and an immortal part; yet both made but one person.

How

is it a greater mystery, if I say: Christ was God, and Christ was man? He had a nature human and divine. One person indeed, in the sense in which Abraham was, he is not. Nor is there any created object, to which the union of Godhead with humanity can be compared. But shall we deny the possibility of it, on this account? Or shall we tax with absurdity, that which it is utterly beyond our reach to scan? I shrink from such an undertaking, and place myself in the attitude of listening to what the voice of revelation may dictate in regard to this. It becomes us to do so, in a case like the present; it is meet to prostrate ourselves before the Father of lights, and say: 'Speak, Lord, for thy servants hear. Lord, what wilt thou have us to believe?'

You may indeed find fault with us, that we speak of three persons in the Godhead, where there is but one nature; and yet of but one person in Christ, where there are two natures. I admit that it is an apparent inconsistency in the use of language; and cannot but wish, on the whole, that it had not been adopted. Still, so great are the imperfections of language in relation to such a subject, that I cannot feel disposed to find much fault with it. What other word in our language would designate an intelligent agent, who possesses powers of distinct development? And does not the Bible, in applying I, thou, he, to the distinctions in the Godhead, afford some warrant for such a usage? But, leaving this and returning to the one person of Christ, I would say that it designates Christ as he appears to us in the New Testament, clothed with a human body, and yet acting (as we suppose) not only as being possessed of the attributes of a man, but also as possessing divine power. We see the attributes of human nature in such intimate conjunction with those of the divine, that we cannot separate the agents; at least, we know not where to draw the line of separation, because we do not know the manner in which the union is effected or continued. We speak therefore of one person, i. e. one agent. And when we say that the two natures of Christ are united in one per

son, we mean to say that divinity and humanity are brought into such a connection in this case, that we cannot separate them, so as to make two entirely distinct and separate agents.

I may, on the whole, be permitted to say that the present generation of Trinitarians do not feel responsible for the introduction of such technical terms, in senses so diverse from the common ideas attached to them. They merely take them as they find them. For my own part, I have shown sufficiently that I have no attachment to them; I think them, on the whole, not to be very happily and warily chosen, and could rather wish they were dropped by general consent. But it is perhaps too late to expect this. Still I am persuaded, that, in most cases, such language rather serves to keep up the form of words without definite ideas; and I fear, that it has been the occasion of many useless disputes in the church. The things which are aimed at by using these terms, I would strenuously retain and defend; because I believe in the divine origin and authority of the Bible, and that its language, when fairly interpreted, does inculcate these things. Candour on your part, now, will certainly admit, that things only are worth any dispute. To be anxious for, and contend about, a mere matter of logomachy, is too trifling for a lover of truth.

5*

Supplementary Note to p. 29.

To do anything like ample justice to the subject of the Nicene Creed, would require a little volume, instead of a brief note. A few leading hints may serve, in some measure, to explain the circumstances and the object of the Council of Nice. We cannot well understand the latter without some good knowledge of the former. The New Testament presents, according to its seemingly obvious import, the person of the Redeemer as both divine and human. "He was in the beginning with God and was God; he made all things; he upholds all things by the word of his power; he is God over all and blessed forever; he is God manifest in the flesh; he is the true God and eternal life." But he is also man; 66 there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus; he took part in flesh and blood; he took on him the nature of the seed of Abraham; he was in all things made like to his brethren; he was tempted in all points as we are, and so can truly sympathize with us; he was made perfect through sufferings; he learned obedience by the things which he suffered; the exact day and hour of the destruction of Jerusalem, he could say that he knew not; he ate, drank, slept, laboured, journeyed, suffered from enemies and from exposure to wants and inconveniences; he prayed, wept, and agonized in the garden of Gethsemane; he was crucified, died, and was buried; he rose from the dead with a transformed and glorious body; he was the Son of man, descended from David in respect to the flesh; and in every point of view, (to sum up all in one word), he was a complete and perfect specimen of humanity.

One must take into view these plain things which seem to lie upon the very face of the New Testament, before he can get any proper clue to the history of the development of ecclesiastical doctrine respecting the person of Christ, either in ancient or in later times. Among the ancient fathers of the church, all the efforts to develop the mystery before us, may be classified by a distribution under three different heads. First, those who admitted a real human nature, but explained away the divine. Secondly, those who admitted a divine, at least a superior, nature, but explained away the human. Thirdly, those who sought to unite both. The conceptions and explanations, however, of

the latter, are very various; and many of them will not abide the test of a strict impartial scrutiny.

In respect to the two first classes, it is easy to see the influence which the Dualistic and Gnostic philosophy had upon them at an early period, which led them to regard matter and spirit as directly opposed to each other, and incapable of any real union in a being purely holy, such as Jesus was. Of course, those who were heartily convinced of this, denied the possibility of a real union of the divine and human, in the person of Jesus. To this class belonged, with different shades of opinion, such men as Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinian. The Spirit of God, or the Aeon Christ, merely waved or hovered over the person of Jesus; or the body of Jesus was only the phantasm of a body. Hence Docetism. The next step was easy, viz. that of Ebionitism; which denied that Christ had any thing more than a nature merely human. This was the opposite of Docetism in some respects, and yet both sprung from the same source, viz., from the belief that a nature both divine and human could not possibly be united in the same person. The one made a phantasm of the human nature, in order to avoid this union; the other excluded the divine.

Subsequently to these early heretical views, arose a scheme of modification, if I may so name it, by which the entire incompatibility of matter and spirit, or of divinity and humanity, was not maintained; but still, the divine in Jesus was explained as being only an influence of the Holy Spirit, or his energy exerted in a manner like that which was developed in the prophets of old, but more enlarged as to measure. To this rubric belong the views expressed in the Recognitions of Clement, by Paul of Samosata, (who called the influence of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus, unvɛvσis, i. e. inspiration), while he looked on that influence as differing merely in degree, not in kind, from that which rested on other holy men; and finally by Sabellius, who maintained that the emanation of the Godhead, which dwelt in Christ, was temporary. He sometimes named this emanation an ἀναπλασμὸς ἀνυπόστατος, i. e. an unsubstantial or impersonal new-modeling; or a nλaτvvioμós, i. e. extension or widening; intending by this to designate his views of what was effected by the Spirit in respect to Jesus, and of the manner in which he supposed the Spirit to act. But the union of the divine and human in one person, although maintained by him, was yet, in his opinion, only temporary. His views, therefore, could not answer the seeming demands of the New Testament; and consequent

ly they did not satisfy the churches in general. Sabellius differed widely from Paul of Samosata, his contemporary, in one respect; and in this he approached much nearer to what is called the orthodox view of the Trinity than the same Paul. The latter allowed of only a temporary and partial influence of the Spirit upon Jesus; the former maintained that the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in him, for the time being; but not that this constituted a union which was personal and perpetual.

It is easy to see from the history of the past, that, in this state of things, the churches in general were dissatisfied with the derogatory or degrading views that had been advanced, by various renowned men whom they had come to look upon as heretical, respecting the person of Christ. Some remedy was needed for this tendency of things in the churches. The leading fathers even of the third century sought, and as they believed found, one in quite a different hypothesis, viz. that of subordination.

As the soul is emphatically the man, and as Christ possessed a nature above the human, so in order to hold fast to his superior nature, they assigned to him a soul of divine origin. One Christ in two persons they could not admit. The proper human soul, therefore, must give place to the vous or loyos (the Word). On the other hand, the sole supremacy of the Father (uovaoxia) must not be given up, which had so long and so zealously been contended for. The result was, to assign to the Son a hypostatic or personal existence, higher than that of all other created beings—a hypostasis different from that of the Father, and also subordinate to him. To make out the grand point of the personality of the Logos, was the principal aim at that period, even among some of the fathers who are not regarded as heretical; because this was effectually to oppose the degrading opinion, that there rested upon Jesus merely a divine influence; an opinion like to that of Paul of Samosata, and of Sabellius. But in doing this, they were also to beware against dashing upon the rocks with such as denied the divine Unity, and made in effect three Gods. To avoid these rocks, they first asserted the personality of the Logos, and then subordinated him to the Father, as being derived from him and dependent on him.

With some shades of difference in minor things, and some diversities of representation, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Dionysius of Alexandria, adopted and maintained such views of the person of Christ. It was Origen who first fully and earnestly broached and taught the doctrine of eternal generation. With him, however, it had no very prominent meaning,