[415] "The children of the Church have received from their holy Fathers, that is, the holy Apostles, to guard the faith; and withal to deliver and preach it to their own children....Cease not, faithful and orthodox men, thus to speak, and to teach the like from the divine Scriptures, and to walk, and to catechise, to the confirmation of yourselves and those who hear you; namely, that holy faith of the Catholic Church, as the holy and only Virgin of God received its custody from the holy Apostles of the Lord; and thus, in the case of each of those who are under catechising, who are to approach the Holy Laver, ye ought not only to preach faith to your children in the Lord, but also to teach them expressly, as your common mother teaches, to say: We believe in One God,'" &c. Epiph. Ancor. 119 fin., who thereupon proceeds to give at length the [so-called] Constantinopolitan Creed. And so Athan. speaks of the orthodox faith, as "issuing from Apostolical teaching and the Fathers' traditions, and confirmed by New and Old Testament." Letter 60. 6. init. Cyril Hier. too as "declared by the Church and established from all Scripture." Cat. v. 12. "Let us guard with vigilance what we have received...What then have we received from the Scriptures but altogether this? that God made the world by the Word," &c., &c. Procl. ad Armen. p. 612. "That God, the Word, after the union remained such as He was, &c., so clearly hath divine Scripture, and moreover the doctors of the Churches, and the lights of the world taught us." Theodor. Dial. 3 init. "That it is the tradition of the Fathers is not the whole of our case; for they too followed the meaning of Scripture, starting from the testimonies, which just now we laid before you from Scripture." Basil de Sp. §16. vid. also a remarkable passage in de Synod. §6 fin. infra.
[416] Matt. xxviii. 19.
[417] [Or, taking the addition as their pretext.']
[418] The only clauses of the Creed which admit of any question in their explanation, are the "He was not before His generation," and "of other subsistence or essence." Of these the former shall be reserved for a later part of the volume; the latter is treated of in a note at the end of this Treatise [see Excursus A.].
[419] Eusebius does not commit himself to any positive sense in which the formula "of the essence" is to be interpreted, but only says what it does not mean. His comment on it is "of the Father, but not as a part;" where, what is not negative, instead of being an explanation, is but a recurrence to the original words of Scripture, of which ex ousias itself is the explanation; a curious inversion. Indeed it is very doubtful whether he admitted the ex ousias at all. He says, that the Son is not like the radiance of light so far as this, that the radiance is an inseparable accident of substance, whereas the Son is by the Father's will, kata gnomen kai proairesin, Demonstr. Ev. iv. 3. And though he insists on our Lord being alone, ek theou, yet he means in the sense which Athan. refutes, supr. §6, viz. that He alone was created immediately from God, vid. next note 6. It is true that he plainly condemns with the Nicene Creed the ex ouk onton of the Arians, "out of nothing," but an evasion was at hand here also; for he not only adds, according to Arian custom, "as others" (vid. note following) but he has a theory that no being whatever is out of nothing, for non-existence cannot be the cause of existence. God, he says, "proposed His own will and power as a sort of matter and substance' of the production and constitution of the universe, so that it is not reasonably said, that any thing is out of nothing. For what is from nothing cannot be at all. How indeed can nothing be to any thing a cause of being? but all that is, takes its being from One who only is, and was, who also said I am that I am.'" Demonstr. Ev. iv. 1. Again, speaking of our Lord, "He who was from nothing would not truly be Son of God, as neither is any other of things generate.'" Eccl. Theol. i. 9 fin. [see, however, D.C.B. ii. p. 347].
[420] Eusebius distinctly asserts, Dem. Ev. iv. 2, that our Lord is a creature. "This offspring," he says, "did He first produce Himself from Himself as a foundation of those things which should succeed, the perfect handy-work, demiourgema, of the Perfect, and the wise structure, architektonema, of the Wise," &c. Accordingly his avowal in the text is but the ordinary Arian evasion of "an offspring, not as the offsprings." E.g. "It is not without peril to say recklessly that the Son is originate out of nothing similarly to the other things originate.'" Dem. Ev. v. 1. vid. also Eccl. Theol. i. 9. iii. 2. And he considers our Lord the only Son by a divine provision similar to that by which there is only one sun in the firmament, as a centre of light and heat. "Such an Only-begotten Son, the excellent artificer of His will and operator, did the supreme God and Father of that operator Himself first of all beget, through Him and in Him giving subsistence to the operative words (ideas or causes) of things which were to be, and casting in Him the seeds of the constitution and governance of the universe;...Therefore the Father being One, it behoved the Son to be one also; but should any one object that He constituted not more, it is fitting for such a one to complain that He constituted not more suns, and moons, and worlds, and ten thousand other things." Dem. Ev. iv. 5 fin. vid. also iv. 6.
[421] Eusebius does not say that our Lord is "from the essence of" the Father, but has "an essence from" the Father. This is the Semi-arian doctrine, which, whether confessing the Son from the essence of the Father or not, implied that His essence was not the Father's essence, but a second essence. The same doctrine is found in the Semi-arians of Ancyra, though they seem to have confessed "of the essence." And this is one object of the homoousion, to hinder the confession "of the essence" from implying a second essence, which was not obviated or was even encouraged by the homoiousion. The Council of Ancyra, quoting the text "As the Father hath life in Himself so," &c., says, "since the life which is in the Father means essence, and the life of the Only-begotten which is begotten from the Father means essence, the word so' implies a likeness of essence to essence." Hær. 73. 10 fin. Hence Eusebius does not scruple to speak of "two essences," and other writers of three essences, contr. Marc. i. 4. p. 25. He calls our Lord "a second essence." Dem. Ev. vi. Præf. Præp. Ev. vii. 12. p. 320, and the Holy Spirit a third essence, ibid. 15. p. 325. This it was that made the Latins so suspicions of three hypostases, because the Semi-arians, as well as they, understood hupostasis to mean essence [but this is dubious]. Eusebius in like manner [after Origen] calls our Lord "another God," "a second God." Dem. Ev. v. 4. p. 226. v. fin. "second Lord." ibid. 3 init. 6. fin. "second cause." Dem. Ev. v. Præf. vid. also heteron echousa to kat' ousian hupokeimenon, Dem. Ev. v. 1. p. 215. kath' heauton ousiomenos. ibid. iv. 3. And so heteros para ton patera. Eccl. Theol. i. 60. p. 90. and zoen idian echon. ibid. and zon kai huphestos kai tou patros huparchon ektos. ibid. Hence Athan. insists so much, as in de Decr., on our Lord not being external to the Father. Once admit that He is in the Father, and we may call the Father, the only God, for He is included. And so again as to the Ingenerate, the term does not exclude the Son, for He is generate in the Ingenerate.
[422] This was the point on which the Semi-arians made their principal stand against the "one in essence," though they also objected to it as being of a Sabellian character. E.g. Euseb. Demonstr. iv. 3. p. 148. d.p. 149. a, b. v. 1. pp. 213-215. contr. Marcell. i. 4. p. 20. Eccl. Theol. i. 12. p. 73. in laud. Const. p. 525. de Fide i. ap. Sirmond. tom. i. p. 7. de Fide ii. p. 16, and apparently his de Incorporali. And so the Semi-arians at Ancyra Epiph. Hær. 73. 11. p. 858. a, b. And so Meletius ibid. p. 878 fin. and Cyril Hier. Catech. vii. 5. xi. 18. though of course Catholics would speak as strongly on this point as their opponents.
[423] Here again Eusebius does not say "from the Father's essence," but "not from other essence, but from the Father." According to note 5, supr. he considered the will of God a certain matter or substance. Montfaucon in loc. and Collect. Nov. Præf. p. xxvi. translates without warrant "ex Patris hypostasi et substantiâ." As to the Son's perfect likeness to the Father which he seems here to grant, it has been already shewn, de Decr. 20, note 9, how the admission was evaded. The likeness was but a likeness after its own kind, as a picture is of the original. "Though our Saviour Himself teaches," he says, "that the Father is the only true God,' still let me not be backward to confess Him also the true God, as in an image,' and that possessed; so that the addition of only' may belong to the Father alone as archetype of the image....As, supposing one king held sway, and his image was carried about into every quarter, no one in his right mind would say that those who held sway were two, but one who was honoured through his image; in like manner," &c. de Eccles. Theol. ii. 23, vid. ibid. 7.
[424] Athanasius in like manner, ad Afros. 6. speaks of "testimony of ancient Bishops about 130 years since;" and in de Syn. §43. of "long before" the Council of Antioch, a.d. 269. viz. the Dionysii, &c. vid. note on de Decr. 20.
[425] Socrates, who advocates the orthodoxy of Eusebius, leaves out this heterodox paragraph [§§9, 10] altogether. Bull, however, Defens. F. N. iii. 9. n. 3. thinks it an interpolation. Athanasius alludes to the early part of the clause, supr. §4. and de Syn. §13. where he says, that Eusebius implied that the Arians denied even our Lord's existence before His incarnation. As to Constantine, he seems to have been used on these occasions by the court Bishops who were his instructors, and who made him the organ of their own heresy. Upon the first rise of the Arian controversy he addressed a sort of pastoral letter to Alexander and Arius, telling them that they were disputing about a question of words, and recommending them to drop it and live together peaceably. Euseb. vit. C. ii. 69. 72.
[426] [Rather potentially' both here and three lines below.] Theognis, [one] of the Nicene Arians, says the same, according to Philostorgius; viz. "that God even before He begat the Son was a Father, as having the power, dunamis, of begetting." Hist. ii. 15. Though Bull pronounces such doctrine to be heretical, as of course it is, still he considers that it expresses what otherwise stated may be orthodox, viz. the doctrine that our Lord was called the Word from eternity, and the Son upon His descent to create the worlds. And he acutely and ingeniously interprets the Arian formula, "Before His generation He was not," to support this view. Another opportunity will occur of giving an opinion upon this question; meanwhile, the parallel on which the heretical doctrine is supported in the text is answered by many writers, on the ground that Father and Son are words of nature, but Creator, King, Saviour, are external, or what may be called accidental to Him. Thus Athanasius observes, that Father actually implies Son, but Creator only the power to create, as expressing a dunamis; "a maker is before his works, but he who says Father, forthwith in Father implies the existence of the Son." Orat. iii. §6. vid. Cyril too, Dial. ii. p. 459. Pseudo-Basil, contr. Eun. iv. 1. fin. On the other hand Origen argues the reverse way, that since God is eternally a Father, therefore eternally Creator also: "As one cannot be father without a son, nor lord without possession, so neither can God be called All-powerful, without subjects of His power;" de Princ. i. 2. n. 10. hence he argued for the eternity of matter.
Excursus [427] A.
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On the meaning of the phrase ex heteras hupostaseos e ousias in the Nicene Anathema.
Bishop Bull has made it a question, whether these words in the Nicene Creed mean the same thing, or are to be considered distinct from each other, advocating himself the latter opinion against Petavius. The history of the word hupostasis is of too intricate a character to enter upon here; but a few words may be in place in illustration of its sense as it occurs in the Creed, and with reference to the view taken of it by the great divine, who has commented on it.