given them in Scripture. Thus Justin Martyr speaks of Christ as the Son, "who alone is literally called by that name:" and arguing with the heathen, he says, "Jesus might well deserve from His wisdom to be called the Son of God, though He were only a man. like others, for all writers speak of God as the 'Father of both men and gods.' But let it not be strange to you, if, besides this common generation, we consider Him, as the Word of God, to have been begotten of God in a special way"." Eusebius of Cæsarea, unsatisfactory as he is as an authority, has nevertheless well expressed the general Catholic view in his attack upon Marcellus. "He who describes the Son as a creature made out of nothing," he says, "does not observe that he is bestowing on Him only the name of Son, and denying Him to be really such; for he who has come out of nothing, cannot truly be the Son of God, more than other things which are made. But He who is truly the Son, born from God, as from a Father, He may reasonably be called the singularly beloved and onlybegotten of the Father, and therefore He is Himself God." This last inference, that what is born of God, is God, of course implicitly appeals to, and is supported by, the numerous texts which expressly call the Son God, and ascribe to Him the divine attributes".

9 Bull, Defens. ii. 4, § 2. [The sentence runs on thus:-Tois TÙY Ἑρμῆ λόγον τὸν παρὰ θεοῦ ἀγγελτικὸν λέγουσιν. Apol. i. 22.]

Euseb. de Eccles. Theol. i. 9, 10.

The following are additional specimens from primitive theology. Clement calls the Son "the perfect Word, born of the perfect Father." Tertullian, after quoting the text, "All that the Father hath are Mine," adds, "If so, why should not the Father's titles be His? When then we read that God is Almighty, and the Highest, and the God of

The reverential spirit in which the Fathers held the doctrine of the gennesis, led them to the use of other forms of expression, partly taken from Scripture, partly not, with a view of signifying the fact of the Son's full participation in the divinity of Him who is His Father, without dwelling on the mode of participation or origination, on which they dared not speculate3. Such were the images of the sun and its radiance, the fountain and the stream, the root and its shoots, a body and its exhalation, fire and the fire kindled from it; all which were used as emblems of the sacred mystery in those points in which it was declared in Scripture, viz. the mystery of the Son's being from the Father and, as such, partaker in His divine perfections. The first of these is found in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where our Lord is called "the brightness of God's glory." These illustrations had a further use in their very variety, as reminding the Christian that he must not dwell on any one of them for its own sake. The following passage from Tertullian will show how they were applied in the inculcation of the sacred doctrine. "Even when a ray is shot forth from the sun, though it be but a part from the whole, yet the sun is in the ray, inasmuch as it is the ray of the sun; nor is its substance separated, but drawn out. In like manner there is Spirit from Spirit, and God from God. As when a light is kindled from another, the original

Hosts, and the King of Israel, and Jehovah, see to it whether the Son also be not signified by these passages, as being in His own right the Almighty God, inasmuch as He is the Word of the Almighty God.” Bull, Defens. ii. 6, § 3. 7, § 4.

3 Vid Athan. ad Serap. i. 20.

light remains entire and undiminished, though you borrow from it many like itself; so That which proceeds from God, is called at once God, and the Son of God, and Both are One"."

So much is evidently deducible from what Scripture tells us concerning the generation of the Son; that there is, (so to express it,) a reiteration of the One Infinite Nature of God, a communicated divinity, in the Person of our Lord; an inference supported by the force of the word "only begotten," and verified by the freedom and fulness with which the Apostles ascribe to Christ the high incommunicable titles of eternal perfection and glory. There is one other notion conveyed to us in the doctrine, which must be evident as soon as stated, little as may be the practical usefulness of dwelling upon it. The very name of Son, and the very idea of derivation, imply a certain subordination of the Son to the Father, so far forth as we view Him as distinct from the Father, or in His personality: and frequent testimony is borne to the correctness of this inference in Scripture, as in the descriptions of the Divine Angel in the Old Testament, revived in the closing revelations of the New; and in such passages as that above cited from St. John's Gospel. This is a truth which every Christian feels, admits, and acts upon; but from piety he would not allow himself to reflect on what he does, did not the attack of heresies oblige him. The direct answer which a true religious loyalty leads him to make to any question about the subordination of the Son, is that such comparisons are irreverent, that the Son 4 Bull, Defens. ii. 7, § 2.

5 Rev. viii. 3. 6 John v. 19-30.

is one with the Father, and that unless he honours the Son in all the fulness of honour which he ascribes to the Father, he is disobeying His express command. It may serve as a very faint illustration of the offence given him, to consider the manner in which he would. receive any question concerning the love which he feels respectively for two intimate friends, or for a brother and sister, or for his parents: though in such cases the impropriety of the inquiry, arises from the incommensurableness, not the coincidence, of the respective feelings. But false doctrine forces us to analyze our own notions, in order to exclude it. Arius argued that, since our Lord was a Son, therefore He was not God: and from that time we have been obliged to determine how much we grant and what we deny, lest, while praying without watching, we lose all. Accordingly, orthodox theology has since his time worn a different aspect; first, inasmuch as divines have measured what they said themselves; secondly, inasmuch as they have measured the Ante-Nicene language, which by its authors was spoken from the heart, by the necessities of controversies of a later date. And thus those early teachers have been made appear technical, when in fact they have only been reduced to system; just as in literature what is composed freely, is afterwards subjected to the rules of grammarians and critics. This must be taken as an apology for whatever there is that sounds harsh in the observations which I have now to make, and for the injustice which I may seem incidentally to do in the course of them to the ancient writers whose words are in question.

"The Catholic doctors," says Bishop Bull, "both before and after the Nicene Council, are unanimous in declaring that the Father is greater than the Son, even as to divinity; i. e. not in nature or any essential perfection, which is in the Father and not in the Son, but alone in what may be called authority, that is in point of origin, since the Son is from the Father, not the Father from the Son." Justin, for instance, speaks of the Son as "having the second place after the unchangeable and everlasting God and Father of all." Origen says that "the Son is not more powerful than the Father, but subordinate (vodεéσтерov); according to His own words, The Father that sent Me, is greater than I." This text is cited in proof of the same doctrine by the Nicene, and Post-Nicene Fathers, Alexander, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Chry

7 Bull, Defens. iv. 2, § 1. Or, again, to take the words of Petavius : ["Filius eandem numero cum Patre divinitatem habet, sed proprietate differt. Proinde Filietas ipsa Paternitat equodammodo minor est, vel Filius, qua Filius, Patre, ut Pater est, minor dicitur, quoniam origine est posterior, non autem ut Deus," ii. 2, § 15.] Cudworth, too, observes: "Petavius himself, expounding the Athanasian creed, writeth in this manner: The Father is in a right Catholic manner affirmed by most of the ancients, to be greater than the Son, and He is commonly said also, without reprehension, to be before Him in respect of original.' Whereupon he concludeth the true meaning of that Creed to be this, that no Person of the Trinity is greater or less than other in respect of the essence of the Godhead common to them all.... but that notwithstanding there may be some inequality in them, as they are Hic Deus et Hæc Persona. Wherefore when Athanasius, and the other orthodox Fathers, writing against Arius, do so frequently assert the equality of all the Three Persons, this is to be understood in way of opposition to Arius only, who made the Son to be unequal to the Father, as ἑτεροοῦσιος . . . one being God, and the other a creature; they affirming on the contrary, that He was equal to the Father, as Sμooúσios.... that is, as God and not a creature." Cudw. Intell. Syst. 4, § 36.