(S$ 55, 56). His laying down and taking again His life is accounted for by the two natures inseparably united in one Person (§§ 57-62). After a short summary (§ 63) he returns to the union of two natures, which is the stumbling-block of worldly wisdom (§ 64), and shews it to be the only reasonable explanation of the facts (§3 65, 66). As St. Paul says, our belief must be according to the Scriptures; the necessity and the rewards of faith ( 67--70). The seeming infirmity of Christ was assumed for our instruction and for our salvation.

Book XI. The Faith is one, even as God is One; but the faiths of heretics are many (S$ 1, 2). Hilary has now demonstrated the truth about Christ, so that it cannot be denied; it is attested also by miracles even in his own day (§ 3). The Arians preach another, a created Christ; and in making Christ a creature they proclaim another God, not a Father but a Creator (§ 4). The Son, as the Image, is of one nature with the Father; if He is inferior He is not the Image (§ 5). But the Arians explain the oneness away by arguments from His condescension to our estate (§ 6), and, even after His Resurrection, plead that He confesses His inequality. They argue thus from 1 Cor. xv. 24-28, a passage to which the rest of this book is devoted (SS 7, 8). But we must recognise the mysteriousness of the truth, accepting the two sides of it, both clearly revealed though we cannot reconcile them (9). They regard only one aspect; Hilary in reply proves once more that Christ is both born from God, and Himself God (§§ 10-12). But at His Incarnation He began to have as Lord the God Who had been His Father eternally (§ 13), and when He said that He was ascending to His God, He spoke as when He calls us His brethren (S$ 14, 15). Thus there are two senses in which God is the Father of Christ; and He Who is Father to Christ the Son is Lord to Christ the Servant (§§ 16, 17). And it was to Him as Servant that the Psalmist said, Thy God hath anointed Thee; the words would have no meaning if addressed to Him as Son (S$ 18, 19). It is through this lower nature that He is our Brother and God our Father, and He the Mediator (§ 20). But it is argued that His subjection at the last and the delivery of the kingdom to the Father is a proof of inequality. The passage must be taken as a whole ( 21, 22). There are some truths which it is difficult for man to grasp, and if we misunderstand them we must not be ashamed to confess our error (S$ 23, 24). In this passage the Arians aid their case by changing the order of the prophecy (§§ 25-27). The end means a final and enduring state, not the coming to an end (§ 28), and though He delivers up the kingdom He does not cease to reign (§ 29). His subjection to the Father and the subjection of all things to Him is next considered; in one sense it is figurative language, in another it proves the unity of Father and Son. The subjection of the Son means His partaking in the glory of the Father ( 30-36). The Transfiguration shews the glory of Christ's Body; a glory which the faithful shall share (S$ 37, 38). The righteous are His kingdom, which He, as Man, shall deliver to the Father, for By man came also the resurrection of the dead (§ 39). And at last God shall be all in all, humanity in Christ not being discarded, but glorified and received into the Godhead (§ 40). Christ, as well as St. Paul, has foretold this (S$ 41, 42). The Arian misrepresentation of this truth is mere folly ($ 43). Any rational explanation must assume that God's majesty cannot be augmented, even as it cannot be measured (S$ 44, 45), while our reason is limited, and so contrasted with the Divine infinity. God cannot become greater than He was in becoming All in all. Father and Son, after as before, must Each be as He was (S$ 46-48). All was done for us that we might be glorified, being conformed to the likeness of Him Who is the Image of the Father (§ 49).

BOOK XII. Hilary gives a final explanation of the great Arian text, The Lord created me for a beginning of His ways; the words must not be taken literally. Christ is not created,

but Creator (SS 1-5). If He is a creature, the Father also is a creature, for They are One in nature and in honour (§§ 6, 7). The similar passage, I begat Thee from the womb, is figurative; elsewhere God's Hands and Eyes are spoken of. The sense is that the Son is God from God (§§ 8-10). Nor was Christ made; He is the Son, not the handiwork, of the Father (§§ 11, 12). And His Sonship is immediate, not derivative like ours, or like that of Israel His firstborn. This latter kind of sonship has a definite beginning of existence, and an origin out of nothing (S$ 13-16). The Arian arguments fail to prove that the Sonship of Christ has either of these characters (S$ 17, 18). Truth is to be attained not by selfconfident arguing but by faith (§ 19), yet it is not enough for us to avoid their reasonings ; we must overthrow them (§ 20). The Son was born from eternity, being the Son of the eternal Father (§ 21). The objection that sonship involves beginning does not hold in His case ($22, 23). The Son has all that the Father has; He has therefore eternity and an unconditioned existence (§ 24). He is from the Eternal, and therefore eternal Himself; from the Eternal, and therefore not from nothing. Reason cannot grasp, and therefore cannot refute, this. We must not assert that there was a time before He was born, a time when He was not (S$ 25-27). We must not argue, from the analogy of our own birth, that the truth is impossible (§ 28), nor that, because of His eternal existence, the Son was not born ( 29-32). Again, the Arians deny the eternal Fatherhood of God; He always existed, they say, but was not always the Father. This contradicts Scripture ($ 33, 34). They argue that Wisdom is said to be the first of God's creatures; but creation, in this sense, is a synonym for generation, and Wisdom was antecedent to creation ($ 35-38). Wisdom is coeternal with God (§ 39), and shared His eternal purpose of creation ($$ 40, 41). Nor may we believe that Christ was begotten simply in order to perform the creative work, as God's Minister, for Wisdom took part in the design as well as in the execution (S$ 42, 43). And again, Wisdom is spoken of as created, as an indication of Her control over created things (44). The creation to be a beginning of God's ways is a separate event from the eternal generation. It means that Christ, as the Way of Life, under the Old Covenant took the semblance, under the New Covenant the substance, of the creature man, to lead us into the way. The two senses must not be confused (§§ 45-49). Yet mere inaccuracy of speech, without heretical intent, is not unpardonable (§ 50). After a final assertion (§ 51) of faith in Christ as God from God, the eternal Son, Hilary appeals to the Almighty Father, declaring his creed, his consciousness of human infirmity and of the need of faith (S$ 52, 53). The Son is the Only-begotten of God, the Second because He is the Son ($ 54). The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and is sent by the Son. He also is no creature, but of one nature with the God Whose mysteries He knows, and ineffable like Him Whose Spirit He is ($55). Finally, Hilary prays that, as he was baptized, so he may remain in the faith of Three Persons in One God.

ON THE TRINITY.

BOOK I.

racked by pain and laden with trouble, it wastes itself upon itself from the blank mind of infancy to the wanderings of age. I believe that men, prompted by nature herself, have raised themselves through teaching and practice to the virtues which we name patience and temperance and forbearance, under the conviction that right living means right action and right thought, and that Immortal God has not given life only to end in death; for none can believe that the Giver of good has bestowed the pleasant sense of life in order that it may be overcast by the gloomy fear of dying.

1. WHEN I was seeking an employment | towards immortality; a life, indeed, which adequate to the powers of human life and then we should confidently assert did not righteous in itself, whether prompted by deserve to be regarded as a gift of God, since, nature or suggested by the researches of the wise, whereby I might attain to some result worthy of that Divine gift of understanding which has been given us, many things occurred to me which in general esteem were thought to render life both useful and desirable. And especially that which now, as always in the past, is regarded as most to be desired, leisure combined with wealth, came before my mind. The one without the other seemed rather a source of evil than an opportunity for good, for leisure in poverty is felt to be almost an exile from life itself, while wealth possessed amid anxiety is in itself an affliction, rendered the worse by the deeper humiliation which he must suffer who loses, after possessing, the things that most are wished and sought. And yet, though these two embrace the highest and best of the luxuries of life, they seem not far removed from the normal pleasures of the beasts which, as they roam through shady places rich in herbage, enjoy at once their safety from toil and the abundance of their food. For if this be regarded as the best and most perfect conduct of the life of man, it results that one object is common, though the range of feelings differ, to us and the whole unreasoning animal world, since all of them, in that bounteous provision and absolute leisure which nature bestows, have full scope for enjoyment without anxiety for possession.

2. I believe that the mass of mankind have spurned from themselves and censured in others this acquiescence in a thoughtless, animal life, for no other reason than that nature herself has taught them that it is unworthy of humanity to hold themselves born only to gratify their greed and their sloth, and ushered into life for no high aim of glorious deed or fair accomplishment, and that this very life was granted without the power of progress

3. And yet, though I could not tax with folly and uselessness this counsel of theirs to keep the soul free from blame, and evade by foresight or elude by skill or endure with patience the troubles of life, still I could not regard these men as guides competent to lead me to the good and happy Life. Their precepts were platitudes, on the mere level of human impulse; animal instinct could not fail to comprehend them, and he who understood but disobeyed would have fallen into an insanity baser than animal unreason. Moreover, my soul was eager not merely to do the things, neglect of which brings shame and suffering, but to know the God and Father Who had given this great gift, to Whom, it felt, it owed its whole self, Whose service was its true honour, on Whom all its hopes were fixed, in Whose lovingkindness, as in a safe home and haven, it could rest amid all the troubles of this anxious life. It was inflamed with a passionate desire to apprehend Him or to know Him.

4. Some of these teachers brought forward large households of dubious deities, and under the persuasion that there is a sexual activity in divine beings narrated births and lineages from god to god. Others asserted that there were gods greater and less, of distinction propor

tionate to their power.

Some denied the continuity of being with the possession of existence of any gods whatever, and confined perfect felicity could not in the past, nor can their reverence to a nature which, in their in the future, be non-existent; for whatsoever opinion. owes its being to chance-led vibrations is Divine can neither be originated nor deand collisions. On the other hand, many stroyed. Wherefore, since God's eternity is followed the common belief in asserting the inseparable from Himself, it was worthy of existence of a God, but proclaimed Him Him to reveal this one thing, that He is, as heedless and indifferent to the affairs of men. the assurance of His absolute eternity. Again, some worshipped in the elements of 6. For such an indication of God's inearth and air the actual bodily and visible finity the words 'I AM THAT I AM' were forms of created things; and, finally, some clearly adequate; but, in addition, we needed made their gods dwell within images of men to apprehend the operation of His majesty or of beasts, tame or wild, of birds or of and power. For while absolute existence snakes, and confined the Lord of the universe is peculiar to Him Who, abiding eternally, and Father of infinity within these narrow had no beginning in a past however reprisons of metal or stone or wood. These, I was sure, could be no exponents of truth, for though they were at one in the absurdity, the foulness, the impiety of their observances, they were at variance concerning the essential articles of their senseless belief. My soul was distracted amid all these claims, yet still it pressed along that profitable road which leads inevitably to the true knowledge of God. It could not hold that neglect of a world created by Himself was worthily to be attributed to God, or that deities endowed with sex, and lines of begetters and begotten, were compatible with the pure and mighty nature of the Godhead. Nay, rather, it was sure that that which is Divine and eternal must be one without distinction of sex, for that which is self-existent cannot have left outside itself anything superior to itself. Hence omnipotence and eternity are the possession of One only, for omnipotence is incapable of degrees of strength or weakness, and eternity of priority or succession. In God we must worship absolute eternity and absolute power.

5. While my mind was dwelling on these and on many like thoughts, I chanced upon the books which, according to the tradition of the Hebrew faith, were written by Moses and the prophets, and found in them words spoken by God the Creator testifying of Himself 'I AM THAT I AM, and again, HE THAT IS hath sent me unto you. I confess that I was amazed to find in them an indication concerning God so exact that it expressed in the terms best adapted to human understanding an unattainable insight into the mystery of the Divine nature. For no property of God which the mind can grasp is more characteristic of Him than existence, since existence, in the absolute sense, cannot be predicated of that which shall come to an end, or of that which has had a beginning, and He who now joins

1 Exod. iii. 14.

mote, we hear again an utterance worthy of
Himself issuing from the eternal and Holy
God, Who says, Who holdeth the heaven in His
palm and the earth in His hand2, and again,
The heaven is My throne and the earth is the
footstool of My feet. What house will ye build
Me or what shall be the place of My rest3?
The whole heaven is held in the palm of God,
the whole earth grasped in His hand. Now
the word of God, profitable as it is to the cur-
sory thought of a pious mind, reveals a deeper
meaning to the patient student than to the
momentary hearer. For this heaven which is
held in the palm of God is also His throne,
and the earth which is grasped in His hand is
also the footstool beneath His feet. This was
not written that from throne and footstool,
metaphors drawn from the posture of one
sitting, we should conclude that He has exten-
sion in space, as of a body, for that which is
His throne and footstool is also held in hand
and palm by that infinite Omnipotence.
was written that in all born and created things
God might be known within them and without,
overshadowing and indwelling, surrounding all
and interfused through all, since palm and
hand, which hold, reveal the might of His ex-
ternal control, while throne and footstool, by
their support of a sitter, display the sub-
servience of outward things to One within Who,
Himself outside them, encloses all in His grasp,
yet dwells within the external world which is
His own. In this wise does God, from within
and from without, control and correspond to
the universe; being infinite He is present in
all things, in Him Who is infinite all are
included. In devout thoughts such as these
my soul, engrossed in the pursuit of truth, took
its delight. For it seemed that the greatness
of God so far surpassed the mental powers of
His handiwork, that however far the limited
mind of man might strain in the hazardous

It