the Holy Ghost is God, the consubstantial nature of the Three Persons is most clearly expressed.

Thus far then the Scriptures coincide precisely with the doctrine, which is now taught in the Articles, Creeds, and Liturgies of the Church of England.

But it is urged with great vehemence that the doctrine of the Trinity, as it is taught in the Articles and other formularies of faith, in the Postnicene Church, is not Catholic: that the Antenicene Fathers, so far from asserting that the Three Persons are consubstantial, as the Postnicenes allege, asserted, in opposition, that the Son is of a created mutable essence, and therefore of a different substance from the Father.

This statement is founded upon an imperfect knowledge of the writings of the Antenicene Fathers.

The very contrary is the real case. There is not a single writer whose works have descended to us who has not declared that the Three Persons are of a consubstantial nature. Their several testimonies cannot here be adduced, by reason of a prescribed limit; but the truth of this assertion will appear equally conclusive by citing the verdict of a learned and sober judge of the writings of primitive antiquity. It is the summing-up of the evidence which each Antenicene Father has yielded to this very point in question.

"Thus at length," says Bishop Bull, "have we

proved by the clearest testimonies, cited from every one of the Antenicene Fathers, whose whole works, or whose fragments, are to be met with, our second Thesis; namely, that the Son of God is consubstantial with God the Father, i. e., not of any created or mutable essence, but altogether of the same Divine incommutable nature with His Father; and therefore it was the constant unanimous opinion of the Catholic doctors who flourished in the three first centuries that He was very God of very God."

And as regards the Third Person of the Trinity, that learned prelate has abundantly proved from the same source, that the Fathers of the three first centuries were unanimous in declaring the Spirit to be consubstantial with the Father. So rare an occurrence was it for the heretics of the three first centuries to venture an attack upon the divinity of the Holy Ghost, that that prelate observes, “I do not remember that any of the Fathers of the first three centuries have attempted to explain distinctly the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father

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Itaque tandem luculentissimis testimoniis, e singulis scriptoribus Ante-Nicænis, quorum vel integra scripta, vel fragmenta saltem aliqua reperire potuissemus, adductis, thesim nostram secundam abunde comprobavimus, quæ hæc fuit. Filium Dei Deo Patri oμoovolov, sive consubstantialem, hoc est, non creatæ alicujus aut mutabilis essentiæ, sed ejusdem prorsus cum Patre suo Naturæ Divinæ et incommutabilis, proinde verum Deum ex Deo vero esse, Catholicorum Doctorum, qui tribus primis sæculis floruerunt, constans consorsque fuit sententia."-Bull, Defens. Fid. Nicæn. sect. ii. c. xiv. § 5.

and the Son, or from the Father by the Son; there being little or no dispute concerning the divinity of the Holy Ghost till Macedonius (who lived towards the middle of the fourth century) appeared, and disputed the faith of the Church in that Article."

It is clear, therefore, there is no such discrepancy. to be found as has been alleged, between the Postnicenes and Antenicenes, and that both have always taught that the Three Persons of the Trinity are consubstantial.

But when the Fathers are represented as acknowledging the Three Persons to be consubstantial, it is not to be supposed (as some have done) that the Fathers imagined the divine substance to be of a Specific nature.

"I do take," says Stillingfleet," the Fathers to have been men of too great sense and capacity to have

'Bull's Catholic Doctrine concerning the Trinity, vol. ii. p. 8, Oxon, 1827.

The following Fathers have been adduced by Bishop Bull, in his Defensio Fidei Nicænæ, et Judicium Eccles. Catholicæ, &c., as witnesses to the consubstantial nature of the Spirit with the Father. sect. ii. c. iii. § 6; Hermas, ib. sect. i. c. ii. § 5; Polycarp, ib. sect. ii. c. iii. § 16; Justin Martyr, Jud. Eccl. Cathol. c. vi. § 12; Tatian, Defens. Fid. Nicæn. sect. ii. c. iv. § 10; Athenagoras, ib. sect. ii. c. iv. § 9; etiam Jud. Eccl. Cathol. c. vi. § 12; Theophilus, Defens. Fid. Nicæn. sect. ii. c. iv. § 10; Irenæus, ib. sect. ii. c. v. § 9; Tertullian, sect. ii. c. vii. § 6 and 7, et sect. iii. c. x. § 8; Hippolytus, ib. sect. iii. c. viii. § 1 and 2; Novatian, ib. sect. ii. c. x. § 6; Dionysius Alex. ib. sect. ii. c. xi. § 11.

Clemens. Rom. Defens. Fid. Nicæn.

maintained such an absurd opinion as that of a specific nature in God. For either it is a mere logical notion and act of the mind, without any real existence belonging to it as such, which is contrary to the very notion of God, which implies a necessary existence: or it must imply a divine nature, which is neither Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost; which is so repugnant to the doctrine of the Fathers, that no one, that is any ways conversant in their writings on this argument, can imagine they should hold such an opinion."1 The Fathers invariably declared the substance to be of a simple and uncompounded nature, and to be incapable of any division whatever."

It was stated that, according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers who lived before and after the Council of Nice, the Three Persons of the Trinity are consubstantial, and therefore co-equal in every essential perfection. There is a sense, however, in which, according to the same stream of antiquity, the Three Persons are not equal.

The Son is not equal to the Father with respect to his incarnate nature. He is "equal to the Fa

1

Stillingfleet Vind. of the Doctrine of the Trinity, p. 77, 8vo., Lond. 1697.

I have shewn, in the Appendix, p. 77, note (e), the gross manner in which the early Fathers have been calumniated by M. Le Clerc and Courcelles, and the falsity of the Socinian statement, namely, "That nothing can be said in answer to Courcelles' proofs that the Fathers held only a specific unity of the Divine Nature, and the Persons to be as so many individuals.”

ther," says the Athanasian Creed, "as touching His Godhead, but inferior to the Father as touching His manhood."

Nor are the Sacred Three without order or rank, even when viewed abstractedly of the Incarnation of the Son.

The Fathers have assigned to the First Person of the Trinity a certain prerogative which they deny to either of the Second or Third Persons. The Father is represented by them as the Fountain, the Origin, and the Source, of the Divinity in the Godhead; while, on the other hand, the Son and Holy Ghost are represented as deriving from Him whatever Divinity they possess, and not as having it from

themselves.

They call the Son, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God. Sometimes avrodeos, "very God," but never auτóleos, "God of Himself," like the Father.

It was this consideration which led the Ancients to acknowledge the First Person of the Trinity to be pre-eminent.

They believed the Father to be un-originate, and therefore they acknowledged Him to be Supreme.

They believed the Son to be begotten of the Father, and therefore to be subordinate1 to the Father,

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The word "Subordinate "if taken in a popular sense, would imply more than is here intended to be expressed; it would seem to intimate that the Father is greater than the Son in essential perfections, whereas I have frequently asserted that he is not. I have used the term to denote only the rank or order which exists