LECT. II. Father. Athenagoras. Paul of He seems to think the Son existed not necessarily; but by the council and power of the Father,* it is, however, not always clear, whether he speaks of the Saviour before or after the incarnation. Athenagoras, affirming that the Christians worship one God, observes, " He is unbegotten; for that which is, is not begotten, but that which is not;" by which he seems either to make Christ once not to have been, or to apply the generation of the Son to his incarnation. In either way he is not orthodox. He bids the emperors not to wonder that "we say God has a Son; for the Son of God is the Word of the Father in idea and efficacy, with whom and by whom were all things; for the Father and the Son are one. God having the Word eternally in himself, being eternally rational. Let no one wonder that we say the Father God and God the Son and the Holy Ghost. But we speak of God, and the Son his Word, and the Holy Spirit." The divinity of Christ is said to have been first denied, towards the end of the second century, by Theodotus, a tanner; but this seems to mean that he was the first who, at Rome, affirmed that Christ was a mere man. Paul of Samosata was the heretic of this school, who made most * ἔκ τε τοῦ ὑπηρετεῖν τῷ πατρικῳ βουλήματι, καὶ ἐκ τοῦ ἀπὸ τοῦ Πατρὸς θελήσει γεγενῆσθαι. Dial. p. 284. † Legatio pro Christianis, p. 5. noise, towards the decline of the third century. LECT. II. The vague account given of him by Eusebius, describes his manners rather than his doctrines, and leads us to suspect more spleen against his person than holy indignation at his heresy. The epistle from the fathers of the council held at Antioch to depose him, merely says, "He affirmed that Christ was of the earth," which might mean no more than that he was born, lived, and died, upon the earth. Paul, however, is accused of forbidding the ancient hymns, in honour of Christ, to be sung, and substituting for them verses in praise of himself. He was deposed and excommunicated, but not put away from the premises of the church, without the interference of the civil government.* Of Dr. Priestley's Ebionites and Nazarenes, it is not necessary to speak, except to refer to the controversy between him and Horseley, which was too personal to yield the most valuable fruit. PART IV.-The Trinity. THE word Trinity does not occur in the earliest Irenæus. age, but, as we have seen, Justin conveys the idea, and Irenæus has said, "The church believes in one God the Father, and in one Jesus the Son of God, incarnate for our salvation, and in the * Euseb. Hist. Eccl., lib. vii. c. 29. K LECT. II. Holy Spirit, who, by the prophets, preached the dispensations of God, the advent, and that generation which is from the Virgin, and the suffering, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily reception into heaven of the beloved Christ Jesus our Lord, and his coming from heaven in the glory of the Father, to sum up all things, and to raise all flesh of all mankind, that to Christ Jesus our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the good pleasure of the invisible Father, every knee may bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth."* God needed none of these (angels) to make what he had determined should exist, as though he had not hands of his own. For there is always with him the Word and wisdom, the Son and Spirit, by whom and in whom he did all things freely and spontaneously.† In the name, Christ, is understood he who anointed, and he who is anointed, and the anointing itself; the Anointer is the Father, the Anointed is the Son, and the unction is in the Spirit." Theophilus of Antioch first employed the word Triad, or Trinity, as was shewn in the sketch of his life and writings. This early writer seems not to use the term as an exotic in Christian theoClement of logy; and we hear Clement of Alexandria speaking of "those who know the blessed Trinity of † Lib. iv. c. 37. Alexandria. * Advers. Hær., lib. i. c. 2. Lib. iii. c. 20. the holy abodes."* "To thank the only Father, LECT. II. and Son, Pedagogue and Teacher, Son with the Holy Spirit, all things in one, in whom are all things, by whom all things are one, of whom (we) all are members; to whom be glory both now and ever.† O mystical miracle! one, indeed, is the Father of all, and one is the Word of all, and the Holy Spirit one and the same everywhere."‡ But the general confession of the Trinity was not always free from suspicious expressions, which Athenagoras, a writer not much consulted, labouring to avoid, looks up to heaven as the realm of perfect light.§ Irenæus affirms, "There- Irenæus. fore one God made all things by the Word and Wisdom;" by which he seems to mean the Son and Spirit, as he adds, "and adorned them by Wisdom, which is the Spirit, before all constitution or creation." Proverbs, viii. 22, is quoted, as a proof; so that what is now appealed to, as evidence of the divinity of the Son, is here applied to the Spirit. "He who made all things, with his word, is justly called sole God and Lord. Therefore Christ himself, with the Father of the living, is God." * οἱ γνωρίζοντες τὴν μακαρίαν τῶν ἁγίων τριάδα μονῶν. Strom. vii. 519. † Pædag., lib. iii. 191. ‡ Ibid., lib. i. 77. Clement supposes that Plato designed, by some of his speculations, τὴν ἁγίαν τριάδα μηνύεσ Da, to intimate the Holy Trinity.-Strom. v. p. 436. § Legatio, p. 12. Advers. Hæres., lib. iv. c. 37. LECT. II. He quotes a celebrated saying of some one :— "The immense Father himself is measured in Father is the the Son; for the measure of the Irenæus, as well as others, speaks of the Father of the Son; but a visible is the Son of the Father;"† i. e., the Son has his divinity from the Father, but the Father owes his visibility to the Son. On the knowledge of the day of judgment, he says, Let us learn by that very thing, that the Father is over all; for he says, the Father is greater than I." To these expressions, however, others give a more orthodox turn. The fathers talk of mind, and reason, and prolation, and manifestation, and generation, and of the impossibility of any but the Father and the Son knowing their nature or relation. In these discussions are contained the germs of the Nicene Creed. Irenæus copies Justin in representing Christ as the Divine person who appeared to the patriarchs. The fathers take an unwise liberty in illustrating the generation of the Son, which they compare to the flowing of streams from a * Advers. Hæres., lib. iii. c. 6. † Ibid., lib. iv. c. 14. |