But we have done enough to indicate how easily speculation opened the way to error on this point, and how dangerous the error was. We proceed to prove that it was error in which Irenæus had no part, nay, that it was an error condemned in terms by the Apostolic tradition as he had received it. We will let the Saint speak for himself, for his words are too clear and too direct to stand in need of much comment. "He who was invisible" (it is thus that he describes the Incarnation), "He who was invisible became visible; He who was incomprehensible, comprehensible; He who was impassible became passible; the Word became man.”* "The Word, being invisible by nature, became subject to the touch and to the sight of men."+ Let the reader observe that Irenæus makes the Son invisible by nature, and regards His appearance in visible form as an effect which flowed not from the limited extent of His Majesty, but from the greatness of His condescension. Then let him mark the contrast between the language of Irenæus and that of Tertullian, remembering that on this point Tertullian represents a large number of early fathers.

The second great difficulty which perplexed the fathers of the ante-Nicene age and was the occasion of errors within the Church which afterwards contributed to the spread of Arianism, turns upon the eternal generation of God the Son. We use the word Son of set purpose, because, while the eternity of the Word was held and taught by the Catholic fathers, as with one mouth, the title of Son, which Scripture and tradition assigned to the Word, involved conceptions hard to reconcile with His eternity. If He was Son, then He must have been begotten or generated by the Father. And before the term "Son" could be understood and explained in a system of philosophical Christianity, it was necessary to define "generation." generation." It was natural, especially for Christians who were labouring to win educated heathens, to turn for the definition to the Greek philosophers; and, apart from this, the opinions of the philosophers on such points represented the general opinions of educated and reflecting men, the opinions which minds like those of Justin or Theophilus would employ instinctively, the moment they began to reason on the things of faith. Let us see, then, what Aristotle, the great master of definition, has to say on the meaning of generation." It is, he says, a change from non-existence to existence. Thus "an eternal generation," or an eternal Son, + Iren., iv. 24, 2. Apud Petav. de Trin., v. 6, 10. "The change from not being a subject to being a subject according to contradiction, is generation."

Iren., iii. 16, 6.

seemed to involve a contradiction in terms. Because "the Son" was a Son, there must have been an epoch in which, as yet, He was not Son, and another in which He began to be the Son of God.

The Arians were able to avail themselves of this principle to its full extent, and to argue "the Word of God was begotten; therefore there was a time when, as yet, He was not." We do not, of course, accuse the holy Fathers, or any one among them, of holding such a portent of heresy as this. But we do maintain that many of them unconsciously sacrificed the integrity and purity of their faith upon this point to intellectual difficulties which pressed hard upon them. Removed from them as we are by the interval of fifteen centuries, it needs an effort of historical imagination to realize the work they had to do and the circumstances under which they had to do it. They had Scripture and tradition and the teaching Church to guide them, no doubt; but neither Scripture nor tradition gave the truth in a systematic or philosophical form, while the time had not come when the Church employed philosophical formulas in her teaching, and so pronounced directly on the intellectual controversies which were before them. They had to attempt the reconciliation of faith and reason, to correct the errors of philosophy, and to invent a new set of terms to express the new ideas which they wished to convey to others.

The point with which we are dealing just now is an instance of the incidental failures with which they accomplished their task. They believed and confessed the eternity of the Word, but then they had to face the seeming contradiction, that this Word was also Son, and as Son must have had a beginning. Accordingly they had recourse to a distinction which was inconsistent with an adequate belief in the unchangeable simplicity of the Divine nature. They admitted that the Second Person of the blessed Trinity was eternal, that the Word had been with the Father before all ages, but they denied that this Word had always been Son. The very title of Móyos λόγος seemed to lend itself to this distinction, and helped them to render it intelligible. Aóyos, they said, may mean, first, the conception which lies hidden in the mind (the λóyos ἐνδιάθετος), and next the spoken Word (the λόγος προφορικός), which leaps forth from the mind, and is the outward expression of the conception within the mind. This, as it seemed, was the key to the apparent contradiction. From all eternity the Word had been hidden in the bosom of the Father, as His λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, till He came forth from the Father as the λόγος προφορικός, and by this procession or generation began VOL. XXVII.-NO. LIII. [New Series.]

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to be the Son. Moreover, Scripture, as they thought, supplied a notice of the object with which, nay of the time at which, this change occurred. S. Paul calls the Son, "the first-begotten of all creation"; and many similar expressions in the Old Testament, as well as in the New, in which the generation of the Son is connected with the creation of the world, will readily suggest themselves to the reader. It was for the work of creation, then, that the "hidden Word " came forth from the Father. He became the Son, and as Son the beginning of the creation of God; He became the uttered or spoken Word, and as the word of man manifests the thoughts which lie within his heart, so it became His office to manifest the mind of the Father to creatures.

We have abstained from giving quotations and references to prove the widespread existence of this theory. It is unnecessary to do so, because we suppose that every one, of the small number who are interested in the subject, has read and re-read the masterly essay which F. Newman has lately published on the "Causes of the Success of Arianism." In that dissertation, short as it is, F. Newman has examined with a close and accurate scrutiny, of which, so far as we are aware, there has been no previous example, the doctrine of each among the ante-Nicene fathers on the generation of the Son. He has shown, and he has shown to demonstration, that, except in the Alexandrian* school, all the ante-Nicene fathers, with the single exception of Irenæus, held that the generation of the Son was temporal and not eternal. Moreover, Father Newman accounts for the full Catholic doctrine which Irenæus puts forth on this question by the fact that he belonged to "what may be called the Apostolic family," and we think that we may appeal to his great authority for the view which we have been trying to enforce in this and in a previous essay, viz., that the teaching of the earlier fathers coincides with the subsequent definitions of the Church on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, just so far as these fathers confined themselves to the office of handing down the apostolic tradition intact, and diverges from them just so far as these fathers brought speculations of their own to bear on the original deposit of the faith. And now to come to the actual doctrine of S. Irenæus on

* But F. Newman excepts the Councils at Antioch, A.D. 264–272. And he adds, "There is also one great exception in the West And it is where it ought to be, in the See of S. Peter" (p. 252). We hope, at some future time, to say something on the doctrine of the Trinity in the third century, with special reference to the Roman tradition on this subject. What we have said in the text may suffice to illustrate the position of S. Irenæus.

the eternal generation of the Son. It is a striking and important fact that he should reiterate this great mystery in unambiguous language, but it is still more important to notice the way in which he does so, because it brings into relief the place as an historical witness for tradition, which we have been claiming for him throughout. The fathers who flourished after the Nicene Council, and defended the creed which it imposed against Arian blasphemy, were never weary of repeating that we must accept the eternal generation because it was part of the faith, and beware of measuring the truths of revelation by the standard of human reason. * S. Irenæus takes exactly the same ground, and, partly from natural temperament, partly because he saw the mischief which Gnostic speculation had done already, he is shy of explaining and adapting to the ideas of philosophy the mysterious belief which he had inherited from the tradition of the Apostles. "If any one," he says, "fails to find the reason for all the things which he examines, let him consider that man is infinitely inferior to God. . . . For thou, O man, art not uncreated nor wert thou always with God, as was His proper Word."+ Following the same train, he rejects all distinction between the Word hidden in the bosom of the Father (the λóyos ivdiálεros), and the Word spoken or uttered and born to be a Son (óyos πроpoρiós), and this on the ground that such a distinction is repugnant to the simplicity of God, and is grounded upon human conceptions, which we cannot on our own authority transfer to the Divine essence. It is true, he admits, that we first form an idea within the mind, and then give it external utterance in the spoken word, but we have no right to apply notions borrowed from our own imperfect nature to the generation of the Word, that generation which, as the prophet says, none can describe. And the same principle which preserved him from error led him to enunciate fearlessly the eternity of the "Son." We must draw attention again to the form in which his statement is made, because it shows how far he was from that false distinction between the eternity of the Word and the eternity of the Son, so familiar, as F. Newman tells us, to the greater number of the ante-Nicene fathers. "We have given many proofs," such is the language of S. Irenæus, "that the Word, that is the Son, was ever with the Father." He goes on in the same section to prove by Scripture that the same eternal existence belongs to the Holy

*See Petav. de Trin., v. 6, ad init.

+ Iren., ii. 25, 3.

Iren., ii. 28, 5, where Is. liii. 8 is quoted, according to the LXX. For a perfect contrast to this passage, see Tertull. adv. Prax., 5. § Iren., iv. 20, 3.

Ghost, and thus completes the confession of his faith in the mystery of the Trinity.

We cannot, however, pass from the consideration of the saint's doctrine on the Holy Trinity without noticing objections which may be drawn from his writings and advanced against the account which we have been giving. The discussion of them need not detain us long, for they reduce themselves to two heads, and it will give us the opportunity of adding a remark which will prevent a possible misconstruction of our meaning. We have claimed for S. Irenæus a fulness and clearness of view on the mystery of the Trinity which justifies us in placing him far above the mass of the ante-Nicene fathers, and on a level with S. Athanasius and S. Basil. We have spoken of him as a witness to the entire tradition of the Apostles on the Godhead of the Son. Now we have to append a remark which qualifies, though it does not in any way contradict, what we have said above. We do not pretend, that it is possible to find in S. Irenæus the perfect accuracy and consistency of theological thought and language, with which we meet in the scholastic divines. He escaped the dangers of speculation: he stood where S. Athanasius stood after him. Still, when once the traditional belief was fixed and secured, then philosophy could be employed with safety and with advantage in the service of faith; reflection and methodical statement had their work to do; inconsistencies of language had to be cleared away; principles had to be carried out to their logical consequences; and we do not imagine for a moment that all this was done by S. Irenæus. True, his inconsistencies are few in number; they are of small importance if we compare them with those of most among the ante-Nicene fathers: they are common to great fathers like S. Athanasius, who lived later, and are usually accepted as the champions of the orthodox faith with regard to the Holy Trinity. Still, as it seems to us, they are inconsistencies none the less, and ought to be recognized as such; and the fact that they have been grossly exaggerated in the interest of heresy will not justify us in ignoring them or explaining them away. But the passages themselves which call for explanation, will give our readers the best idea on the amount of explanation which it is possible to give.

First, then, S. Irenæus appears to hold, on the authority of Mark xiii. 32, that God the Son did not know when the day of judgment was to be, and to support his thesis by interpreting the words of our Lord in S. John xiv. 28, "the Father is greater than I," as if they meant that the Person of God the Father was greater than that of God the Son. He is reproach