[Sidenote:  Doctrine of Marcellus.]

Marcellus then agreed with the Arians that the idea of sonship implies beginning and inferiority, so that a Son of God is neither eternal nor equal to the Father.  When the Arians argued on both grounds that the Lord is a creature, the conservatives were content to reply that the idea of sonship excludes that of creation, and implies a peculiar relation to and origin from the Father.  But their own position was weak.  Whatever they might say, their secondary God was a second God, and their theory of the eternal generation only led them into further difficulties, for their concession of the Son’s origin from the will of the Father made the Arian conclusion irresistible.  Marcellus looked scornfully on a lame result like this.  The conservatives had broken down because they had gone astray after vain philosophy.  Turn we then to Scripture.  ‘In the beginning was,’ not the Son, but the Word.  It is no secondary or accidental title which St. John throws to the front of his Gospel, and repeats with deliberate emphasis three times over in the first verse.  Thus the Lord is properly the Word of God, and this must govern the meaning of all such secondary names as the Son.  Then he is not only the silent thinking principle which remains with God, but also the active creating power which comes forth too for the dispensation of the world.  In this Sabellianizing sense Marcellus accepted the Nicene faith, holding that the Word is one with God as reason is one with man.  Thus he explained the Divine Sonship and other difficulties by limiting them to the incarnation.  The Word as such is pure spirit, and only became the Son of God by becoming the Son of Man.  It was only in virtue of this humiliating separation from the Father that the Word acquired a sort of independent personality.  Thus the Lord was human certainly on account of his descent into true created human flesh, and yet not merely human, for the Word remained unchanged.  Not for its own sake was the Word incarnate, but merely for the conquest of Satan.  ’The flesh profiteth nothing,’ and even the gift of immortality cannot make it worthy of permanent union with the Word.  God is higher than immortality itself, and even the immortal angels cannot pass the gulf which parts the creature from its Lord.  That which is of the earth is useless for the age to come.  Hence the human nature must be laid aside when its work is done and every hostile power overthrown.  Then shall the Son of God deliver up the kingdom to the Father, that the kingdom of God may have no end; and then the Word shall return, and be for ever with the Father as before.

[Sidenote:  The conservative panic.]