But on a fuller search, I found this to be Paul’s doctrine also:  for in 1 Corinth, viii., when discussing the subject of Polytheism, he says that “though there be to the heathen many that are called Gods, yet to us there is but One God, the Father, of whom are all things; and One Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things.”  Thus he defines Monotheism to consist in holding the person of the Father to be the One God; although this, if any, should have been the place for a “Trinity in Unity.”

But did I proceed to deny the Divinity of the Son?  By no means:  I conceived of him as in the highest and fullest sense divine, short of being Father and not Son.  I now believed that by the phrase “only begotten Son,” John, and indeed Christ himself, meant to teach us that there was an unpassable chasm between him and all creatures, in that he had a true, though a derived divine nature; an indeed the Nicene Creed puts the contrast, he was “begotten, not made.”  Thus all Divine glory dwells in the Son, but it is because the Father has willed it.  A year or more afterward, when I had again the means of access to books, and consulted that very common Oxford book, “Pearson on the Creed,” (for which I had felt so great a distaste that I never before read it)—­I found this to be the undoubted doctrine of the great Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, who laid much emphasis on two statements, which with the modern Church are idle and dead—­viz. that “the Son was begotten of his Father before all worlds,” and that “the Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father and the Son.”  In the view of the old Church, the Father alone was the Fountain of Deity,—­(and therefore fitly called, The One God,—­and, the Only True God)—­while the Deity of the other two persons was real, yet derived and subordinate.  Moreover, I found in Gregory Nazianzen and others, that to confess this derivation of the Son and Spirit and the underivedness of the Father alone, was in their view quite essential to save Monotheism; the One God being the underived Father.

Although in my own mind all doubt as to the doctrine of John and Paul on the main question seemed to be quite cleared away from the time that I dwelt on their explanation of Monotheism, this in no respect agitated me, or even engaged me in any farther search.  There was nothing to force me into controversy, or make this one point of truth unduly preponderant.  I concealed none of my thoughts from my companions; and concerning them I will only say, that whether they did or did not feel acquiescence, they behaved towards me with all the affection and all the equality which I would have wished myself to maintain, had the case been inverted.  I was, however, sometimes uneasy, when the thought crossed my mind,—­“What if we, like Henry Martyn, were charged with Polytheism by Mohammedans, and were forced to defend ourselves by explaining in detail our doctrine of the Trinity?