From the various transformations of this Creed in the pages of Ecclesiastical writers, it is evident that it was not a fixed but a growing formula, and that additions were freely made to it according as the heresies of the time might seem to require the introduction of a new clause. One thing, however, is plain, that the Ages which had their faith stated in this creed had not yet confounded Jesus with God; that he who is simply and solely described as the Son of God, crucified and dying, rising from the grave, and sitting now on the right hand of the Father Almighty, was not yet exalted into the Second Person of the Trinity, equal to God in all things.
Now it is not a little remarkable, that many orthodox writers perceived and deplored the lamentable deficiency of this faith of the primitive Church; and some of them boldly declare, that the Christian Fathers were not yet initiated in these high mysteries. “M. Jurieu,” quoted by Jortin, “whose zeal against heresy is well known, assures us that the fundamental articles of Christianity were not understood by the Fathers of the three first centuries; that the true system began to be modelled into some shape by the Nicene bishops, and was afterwards immensely improved and beautified by the following synods and councils.”[[468]]
Bishop Bull declares, “that almost all the Catholic writers before Arius’ time seem not to have known any thing of the invisibility and immensity of the Son of God; and that they often speak of him in such a manner as if, even in respect of his divine nature, he was finite, visible, and circumscribed in place.” Such sentiments are only to be paralleled by some passages from these Fathers themselves, who declare that such notions as they had of the divinity of Christ they had derived solely from the Gospel of St. John, and that the other Evangelists had but an obscure knowledge of this subject. “None of them,” says Origen, “disclosed his divinity so purely as John.”[[469]] “John,” says Eusebius, “commenced with the doctrine of the divinity, that having been reserved by the divine Spirit for him as the most worthy.”[[470]] And, later, Chrysostom declares that the other Evangelists were like “little children, who hear, but do not understand what they hear, being occupied with cakes and childish playthings;” but John taught, “what the angels themselves did not know before he declared it.” “This doctrine was not published at first, for the world was not advanced to it. Matthew, Mark, and Luke did not state what was suitable to his dignity, but what was fitting for their hearers. John, the Son of Thunder, advanced at last to the doctrine of the divinity.”[[471]]
I shall now cite some proofs from the Christian writers of the three first centuries, to show that though, in correspondence with Platonic doctrines, a derived and subordinate divinity was ascribed to Jesus, nothing like the present orthodox faith was dreamed of, and that the highest authorities on these subjects, Cudworth for instance, are fully aware that, for nearly four hundred years, the Creeds of the Church embraced nothing more than the Platonic Trinity.
And, first, I shall give one distinct testimony from Origen, to which others might be added from Irenæus and Tertullian, of the Unitarianism of the Jewish Christians:
“And when you consider the faith concerning our Saviour of those of the Jews who believe in Jesus, some thinking him to be the son of Joseph and Mary, and others of Mary only, and the divine Spirit, but still without any belief in his divinity.”[[472]] “And they of the Jews who have received Jesus as the Christ, go by the name of Ebionites.”[[473]]
I am next to cite evidence that, for the first three hundred years, the Christian writers acknowledged the inferiority of Jesus to his Father, though ascribing to him a derived divinity. It is not until A. D. 140 that we find any very distinct mention even of this description of divinity as belonging to Jesus.[[474]]