Trinitarian economy, discloses his own confusion of thought by confounding the Spirit with the Logos. Referring to the invisible Being who overshadowed the Virgin Mary, he says: It is that Spirit which we call the Word, for the Spirit is the substance of the Word, and the Word the operation of the Spirit, and these two are one.'1

Origen informs us that the Holy Spirit is associated in honour and dignity with the Father aud the Son ; but, as it is doubtful whether he is born or innate, or is a Son of God, all these questions require careful investigation through the Scriptures.' 2

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It is, therefore, obvious that a consubstantial Trinity had no existence in the third century, and from this period until the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325), the relationship of Father and Son remained the absorbing topic of theological controversy.

At the close of the third century, the theory of the Divinity of Jesus had made important progress among communities already familiar with the system of Plato. But whilst Piety rejoiced in the exaltation of Jesus, Reason still lingered over acceptance of two or three persons in one God; and conflicting theologians, in search of some compromise with the impossible, drifted into a confused theosophy, depicting Jesus in varying forms of finite and infinite Divinity.

With the fourth century, the time had come for defining what was really meant by the Divinity of the Son of Man. Arius, the celebrated presbyter of Alexandria, declared the Son as a created being, to be inferior to, and neither co-eternal nor consubstantial with 1 Against Praxean, xxvi. 2 De Principiis, Preface.

the Father, for if he possessed the infinite attributes of the Supreme Deity, there would be two Gods instead of one God. This thesis confirms the theology of the Ante-Nicene Fathers; but further progress had been made in the exaltation of the Logos, and Arius, behind the spirit of his age, was condemned, deposed, and excommunicated by his Bishop, whilst the famous theologian, Athanasius, came to the front, not as the apostle of Trinitarianism, in its modern sense, but as the zealous advocate of a modified form of Ditheism, which assigned to the Logos a higher grade in Divinity than was admissible in the creed of Arius.

Tertullian had affirmed that the Logos was possessed of substance, not because he knew anything on the subject, but because he had adopted the Valentinian theory of emanations, and thence inferred that that which proceeded from the Father must, of necessity, be substantial. Athanasius made still further progress in this logical theosophy by inferring that procession from the Father involves identity of substance (Homoousia), and consequent equality and co-eternity of the Father and the Son, who combine, through community of essence, duality of person with unity of Divinity; and on this Gnostic fiction rests the imaginative Infinity of the Hebrew Messiah.

At this momentous crisis in the history of Christianity, the Emperor Constantine became a convert to the faith, and learned with surprise and disappointment that the ecclesiastical organisation, which appeared to be so desirable an ally for imperial power, concealed the internal disunion of hostile factions fiercely quarrelling over the substance of their God. He, therefore, tried

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to appease the furious contests of rival theologians by counselling imitation of the tolerant spirit in which heathen philosophers dispassionately criticised the conflicting theories of divergent schools. But this prudent advice failed to influence men convinced that misapprehension of divinity involves perdition; and Constantine, therefore, summoned a General Council of bishops to determine and enforce the Creed of Christendom.

Three hundred and eighteen bishops assembled at Nicea in Bithynia (A.D. 325), in response to the imperial summons; and the successors of Galilean apostles, oblivious of the Son of Man, discussed, with angry recrimination, in the presence of a Roman Emperor, the Aonic substance of the phantom Logos, as the supreme question for the salvation of mankind.

The majority of the bishops, holding rather hazy views on a subject clear to demonstration in the eyes of an Arius or Athanasius, would have gladly accepted some form of compromise admitting diversity of opinion within the Christian Church; but Constantine, influenced by the enemies of Arius, and desirous of combining spiritual with imperial despotism through a Catholic hierarchy subservient to his will, adopted the doctrine of Homoousia, and demanded its episcopal ratification under the penalty of his serious displeasure.

Seventeen Arian bishops at first resisted the will of Constantine; but all eventually yielded to the pressure of the temporal power, except Theonas of Lybia and Secundus of Ptolemais, who were deposed and banished, in company with Arius, whose books were committed to the flames, and their possession denounced under the penalty of death. The Consub

stantialists therefore triumphed, and voted the Homoousia in the following formula :—

"We believe in one only God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.

'And in one only Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, only-begotten of the Father (Monogenes), that is of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, True God of True God, Begotten and not created; consubstantial (oμoóvoios) with the Father; by whom all things are, as well in heaven as on earth; who came down for us men and for our salvation, who was incarnate and became man, who suffered, who was raised the third day, and ascended into heaven; who will come again to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit.

'As to those who say, "There was a time when he was not; and before he was begotten he was not; and he was made out of nothing;" or who pretend that the Son of God is of another essence or substance, that he is created, or mutable, or alterable, the Catholic Apostolic Church anathematises them.'

According to this Creed, the lineal descendant of Gnosticism, the Council of Nicæa knew nothing of the incomprehensible Trinity of future generations. Its members simply affirmed the existence of one Supreme God, identified Jesus with the Æonic Monogenes, as the secondary Deity through whom all things came into being, voted him the attribute of eternity through Homoousia, and finally gave official recognition to the existence of the Holy Spirit, without attempting to define his origin, status, or relationship with the Father and the Son. The final evolution of a consubstantial Trinity, even in

the age of Athanasius, was, therefore, still a problem of the future, and the immediate test of orthodoxy lay in the Shibboleth of Homoousia.

The Creed of Nicæa, unknown to Jesus and his apostles, necessarily made them, as heretics, the objects of episcopal imprecation. From this famous Council, therefore, dates the era of separation between the Gospel of the Kingdom and the Creed of the Empire; let us, therefore, henceforth give to the Faith of Galilee the name of Jesuism, and abandon the sullied title of Christianity to sacerdotal systems, which have forsaken the simplicity of Nazareth.

Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicæa earned the gratitude of posterity by protesting against the official anathema, and preferring deposition and exile to complicity with spiritual and imperial despotism. The historian, Eusebius of Cæsarea, subscribed the Nicene creed with the mental reservation that Homoousia may be read Homoiousia, expressing, not identity, but similarity of substance admitting of degrees in the essence of Divinity. How profound must have been the amazement of heathen contemporaries, on learning from rival missionaries, that the true Faith had become a question of acceptance or rejection of a single letter in the alphabet!

The extant works of Eusebius, in harmony with the theosophy of Tertullian and Origen, reproduce the fiction that the Being, who appeared in human form to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua, was the pre-existent Logos, because being called God and Lord, he could not have been a subordinate angel, and it is irrational to suppose that the uncreated and unchangeable essence of

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