Semi-Arianism.  In short, the Scriptural phrase, Son of God, conveyed to us either a literal fact, or a metaphor.  If literal, the Semi-Arians were clearly right, in saying that sonship implied a beginning of existence.  If it was a metaphor, the Athanasians forfeited all right to press the literal sense in proof that the Son must be “of the same substance” as the Father.—­Seeing that the Athanasians, in zeal to magnify the Son, had so confounded their good sense, I was certainly startled to find a man of Dr. Olinthus Gregory’s moral wisdom treat the Nicenists as in obvious error for not having magnified Christ enough.  On so many other sides, however, I met with the new and short creed, “Jesus is Jehovah,” that I began to discern Sabellianism to be the prevalent view.

A little later, I fell in with a book of an American Professor, Moses Stuart of Andover, on the subject of the Trinity.  Professor Stuart is a very learned man, and thinks for himself.  It was a great novelty to me, to find him not only deny the orthodoxy of all the Fathers, (which was little more than Dr. Olinthus Gregory had done,) but avow that from the change in speculative philosophy it was simply impossible for any modern to hold the views prevalent in the third and fourth centuries.  Nothing (said he) WAS clearer, than that with us the essential point in Deity is, to be unoriginated, underived; hence with us, a derived God is a self-contradiction, and the very sound of the phrase profane.  On the other hand, it is certain that the doctrine of Athanasius, equally as of Arius, was, that the Father is the underived or self-existent God, but the Son is the derived subordinate God.  This (argued Stuart) turned upon their belief in the doctrine of Emanations; but as we hold no such philosophical doctrine, the religious theory founded on it is necessarily inadmissible.  Professor Stuart then develops his own creed, which appeared to me simple and undeniable Sabellianism.

That Stuart correctly represented the Fathers was clear enough to me; but I nevertheless thought that in this respect the Fathers had honestly made out the doctrine of the Scripture; and I did not at all approve of setting up a battery of modern speculative philosophy against Scriptural doctrine.  “How are we to know that the doctrine of Emanations is false? (asked I.) If it is legitimately elicited from Scripture, it is true.”—­I refused to yield up my creed at this summons.  Nevertheless, he left a wound upon me:  for I now could not help seeing, that we moderns use the word God in a more limited sense than any ancient nations did.  Hebrews and Greeks alike said Gods, to mean any superhuman beings; hence derived God did not sound to them absurd; but I could not deny that in good English it is absurd.  This was a very disagreeable discovery:  for now, if any one were to ask me whether I believed in the divinity of Christ, I saw it would be dishonest to say simply, Yes; for the interrogator means to ask, whether I hold Christ to be the eternal and underived Source of life; yet if I said No, he would care nothing for my professing to hold the Nicene Creed.