pendent on Him as the cause of his existence, and of his being powerful, and of his being Lord and God.* "I will," he says to Trypho, "endeavour to prove to you from the scriptures, that he who is said to have appeared to Abraham, to Jacob, and to Moses, and who is there called in scripture God, is another from the God who created all things, another I say numerically, not in will; for I affirm that he never did any thing at any time, but what he who created the world, and above whom there is no other God, willed that he should do and say."t Among other proofs that there is another beside the Supreme God, Justin quotes those passages, where it is said that the Lord shut the door of the ark after Noah had entered in; that the Lord came down to see the city and the tower of Babel; that God went up from Abraham; and that the Lord spake to Moses. "Do not suppose," he then says, "that the unbe gotten God either ascended or descended. For the ineffable Father and Lord of all neither comes any where, nor walks, nor sleeps, nor arises; but remains in his own place wherever that be." After describing the greatness, the omniscience, spirituality, and omnipresence of the Supreme God, he proceeds -"How therefore can he either speak to any one, or be seen by any one, or appear in a little portion of the earth; when the people were not able to behold on Sinah even the glory of him who was sent by Him," &c. Justin therefore, since he who ascended and descended is called God in scripture, thus endeavours to prove, that there is another beside the Supreme God; another, as is evident from his assertions and his arguments, far inferior. • See the passages quoted from him by Dr. Priestley and Whitby. + Επι τας γραφας επανελθών, πειρασομαι πεισαι ὑμᾶς, ὅτι οὗτος ὁ τε τῷ Αβρααμ, και τον Μωτες ώφθαι λεγομενος, και γεγραμμένος Θεος, έτερος εσι τον τα παντα ποιησαντος Θεδο αριθμῳ λεγω, αλλά & γνώμης εδεν γας φημι αυτον πεπράχεται ποτέ, η άπερ αυτος ὁ τον κόσμον ποιησας, ὑπερ ἐν ἄλλος εκ έτι Θεός, βιβόληται και πράξαι και ομιλησαι. Dial. cum Tryph. p. 276. edit. Paris. p. 252. edit. Thirlb. * Πως αν εν οὗτος η λαλήσεις προς τινα, η οφθέση του, η εν ελαχιστῳ μέρες γῆς φανείη, όποτε γε ουδε την δόξαν τις παρ αυτες πεμφθέντος ισχυε Axes den Ene. p. 357 vel p. 410. Irenæus, in maintaining that all things were made by the Word of God, as the minister of God, quotes the one hundred forty eighth Psalm;-he commanded and they were created. "Whom then," he asks, "did he command? his Word, by which David says the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth."* "It was a familiar doctrine," says Brucker, "of the Antenicene Fathers, that the Son was the instrument and minister of the Father in creation, of which instrumental ministry Irenæus so discourses, as to use expressions which can hardly be tolerated; for he says that God had no need of the ministry of angels in the creation of the world, when he had his Son and his spirit ministring to him.' These words seem to imply some subjection and inequality in the sacred trinity."+ The passage to which Brucker refers is a different one from that above quoted. Irenæus has various passages produced by Whitby similar to the following. He is arguing against the Gnostics, wha maintained that the God of the Jews was an inferior being and not the Supreme God. "It is one and the same God," he says, "who is announced by the law and the prophets, that Christ confessed to be his Father. He is the Maker, and it is He who is God over all."‡ Christ, by the parable of the father of a family [husbandman], who planted a vineyard, manifestly shewed to his disciples, that it was one and the same father of a family, that is, one God, the Father, who by himself did all things.... and that it is this same who sometimes sent his servants, and sometimes his son." -Cui ergo precepit? Verbo scilicet. vel 7 edit. Mass. p. 236. Adv. Hær. Lib. iii. c. 8. Irenæi. Adv. Hær. Lib. iv. c. 17. + Unus igitur et idem Deus, qui a lege et prophetis annuntiatus est, quem Christus suum Patrem confessus est; ipse autem est Fabricator, et ipse est qui supcr omnia est Deus. Adv. Hær. Lib. iv. c. 10. Per quæ ostendit manifeste discipulis suis, unum quidem ac eundem patrem familias, hoc est, unum Deum Patrem, qui per seipsum (al. semetipsum) omnia fecit.... ac eundem hunc patrem familias aliquando quidem mittentem servos, aliquando quidem Filium suum. Adv. Hær. lib. iv. c. 70. Tertullian, it may be recollected, expressly denies the eternity of the Son's existence as a person. I shall produce but one passage from him in this connexion. He is arguing particularly against those whom he chose to consider as patripassians, and maintaining (like Justin Martyr) that all the appearances of God, mentioned in the Old Testament, are to be referred to the Son. He says that the heretics (that is, the Gnostics, who supposed the god of the Jews different from either the true God or Christ) were ignorant that those things recorded in the Old Testament "were suitable to the character of the Son, who was about to submit to human passions, and hunger, and thirst, and tears, and to be born and to die; and on this account was made by the Father a little lower than the angels. The heretics," he says, "do not think that those things are suitable to the character of the Son of God, which you refer to the Father himself, as if he had made himself lower on our account; when the scripture says that another was made lower by Him, not He by himself. What also, is not he who was crowned with glory and honor different from him who crowned him, the Son from the Father?" He then proceeds to argue, that it cannot be supposed, "that Omnipotent God, the Invisible, whom no man hath seen or can see, who dwells in inaccessible lightwalked in paradise seeking Adam, or shut the door of the ark, or cooled himself under the tree with Abraham-&c. These things," he says, "would not be credible concerning the Son of God, if they were not in the scriptures; perhaps they would not be credible concerning the Father if they were; concerning him, whom they [the patripassians] suppose to have descended into the womb of Mary, and place before the tribunal of Pilate, and shut up in the tomb of Joseph. Hence their error appears, for being ignorant that the whole series of divine. dispensations has been, from the beginning, conducted by the Son, they believe that the Father himself was seen, and conversed, and worked, and suffered hunger and thirst (contrary to what the Prophet says-the eternal God neither hungereth nor thirsteth at all;-how much less then can he die or be buried?); and so they believe that one God [or rather THE ONE GOD], that is, the Father, did all those things which were done by the Son."* What is quoted above is from the work of Tertullian against Praxeas, in which it was his express purpose to defend what was in his day the orthodox doctrine of the trinity. Origen, says Whitby, has many arguments to prove, that Christ is not to be worshipped with prayer, which arguments are given by him. In one of the passages of Origen quoted by Dr. Priestley, he says, "that the Saviour and the Holy Spirit are more excelled by the Father, than he and the Holy Spirit excel other things; and that he is by no means [or in nothing] to be compared to the Father." Huetius, after quoting Origen's comparison of the generation of the Son from the Father to the emission of rays from the sun, says that "nothing is bet ter adapted to explain Origen's opinion concerning the trinity; for as much as the sun himself is more noble than the rays emitted from that immense source of light, and superior in dig nity, so much did Origen esteem the Father more noble than the Son and superior to him; and has every where spread through his writings this abominable and dangerous heresy." The conclusion of the above passage is as follows:-ipsum credunt Patrem et visum, et congressum, et operatum, et sitim et esuriem passum, (adversus prophetam dicentem, æternus Deus non sitiet, nec esuriet omnino: quanto magis nec morietur nec sepelietur?) et ita unum Deum semper egisse, id est Patrem, quæ per Filium gesta sunt." With regard to the phrase unum Deum the following is the remark of Whitby: "Notandum est ex Gatakero de stylo scripturæ, unum pro solo frequenter usurpatum esse à scripturis sacris, à Rabbinis, et ab authoribus profanis, cap. 3. p. 31, 32. Quem sensum postulant loca non pauca quæ sub hoc capite adduximus,” p. 116.. I omit the original of the preceding part of the passage of Tertullian on account of its length, and as I trust there will be no dispute as to its meaning. It may be found in his work Adv. Praxeam, cap, 16, † Hist. of Earl. Opp. B. ii c 4. + Quam proxime usurpavimus solaris radii comparationem, cum Origenis de generatione Filii sententiam explicaremus, eadem nunc hic et alias quoque repetetur inferius: nulla enim est ad evolvenda Origenis de trinitate dogmata accomodatior. Quanto igitur radiis ex immenso lucis suæ penu emissis nobilior est sol ipse, et dignitate superior; tanto nobilio With respect to the generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit, he says "that almost all the Antenicene Fathers equalled or surpassed the impiety or the ignorance of Origen."* He then proceeds to state that they held that notion of the generation of the Son, which is ascribed to them by Dr. Priestley. Novatian says that Christ "is properly affirmed to be in the form of God, seeing he is over all, and has obtained divine power over every creature, and is God after the example of the Father, having obtained from his own Father that he should be God and Lord of all, and God after the form of God the Father, begotten and prolated from him. He therefore, though he was in the form of God, did not think of the robbery of be ing equal with God. For as he remembered that he was God of God the Father, he never compared himself or put himself on a level with God the Father; remembering that he is of his Father, and that what he is, he has, because his Father has given it. Hence before his incarnation, and while he was in the body, and after his resurrection, he paid obedience to the Fa ther in all things, and will equally continue to pay it. Whence it is proved that he never thought of the robbery of divinity, of making himself equal with God; but on the contrary, that obedient and subject to his command and will, he was contented to take upon him the form of a servant."† rem esse ac superiorem Filio Patrem censuit Origenes, passimque perditam hanc et damnosam scriptis suis affudit hæresim. Origeniana. Lib. ii. cap. 2. qu. 2. § 7. • At non in iis solum, sed in aliis etiam ad Christi generationem, et Spiritûs sancti processionem pertinentibus, et hic quem dico Tertullianus, et alii plerique ex antiquissimis doctoribus et Nicæna synodo anterioribus, Origenis impietatem dicam an imperitiam vel æquarunt vel superarunt. Ib. § 25. "Et merito in forma pronuntiatus est Dei, dum et ipse super omnia, et omnis creaturæ divinam obtinens potestatem, et Deus est exemplo Patris; hoc ipsum tamen ex Patre proprio consecutus, ut omnium et Deus esset, et Dominus esset, et Deus ad formam Dei Patris ex ipso genitus, atq; prolatus. Hic ergo quamvis esset in forma Dei, non est rapinam arbitratus æqualem se Deo esse. Quamvis enim se ex Deo Patre Deum esse meminisset, nunquam se Deo Patri aut comparavit aut contulit, memor se esse ex suo Patre, et hoc ipsum quod est, habere se, quia Pater dedisset. |