sidered the Son and Spirit as necessary emanations from the Father; erring, first, in their classing those Divine Persons with intelligences confessedly imperfect and sul servient; 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 altogether Mind, and bound by no laws, but those established by His own perfection as a first cause. Thus Iamblichus calls the Son self-begotten'.

The discussion seems hardly to have entered farther into the Ante-Nicene Church, than is implied in the above notice of it: though some suppose that Justin and others referred the divine gennesis or generation to the will of God. However, it is easy to see that the ground was prepared for the introduction of a subtle and irreverent question, whenever the theologizing Sophists should choose to raise it. Accordingly, it was one of the first and principal interrogations put to the Catholics by their Arian opponents, whether the generation of the Son was voluntary or not on the part of the Father; their dilemma being, that Almighty God was subject to laws external to Himself, if it were not voluntary, and that, if on the other hand it was voluntary, the Son was in the number of things created. But of this more in the next Section.

• AUTÓуovos. [Vide Ath. Tr. p. 514, o ]

5.

The Word as internal or external to the Father; λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and προφορικός':-One theory there was, adopted by several of the early Fathers, which led them to speak of the Son's generation or birth as resulting from the Father's will, and yet did not interfere with His consubstantiality. Of the two titles ascribed in Scripture to our Lord, that of the "Word" expresses with peculiar force His co-eternity in the One Almighty Father. On the other hand, the title "Son" has more distinct reference to His derivation and ministrative office. A distinction resembling this had already been applied by the Stoics to the Platonic Logos, which they represented under two aspects, the ἐνδιάθετοs and προφο pikós, that is, the internal Thought and Purpose of God, and its external Manifestation, as if in words spoken. The terms were received among Catholics; the "Endiathetic" standing for the Word, as hid from everlasting in the bosom of the Father, while the "Prophoric was the Son sent forth into the world, in apparent separation from God, with His Father's name and attributes upon Him, and His Father's will to perform. This contrast is acknowledged by Athanasius, Gregory Nyssen, Cyril, and other Post-Nicene writers; nor can it be confuted, being scriptural in its doctrine, and merely expressed in philosophical language, found ready for the purpose. But further, this change of state in the Eternal Word, from repose to energetic manifestation, as it

1 [Vide Ath. Tr. p. 113, z.]

2 Burton, Bampt. Lect., note 91. Petav. vi. 1-3.

دو

took place at the creation, was called by them a gennesis : and here too, no blame attaches to them, for the expression is used in Scripture in different senses, one of which appears to be the very signification which they put on it, the mission of the Word to make and govern all things. Such is the text in St. Paul, that He is "the image of the Invisible God, the First-born of every creature;" such is His title in St. John as "the Beginning of the creation of God." This gennesis or generation was called also the "going-forth," or "condescension," of the Son, which may scripturally be ascribed to the will of the all-bountiful Father. However, there were some early writers who seem to interpret the gennesis in this meaning exclusively, ascribing the title of "Son" to our Lord only after the date of His mission or economy, and considering that of the "Word" as His peculiar appellation during the previous eternity. Nay, if we carry off their expressions hastily or perversely, as some theologians have done, we shall perhaps conclude that they conceived that God existed in One Person before the "going-forth," and then, if it may be said, by a change in His nature began to exist in a Second Person; as if an attribute (the Internal Word, "Endiathetic,") had come into substantive being, as "Prophoric." The Fathers, who have laid themselves open to

3 Col. i. 15. Rev. iii. 14. Vide also Gen. i. 3. Heb. xi. 3. Eccl. xxiv. 3-9.

4 πроÉλEvσis, σvykatáßaois, Bull, Defens. iii. 9. [Other writers support him in this view, as Maranus, in Just. Tryph. 61, and in his work Divin. Jes. Christi, lib. iv. c. 6. Vide contr. the Author's Translation of St. Athanasius, p. 272; and Dissertat. Theolog. 4.]

5 [Vide Ath. Tr. p. 485, f.]

this charge, are Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus, Hippolytus, and Novatian, as mentioned in the first Chapter.

Now that they did not mean what a superficial reader might lay to their charge, may be argued, first, from the arallel language of the Post-Nicenes, as mentioned above, whose orthodoxy no one questions. Next, from the extreme absurdity, not to speak of the impiety, of the doctrine imputed to them; as if, with a more than Gnostic extravagance, they conceived that any change or extension could take place in that Individual Essence, which is without parts or passions, or that the divine generation could be an event in time, instead of being considered a mere expression of the eternal relation of the Father towards the Son". Indeed, the very absurdity of the literal sense of the words, in whatever degree they so expressed themselves, was the mischief to be apprehended from them. The reader, trying a rhetorical description by too rigid a rule, would attempt to elicit sense by imputing a heresy, and would conclude that they meant by the External or Prophoric Word a created being, made in the beginning of all things as the visible emblem of the Internal or Endiathetic, and the instrument of God's purposes towards His creation. This is in fact the Arian doctrine, which doubtless availed itself in its defence of the declarations of incautious piety; or rather we have evidence of the fact, that it did so avail itself, in the letter of Arius to Alexander, and from the

6 [οὔτε ἀρχὴν ἔχει ἡ ἀκατάληπτος αὐτοῦ γέννησις οὔτε τέλος, ἀνάρχως, ȧKATATAÚσTWS, &c. Damasc. F. O. p. 8. Vide Ath. Tr. p. 201, b and c ; also p. 284, e.]

anathema of the Nicene Creed directed against such as said that "the Son was not before His gennesis."

Lastly, the orthodoxy of the five writers in question is ascertained by a careful examination of the passages, which give ground for the accusation. Two of these shall here be quoted without comment. Theophilus then says, "God, having His own Word in His womb, begat Him together with His Wisdom" (that is, His Spirit), 66 uttering them prior to the universe." "He had this Word as the Minister of His works, and did all things. through Him. . . . The prophets were not in existence when the world was made; but the Wisdom of God, which is in Him, and His holy Word, who is ever present with Him"." Elsewhere he speaks of "the Word, eternally seated in the heart of God;" "for," he presently adds, "before any thing was made, He possessed this Counseller, as being His mind and providence. And, when He purposed to make all that He had deliberated on, He begat this Word as external to Him, being the First-born antecedent to the whole creation; not, however, Himself losing the Word" (that is, the Internal), "but begetting it, and yet everlastingly communing with it"."

In like manner Hippolytus in his answer to Noetus:"God was alone, and there was no being coeval with Him, when He willed to create the world.

Not that

* ἔχων . . ὁ θεὸς τὸν ἑαυτοῦ λόγον ἐνδιάθετον ἐν τοῖς ἰδίοις σπλάγχνοις, ἐγέννησεν αὐτὸν μετὰ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ σοφίας, ἐξερευξάμενος (Psalm xlv. 1), πρὸ τῶν ὅλων . . . ὁ ἀεὶ συμπαρὼν αὐτῷ.

8 τὸν λόγον διαπαντὸς ἐνδιάθετον ἐν καρδίᾳ θεοῦ.

9 ἐγέννησε προφορικόν.