by a kind of subordination the first and second light, the first and second ovcía;* but the Son of God is in every respect similar to the Father. It is true, he had received from Origen the idea of a Generation not in time; but, in order to distinguish the Son from the Father, he maintained that he was not eternal like the Father in an absolute sense, and that the Father existed before the Son. The Generation of the Son of God was an idea, to the conception of which only the acutest understanding.was adequate. He was begotten not in any specific time, but existed before all time in an incomprehensible manner. Eusebius calls the Son τέλειον δημιούργημα τοῦ Tλsíou ("the perfect workmanship of the Perfect One"); but it does not follow from this, that he held him to be a creature. At that time the language of theology was not so precise, and he afterwards expressed himself decidedly against such an opinion, as not corresponding to the nature and dignity of the Son of God, and as unscriptural. But even the Homousion did not correspond to the true relation of the Son to the Father, and was not founded in Scripture. He made use, by preference, of biblical phraseology, and eagerly insisted on what was practically important, while he pointed out the incomprehensibility of those things which men ought not to define too exactly. As we cannot conceive, he said, how God made the world out of nothing, how can we expect to explain the manner in which the Son was brought into existence by the Father? We men know not even what lies straight before our eyes. Christ tells us what is needful to be known respecting himself; he who believes on him hath everlasting life; but how he is the Son of God, that is not necessary for us to know. From this standpoint we may understand his conduct in the Arian Controversy, and his moderation, which, however, was influenced by the imperial authority. When Arius acknowledged that the Son was begotten by the Father, this might appear sufficient from the standpoint of Eusebius, but he could not honourably assent to the Homousion, and it was acting unjustly when he wished to impose his point of view on all other persons, and charged the more decided adherents of the Homousion with obstinacy. CYRILL of Jerusalem† agreed with Eusebius in his opposition against Arianism and the Homousion, and in his Catechism Præpar. Evang. 7, 12. Eccles. Theol. i. 89. † Catech. iv. 87; xi. 1. CYRILL OF JERUSALEM. 299 equally combated the views of those who separated the Son of God from the Father, and those who confounded the Father and Son. But he approached nearer than Eusebius to the views of the Nicene party; he taught that Christ was eternal, begotten from all eternity, without beginning and poros in every respect to him who begat him. He endeavoured to avoid asserting that the generation of the Logos was consequent on an act of the divine Will, and not less the denial of such an act; in order to escape the difficulty, he only says that God did not determine on the generation of Son by previous deliberation, but always had the Son along with himself. Like Eusebius, he enters a protest against defining too much on this doctrine; it can only be spoken of negatively; the mode cannot be determined. He was always amazed at the forwardness of those persons who advanced too boldly, and with a pretended religious zeal, arrived at impious conclusions. Many things are to met with in the Bible which we cannot understand; why should we make the attempt? It is enough for us that God has begotten a Son; let us check ourselves from wishing to know the inconceivable. Christ himself says, "He who believeth on him, hath everlasting life”—not he who knows how the Son is begotten of the Father.* As to the Arians, strictly so called, Arius had already given a very logical representation of his doctrine; he had asserted the infinite distance between God and the creature, and classed the Son with created beings.† Only sometimes he was induced to express himself more mildly, as when in his letter to the Church at Alexandria he impugns those who held that the Father had begotten the Son not in truth, but in appearance. But this language implied no change in his own views; for the true Generation, according to his representation, differed in nothing essentially from Creation. When he says of the Son that he was not like a creature, he means to except him as being the most perfect of all creatures. maintains that the Father begat the Son as unchangeable, but that this idea is founded not in his essence, but in his agency. In a fragment which Athanasius has preserved, he says, *Catech. xi. 12. He + Athan. c. Arian. Or. 1, 6.—kai távtwv žévwv kaì ȧvopoíwv övrwv τοῦ Θεοῦ κατ' οὐσίαν, οὕτω καὶ ὁ λόγος ἀλλότριος μὲν καὶ ἀνόμοιος κατὰ πάντα τῆς τοῦ πατρὸς οὐσίας καὶ ἰδιότητος ἐστι. Christ is the Logos in a metonymical sense, namely, in distinction from Reason as immanent in God; the Father is incomprehensible to the Son; he knows him only in conformity with his peculiar nature. These doctrines were expressed still more clearly and broadly by Eunomius, a Deacon of Antioch, afterwards Bishop of Cyzicus, as he had no such interest, as Arius originally had, to connect himself with the Homoiousians, but maintained his dogma equally against them and the Homousians. God, the only unoriginated Being, is infinitely exalted above all in nature, power and might; the Son cannot be said to be like him, since, as Athanasius had already asserted, likeness and unlikeness can only be predicated of created beings; but the Homousion necessarily leads to the acknowledgment of two original beings. Generation from the divine Essence seemed to him inconceivable, and to involve a sensuous emanation and a separation of the divine essence; eternal Generation he regarded as unimaginable, and a heathenish representation derived from Platonism. The divine essence or nature is simple; the will is the mediating principle between the essence of God and his agency, and every act of the will necessarily has a beginning and an end. The Son of God, consequently, was created according to God's will; he was eternally with God only as predestinated; he was created before all the rest of Creation, which he brought into existence as the organ of God. natures of creatures differ according to God's will; the Son of God must attain among them the highest possible perfection. According to God's will he is the image and reflection of the Father, the only begotten God. In support of his The • Contr. Arian. i. 5.—δύο γοῦν σοφίας φησὶν εἶναι, μίαν μὲν τὴν ἰδίαν καὶ συνυπάρχουσαν τῷ θεῷ, τὸν δὲ υἱὸν ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ σοφίᾳ γεγενῆσθαι καὶ ταύτης μετέχοντα ὠνομάσθαι μόνον σοφίαν καὶ λόγον ἡ σοφία γάρ, φησι, τῇ σοφίᾳ ὑπῆρξε σοφοῦ Θεοῦ θελήσει· οὕτω καὶ λόγον ἕτερον εἶναι λέγει παρὰ τὸν υἱὸν ἐν τῷ θεῷ, καὶ τούτού μετέχοντα τὸν υἱὸν ὠνομάσθαι πάλιν κατὰ χάριν λόγον καὶ υἱὸν αὐτὸν. + Greg. Nyssa, Orat. viii. t. ii. 650.-πáons yεvvýσews oùk it' ἄπειρον ἐκτεινομένης, ἀλλ ̓ εἴς τι τέλος καταληγούσης ἀνάγκη πᾶσα καὶ τοὺς παραδεξαμένους τοῦ υἱοῦ τὴν γένησιν, τό τε πεπαῦσθαι τοῦτον γεννώμενον, μηδὲ πρὸς τὴν ἀρχὴν ἀπίστως ἔχειν. + But differing from Arius.—Οὐκ ἐκ τῆς ὑπακοῆς προσλαβὼν τὸ εἶναι υἱὸς θεὸς, ἀλλ ̓ ἐκ τοῦ υἱὸς εἶναι καὶ γεννηθῆναι μονογενὴς θεὸς γενόμενος ὑπήκοος ἐν λόγοις ὑπήκοος ἐν ἔργοις. Gregor. Νyss. Orat. ii. c. Eunom. 470, differing also in Apolog. § 24.-riç yàp avróV TE MARCELLUS, BISHOP OF ANCYRA. 301 opinion of the Son's subordination he appealed to Christ's words, that he did not his own will, but the will of his Father and to the fact that Christ prayed to God. We have to notice another person who at one time was among the most zealous advocates of the Nicene Creed, but afterward withdrew from the party, Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra. In his zeal against the Arian Asterius he became a violent opponent of Origen, to whom he traced Arianism, though Origen was rather the forerunner of the middle party. But Marcellus allowed of no mean between the Nicene Homousion and Arianism. The Arians maintained that the term Logos was applied only in a metonymical sense to the Son of God, for the proper Logos was the indwelling reason of God. He opposed the Homousion to the utmost, and said that the term Logos was the only one which could be employed as an adequate designation of the divine nature in Christ; that it was only possible to speak of an eternal existence of the Logos in God, and that every idea of subordination must be excluded. When the Arians appealed to passages of Scripture which expressed a certain dependent relation of Christ, that he was the Image of God, the rewróTOKOS TάONS xrisews and the like, he allowed they were right in the notion of dependence, but maintained that these passages referred not to the Logos in himself, but only to his human appearing. He was, indeed, the first person who referred all the expressions in Col. i. 15, &c., and in the Epistle to the Ephesians, to Christ as a man, and to the Creation brought into existence by him. Image, he said, denotes something visible, hence Christ could only be so called, as far as he represents God in humanity; ríos was the new moral creation proceeding from him, and he was its gwróToxos as the first being on the new standpoint. He distinguished the Logos according to his eternal being in God and his coming τὸν μονογενῆ γινώσκων, και πάντα τὰ δι' αὐτοῦ γενόμενα καταμαθών, οὐκ ἂν ὁμολογήσειεν [ἐν] αὐτῷ θεωρεῖσθαι πᾶσαν τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς δύναμιν ; Euseb. contr. Marcellum, ii. 3, p. 44, ed. Colon.-où roívvv OUTOS ὁ ἁγιώτατος λογος πρὸ τῆς ἐνανθρωπήσεως πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως ὠνόμαστο πῶς γὰρ δυνατὸν, τὸν ἀεὶ οντα πρωτότοκον εἶναί τινος ; ἀλλὰ τον πρῶτον καινὸν ἄνθρωπον, εἰς ὃν τὰ πάντα ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι ἐβουλήθη ὁ Θεὸς τοῦτον αἱ θεῖαι γραφαὶ πρωτότοκον πάσης ὀνομάζουσι κτίσεως. out from God, or as ήσυχάζων and as ἐνέργεια δραστική * formed by a πλατύνεσθαι of the Logos; the Deity remained an indivisible unity, but by virtue of such an agency the Logos was extended outward. This is another mode of expression for the older phrases λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and προφορικός. Marcellus referred the whole Creation to this δραστική ἐνέργεια, and included in it the generation of the Logos as far as he communicated himself outwardly. But he referred the operation of the vegye a more especially to Christ's Incarnation. Hence, the name Son of God was applicable not to the Logos in himself, but to the ἐνέργεια δραστική by virtue of which he acted among men in order to make them the children of God. Christ called himself the Son of Mant because he wished to signify that he was the Son of God only in relation to humanity, in which he wished to employ that agency. The charge of Sabellianism which the Arians brought against him was therefore not unfounded, especially as he had objected to the mention of three hypostases as infringing on the divine unity. He was first of all deposed at Constantinople A.D. 336, by the majority of the Oriental Church, when they set themselves in opposition to the Nicene doctrine, and Eusebius of Cæsarea was commissioned to refute his doctrine.§ At a later period many adherents of the Homousion declared themselves against him.|| Marcellus, however, adopted these erroneous • Euseb contr. Marcellum, lib. ii. 2, p. 39.—πρὸ τῆς δημιουργίας ἁπάσης ἡσυχία τις ἦν, ὡς εἰκὸς, ἐν τῷ θεῷ τοῦ λόγου ὄντος. P. 41. οὐδενὸς γὰρ ὄντος προτερον ἢ θεοῦ μόνου, πάντων δε διὰ τοῦ λόγου γίγνεσθαι μελλόντων, προηλθεν ὁ λόγος δραστικῇ ἐνεργείᾳ, ὁ λόγος οὗτος τοῦ πατρὸς ὤν-πρὸ γὰρ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον εἶναι, ἦν ὁ λόγος ἐν τῷ πατρὶ· ὅτε δὲ ὁ θεὸς παντοκράτωρ πάντα τὰ ἐν οὐρανοῖς καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς προὔθετο ποιῆσαι, ἐνεργείας ἡ τοῦ κόσμου γένεσις ἐδεῖτο δραστικῆς· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο, μηδενὸς ὄντος ἑτέρου πλὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ πάντα γὰρ ὁμολογεῖται ὑπ' αὐτοῦ γεγενῆσθαι, τότε ὁ λόγος προελθὼν ἐγένετο τοῦ κόσμου ποιητής. + Ibid. ii. 2, p. 42.—οὐχ υἱὸν Θεοῦ ἑαυτὸν ὀνομάξει, ἀλλ ̓ [ἄνθρωπου], ἵνα διὰ τῆς τοιαύτης ὁμολογίας θέσει τὸν ἄνθρωπον διὰ τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν κοινωνίαν υἱὸν Θεοῦ γενέσθαι παρασκευάσῃ καὶ μετὰ τὸ τέλος τῆς πράξεως αὖθις ὡς λόγος ἑνωθῇ τῷ θεῷ, πληρῶν ἐκεῖνο τὸ ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀποστόλου προειρημένον, τότε αὐτὸς ὑπο ταγήσεται τῷ ὑποτάξαντι αὐτῷ πάντα, ἵνο ᾖ πάντα καὶ ἐν πᾶσι Χριστός [θεός] (1 Cor. xv. 28) ἔσται γὰρ τηνικαῦτα τοῦτο ὅπερ πρότερον ἦν. † Eccl. Theol. iii. c. 4. § Neander's Ch Hist. iv. 50-52. | Epiph. Hær. 72, 4. |