaning of this doctrine is clear ;--to protest, in the manner of Athanasius, in a passage lately cited, against the notion that the substance of God is something distinct from God Himself, and not God viewed as self-existent, the one immaterial, intelligent, all-perfect Spirit; but the risk of it lay in its tendency to destroy the doctrine of His individual and real existence (which the Catholic use of substance symbolized), and to introduce in its stead the notion that a quality or mode of acting was the governing principle of nature; in other words, Pantheism. This is an error of which Origen of course cannot be accused; but it is in its measure chargeable on the Platonic Masters, and is countenanced even by their mode of speaking of the Supreme Being, as not substantial, but above the notion of substance 8."

The controversy did not terminate in the subject of Theism, but was pursued by the heretical party into questions of Christian Theology. The Manichees considered the Son and Spirit as necessary emanations from the Father; erring, first, in their classing those Divine Persons with intelligences confessedly imperfect and subservient; next, in introducing a sort of materialism into their notion of the Deity. The Eclectics on the other hand, maintained, by a strong figure, that the Eternal Son originated from the Father at His own will; meaning thereby, that the everlasting mystery, which constitutes the relation between Father and Son, has no physical or material conditions, and is such as becomes Him who is alto

8 vπeρovσios. Cudw. Intell. Syst. iv. § 23. t. i. ii, 6, § 9.

Petav. vi. 8, § 19, ibid