from the fountain, a ray from the sun." So where they speak of the Son being "minister," subject to the Father, and begotten by the will and counsel of the Father, they mean that creation of the world which the Son wrought.

IX.

THE SON IS NOT A CREATURE.

BEGOTTEN, NOT MADE.

THE Arian heresy first appeared in Antioch. In that city, owing to political circumstances, the Jews were powerful; and even after Christianity had begun to assert its power, the influence of Jewish feeling was very considerable. Early in the third century, Lucian, a presbyter, had uttered language indicative of the same sentiments; and Paul of Samosata, as we have stated before, was Bishop of this See. The immediate cause of the outbreak of this heresy is as follows: Socrates a tells us, how that once when Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, in the presence of his subject presbyters and the rest of the Clergy, spoke freely on the subject of the Holy Trinity, and asserted that

a Hist. Eccl. lib. i. c. 6.

b For some admirable arguments on the Arian controversy, see a letter of Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, in Socrates lib. i. c. 6.

"in the Unity there was a Trinity;" Arius, one of the presbyters of that Church, accused his Bishop of Sabellianism, and violently asserted, that if the Father begat the Son, He who was begotten had a beginning to His existence; whence it is manifest, that there was a time when the Son was not, and as a consequence, that He had His Person out of non-existence. In short, he asserted that our Lord was a creature. In this all the different shades of Arianism agreed, except perhaps those Semiarians, who while they rejected the word 'Consubstantial' as a new term in theology, taught in fact the true doctrine. All the rest fell into this capital error.

The real secret strength of Arianism was, that it was in fact rationalism. It was the popular religion of the day, supported by the influential and well-educated, defended by an unscrupulous but able logic, and exacting little of the obedience of faith. It was essentially plausible. It appealed to the letter of Scripture, from which it chiefly culled the following arguments.

1. Where our Lord is termed "the firstborn of every creature," they maintained that this

• Col. i. 15.

implied that He also was a creature; whereas if we look at the context we find, that the whole spirit of the passage is against this interpretation, and that in fact it is merely an expression implying that He was begotten before all creatures.

2. They rested on a mistranslation of the 22d verse of the eighth chapter of Proverbs, which used to be rendered, "The Lord created Me in the beginning of His way;" which passage, while all the Fathers, except Eusebius the historian, agreed in applying it to the eternal wisdom of God, yet some applied it to His earthly birth, while others, such as Epiphanius, Chrysostom, and Basil, had the acuteness to find out the mistranslation of the original".

3. Another argument was from that mysterious text, where it is said", "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." Now the real meaning of this text is, that as our Lord in addition to being perfect God was also perfect man, he assumed, in a way we know not, all the accidents of ὰ ἐκτήσατο for ἔκτισε, xxiv. 36.

e Mark xiii. 32. conf. Matt.

manhood, sin only excepted; it follows, that he therefore assumed that ignorànce which is the lot of man. As man then, He could be ignorant of that which as God He must know. He came to be in all things like unto us, and therefore He came ignorant of the day of judgment as we are; but being the Word and Wisdom of God, He knew it. "If neither the truth can deceive, nor God the Word be ignorant of the day which He hath appointed, and in which He shall judge the world, as having the knowledge of the Father, whose image in all things alike He is, (it follows,) that the ignorance is not that of the Word of God, but of that form of a servant, which at that time knew so much as the indwelling Godhead revealed to it."

4. The passage in St. Luke', where it is said, "Jesus increased in stature and wisdom, and in favour &c." supplied a fertile subject of attack upon the true doctrine. It was perhaps only fair to ask, How could the very Wisdom of God increase in wisdom? The answer is the same as that made to the last exception. "He did not increase as He was the Word, but as He • Theodoret ad 4 Cyrill. Anathem. t. iv. p. 713. f Luke ii. 52.