having become by so much better than the angels, as He hath inherited a more excellent name than they."

But though in all these senses it may be said that the title Son belongs to Him, they are, however, but inferior and improper senses; for the title is properly given to Him, not for anyone of the reasons just given, but because He has the divine essence communicated to Him by the Father from all eternity. In this sense He is God's own Son," and God is His "own Father."1 The title belongs to Him, therefore, in His divine nature. Prior to the Incarnation, prior to the creation, He has from all eternity been the Son in this sense, in that He derives His Divinity from the Father, who, as was shown under the last Article, is alone unoriginate (avapxos), the Son being indeed God, but (as the Nicene Creed reminds us) by proceeding from God. "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God" (eòs ÈK ОEOÛ, φῶς ἐκ φῶτος, Θεὸς ἀληθινὸς ἐκ Θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ).

Which is the Word of the Father. The personal title of Word, or Logos, is given to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity only in S. John i. 1, 14, and Rev. xix. 13 ("the Word of God," cf. however Heb. iv. 12 and 1 John i. 1). The reader will scarcely expect a discussion of its meaning and significance here. For this he will naturally turn to the Commentaries on S. John's Gospel.2 It will be sufficient for our purpose here to point out how this title at once suggests the eternity of Him to whom it is applied, for it is impossible to conceive of the Father as ever aλoyos, without that eternal Thought or Reason, which is the Son. Thus the two titles, Son and Word, as it has often been pointed out, supplement and reinforce each other; and, taken

1 See S. John v. 18: Пarépa idɩov ëλeye tòv Ɖeóv, and Rom. viii. 32: τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ οὐκ ἐφείσατο.

See especially Westcott on S. John's Gospel, Introd. p. xv.

together, guard and protect the full truth concerning the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Either of them standing alone might have seemed to sanction error. While the title Son suggests personal distinction, it might, if it stood alone, have been pressed into the service of Arianism, as if it implied that the Son was of more recent origin than the Father. "The Word," on the contrary, although of necessity conveying the idea of eternity, does not necessarily suggest Personality, and thus might have been appealed to as sanctioning Sabellianism. But when the two titles are combined, the possible misapplication of either of them is at once avoided. The Son, who is also the Word, must be eternal. The Word, who is also the Son, must be a distinct Person.1

Begotten from everlasting of the Father (ab æterno a Patre genitus). If the Second Person of the Holy Trinity is from all eternity the Son, it follows that He is "begotten from everlasting"; and thus eternal generation is the term used by the Church to express the manner in which the divine essence is communicated by the Father to the Son. It must never be understood as if it referred to an "event" which " once" took place, for it is intended to denote not an act but an eternal and unchangeable fact in the divine nature. The precise term is apparently due to Origen, who says ó Zwτnρ ȧeì yevvâтaι, the Saviour is ever begotten; and similarly Augustine says: "Semper gignit Pater, et semper nascitur Filius." 3 Such expressions are, however, founded on the language of revelation, for Holy Scripture

1 See Liddon's Bampton Lectures, p. 234, and cf. Robertson's Athanasius, p. 472, Note 1.

2 Opera, vol. iv. ; S. Pamphili Martyris, Apologia, ch. iii. ; cf. Routh, Reliquiæ Sacræ, vol. iv. p. 354.

3 Ep. 238.

not only speaks of the Second Person of the Trinity as "the Son," but also applies to Him the terms "begotten" and "only begotten." 1 The latter term (μονογενής) is used several times by S. John (i. 14, 18; iii. 16, 18; 1 John iv. 9), but by no other writer of the New Testament. Elsewhere S. John also speaks of Him as begotten" (yeyevvnμévos and yevvnleís; see 1 John v. 1, 18.) S. Paul employs another phrase to express the same idea, when he speaks of Him as "the First-born of all creation” (πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως, Col. i. 15).

The very and eternal God (Verus et æternus Deus). It became necessary to use such adjectives after the rise of the Arian heresy in the fourth century, for the Arians were willing to allow that in some sense Christ might be termed God, though they denied that He was of one substance with the Father, and maintained that "once" He did not exist (ἦν πότε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν καὶ πρὶν γεννηθῆναι ok ). Thus, on the Arian hypothesis, He is neither true (verus, very), nor eternal God. Hence in the Nicene Creed it was found necessary to state emphatically that He is "very God of very God," and the use of the similar phrase in the Article before us is probably due to the revival of the Arian heresy by the Anabaptists. To the same cause we may also trace the need for the next expression employed in the Article.

=

Of one substance with the Father (Patri Consubstantialis ópoоÚσιos т пαтρí). This is the distinctive symbol of the Catholic faith against Arianism, first inserted in the Creed at the Council of Nicæa (325). Not that the adoption of the term marked any change in the faith of the Church. The faith was once for all

1 The term is applied to Him, ὅτι μόνος ἐκ μόνου τοῦ πατρὸς μόνως iyvnen. S. John Damascene.

2 On this passage and its true meaning, see Lightfoot's Commentary, in loc.

delivered to the saints" (S. Jude, 3), and there can be no change in it, nor addition to it. The only "development" of which it admits is a development by explanation, not a development by addition. The old

faith may need restating in new terms and a somewhat fuller definition, in order to guard against misinterpretation. But this is all; and nothing more than this was attempted at Nicæa. "The Nicene divines," says Liddon, "interpreted in a new language the belief of their first Fathers in the faith. They did not enlarge it; they vehemently protested that they were simply preserving and handing on what they had received. The very pith of their objection to Arianism was its novelty; it was false because it was of recent origin. They themselves were forced to say what they meant by their Creed, and they said it. Their explanation added to the sum of authoritative ecclesiastical language, but it did not add to the number of articles in the Christian faith: the area of the Creed was not enlarged. The Nicene Council did not vote a new honour to Jesus Christ, which He had not before possessed: it defined more closely the original and unalterable basis of that supreme place which, from the days of the apostles, He had held in the thought and heart, in the speculative and active life of Christendom." 1

After what was said under the first Article on the history and meaning of the terms Ousia and Hypostasis, there is no need to explain further the meaning of the word Homoousios, "of one substance." But it may be

1 Bampton Lectures, p. 429; cf. Gore's Bampton Lectures, p. 96. "These decisions do, it is contended, simply express in a new form, without substantial addition, the apostolic teaching as it is represented in the New Testament. They express it in a new form for protective purposes, as a legal enactment protects a moral principle. They are developments only in the sense that they represent the apostolic teaching worked out into formulas by the aid of a terminology which was supplied by Greek dialectics."

well to emphasise the fact that it was not adopted at Nicea without anxious consideration. It was open to several objections, which the Arians were not slow to urge. The following were the principal ones:—

1. It was said to be a novelty, and not found in Scripture.

2. It was a philosophical term; as such it had been used by heretics, and it implied a divine substance distinct from God, of which the persons partook.

3. It had been rejected at the Council of Antioch against Paul of Samosata, A.D. 268.

4. It was of a Sabellian tendency.

Of these objections the first was met by pointing out that, even if the term were novel, its meaning was not; and though it was not actually found in Scripture, yet it did but sum up the doctrine of Scripture on the nature of the Son of God. "In it," says Athanasius, "the Bishops concentrated the sense of the Scriptures." 1 As a matter of fact, however, the term was not such a novelty as the Arians tried to make out, and precedents for its use were quoted from early writers, notably Dionysius of Rome and his namesake of Alexandria in the third century.2

With regard to the second objection, it was made abundantly clear that the Church was not using the term in the sense in which it had been used by philosophers. She did not intend to imply that there was any substance distinct from God. She only used the term "to express the real Divinity of Christ, and that as being derived from and one with the Father's." 3

• Athanasius, Def. Nic. defin. ch. v. § 20.

2 Athanasius, ubi supra. Eusebius of Cæsarea himself confesses the antiquity of the word ("Epistola Eusebii in Socrates," H. E. I. viii.). Origen apparently had made use of the word (Pamphili Apol. 5), and so had Theognostus, while so early a writer as Tertullian has its Latin equivalent "unius substantiæ" (see above, p. 107).

Newman's Arians, p. 191.