In the controversy carried on by various learned men in the seventeenth and following century, concerning the statements of the early Fathers on this subject, the one party determined the patristic theology by the literal force of the separate expressions or phrases used in it, or by the philosophical opinions of the day; the other, by the doctrine of the Catholic Church, as afterwards authoritatively declared. The one party argued that those Fathers need not have meant more than what was afterwards considered heresy; the other answered that there is nothing to prevent their meaning more. Thus the position which Bull maintains seems to be nothing beyond this, that the Nicene Creed is a natural key for interpreting the body of Ante-nicene theology. His very aim is to explain difficulties; now the notion of difficulties and their explanation implies a rule to which they are apparent exceptions, and in accordance with which they are to be explained. Nay, the title of his work, which is a "Defence of the Creed of Nicæa," shows that he is not investigating what is true and what false, but explaining and justifying a foregone conclusion, as sanctioned by the testimony of the great Council. Unless the statements of the Fathers had suggested difficulties, his work would have had no object. He allows that their language is not such as they would have used after the Creed had been imposed; but he says in effect that, if we will but take it in our hands and apply it equitably to their writings, we shall bring out and harmonize their teaching, clear their ambiguities, and discover their anomalous statements to be few and insignificant. In other words, he begins with a presumption, and shows how naturally facts close round it and fall in with it, if we will but let them. He does this triumphantly, yet he has an arduous work; out of about thirty writers whom he reviews, he has, for one cause or other, to "explain piously" nearly twenty.
SECTION II.
OUR LORD'S INCARNATION AND THE DIGNITY OF HIS BLESSED
MOTHER AND OF ALL SAINTS.
Bishop Bull's controversy had regard to Ante-nicene writers only, and to little more than to the doctrine of the Divine Son's consubstantiality and co-eternity; and, as being controversy, it necessarily narrows and dries up a large and fertile subject. Let us see whether, treated historically, it will not present itself to us in various aspects which may rightly be called developments, as coming into view, one out of another, and following one after another by a natural order of succession.
2.
First then, that the language of the Ante-nicene Fathers, on the subject of our Lord's Divinity, may be far more easily accommodated to the Arian hypothesis than can the language of the Post-nicene, is agreed on all hands. Thus St. Justin speaks of the Son as subservient to the Father in the creation of the world, as seen by Abraham, as speaking to Moses from the bush, as appearing to Joshua before the fall of Jericho,[135:1] as Minister and Angel, and as numerically distinct from the Father. Clement, again, speaks of the Word[135:2] as the "Instrument of God," "close to the Sole Almighty;" "ministering to the Omnipotent Father's will;"[135:3] "an energy, so to say, or operation of the Father," and "constituted by His will as the cause of all good."[135:4] Again, the Council of Antioch, which condemned Paul of Samosata, says that He "appears to the Patriarchs and converses with them, being testified sometimes to be an Angel, at other times Lord, at others God;" that, while "it is impious to think that the God of all is called an Angel, the Son is the Angel of the Father."[136:1] Formal proof, however, is unnecessary; had not the fact been as I have stated it, neither Sandius would have professed to differ from the Post-nicene Fathers, nor would Bull have had to defend the Ante-nicene.
3.
One principal change which took place, as time went on, was the following: the Ante-nicene Fathers, as in some of the foregoing extracts, speak of the Angelic visions in the Old Testament as if they were appearances of the Son; but St. Augustine introduced the explicit doctrine, which has been received since his date, that they were simply Angels, through whom the Omnipresent Son manifested Himself. This indeed is the only interpretation which the Ante-nicene statements admitted, as soon as reason began to examine what they did mean. They could not mean that the Eternal God could really be seen by bodily eyes; if anything was seen, that must have been some created glory or other symbol, by which it pleased the Almighty to signify His Presence. What was heard was a sound, as external to His Essence, and as distinct from His Nature, as the thunder or the voice of the trumpet, which pealed along Mount Sinai; what it was had not come under discussion till St. Augustine; both question and answer were alike undeveloped. The earlier Fathers spoke as if there were no medium interposed between the Creator and the creature, and so they seemed to make the Eternal Son the medium; what it really was, they had not determined. St. Augustine ruled, and his ruling has been accepted in later times, that it was not a mere atmospheric phenomenon, or an impression on the senses, but the material form proper to an Angelic presence, or the presence of an Angel in that material garb in which blessed Spirits do ordinarily appear to men. Henceforth the Angel in the bush, the voice which spoke with Abraham, and the man who wrestled with Jacob, were not regarded as the Son of God, but as Angelic ministers, whom He employed, and through whom He signified His presence and His will. Thus the tendency of the controversy with the Arians was to raise our view of our Lord's Mediatorial acts, to impress them on us in their divine rather than their human aspect, and to associate them more intimately with the ineffable glories which surround the Throne of God. The Mediatorship was no longer regarded in itself, in that prominently subordinate place which it had once occupied in the thoughts of Christians, but as an office assumed by One, who though having become man in order to bear it, was still God.[137:1] Works and attributes, which had hitherto been assigned to the Economy or to the Sonship, were now simply assigned to the Manhood. A tendency was also elicited, as the controversy proceeded, to contemplate our Lord more distinctly in His absolute perfections, than in His relation to the First Person of the Blessed Trinity. Thus, whereas the Nicene Creed speaks of the "Father Almighty," and "His Only-begotten Son, our Lord, God from God, Light from Light, Very God from Very God," and of the Holy Ghost, "the Lord and Giver of Life," we are told in the Athanasian of "the Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Ghost Eternal," and that "none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than another."