When I had found how exactly the Nicene Creed summed up all that I myself gathered from John and Paul concerning the divine nature of Christ, I naturally referred to this creed, as expressing my convictions, when any unpleasant inquiry arose.  I had recently gained the acquaintance of the late excellent Dr. Olinthus Gregory, a man of unimpeached orthodoxy; who met me by the frank avowal, that the Nicene Creed was “a great mistake.”  He said, that the Arian and the Athanasian difference was not very vital; and that the Scriptural truth lay beyond the Nicene doctrine, which fell short on the same side as Arianism had done.  On the contrary, I had learned of an intermediate tenet, called Semi-Arianism, which appeared to me more scriptural than the views of either Athanasius or Arius.  Let me bespeak my reader’s patience for a little.  Arius was judged by Athanasius (I was informed) to be erroneous in two points; 1. in teaching that the Son of God was a creature; i.e. that “begotten” and “made” were two words for the same idea:  2. in teaching, that he had an origin of existence in time; so that there was a distant period at which he was not.  Of these two Arian tenets, the Nicene Creed condemned the former only; namely, in the words, “begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father.”  But on the latter question the Creed is silent.  Those who accepted the Creed, and hereby condemned the great error of Arius that the Son was of different substance from the Father, but nevertheless agreed with Arius in thinking that the Son had a beginning of existence, were called Semi-Arians; and were received into communion by Athanasius, in spite of this disagreement.  To me it seemed to be a most unworthy shuffling with words, to say that the Son was begotten, but was never begotten.  The very form of our past participle is invented to indicate an event in past time.  If the Athanasians alleged that the phrase does not allude to “a coming forth” completed at a definite time, but indicates a process at no time begun and at no time complete, their doctrine could not be expressed by our past-perfect tense begotten.  When they compared the derivation of the Son of God from, the Father to the rays of light which ever flow from the natural sun, and argued that if that sun had been eternal, its emanations would be co-eternal, they showed that their true doctrine required the formula—­“always being begotten, and as instantly perishing, in order to be rebegotten perpetually.”  They showed a real disbelief in our English statement “begotten, not made.”  I overruled the objection, that in the Greek it was not a participle, but a verbal adjective; for it was manifest to me, that a religion which could not be proclaimed in English could not be true; and the very idea of a Creed announcing that Christ was “not begotten, yet begettive,” roused in me an unspeakable loathing.  Yet surely this would have been Athanasius’s most legitimate form of denying