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.

Might not then, after all, Sabellianism be the truth? No: I discerned
too plainly what Gibbon states, that the Sabellian, if consistent, is
only a concealed Ebionite, or us we now say, a Unitarian, Socinian. As
we cannot admit that the Father was slain on the cross, or prayed to
himself in the garden, he who will not allow the Father and the Son to
be separate persons, but only two names for one person, _must divide
the Son of God and Jesus into two persons_, and so fall back on th