Platonic school_,[380:1]
who, about the middle of the second century, first promulgated the
opinion, that Jesus of Nazareth, the "Son of God," was the second
principle in the Deity, and the Creator of all material things. He is
the earliest writer to whom the opinion can be traced. This knowledge,
he does not ascribe to the Scriptures, but to the special favor of
God.[380:2]

The passage in I. John, v. 7, which reads thus: "For there are three
that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost,
and these three are one," is _one of the numerous interpolations which
were inserted into the books of the New Testament, many years after
these books were written_.[380:3] These passages are retained and
circulated as the _word of God_, or as of equal authority with the rest,
though known and admitted by the learned on all hands, to be forgeries,
willful and wicked interpolations.

The subtle and profound questions concerning the nature, generation, the
distinction, and the quality of the three divine persons of the
mysterious triad, or Trinity, were agitated in the philosophical and in
the Christian schools of _Alexandria in Egypt_,[380:4] but it was not a
part of the established Christian faith until as late as A. D. 327, when
the question was settled at the Councils of Nice and Constantinople. _Up
to this time there was no understood and recognized doctrine on this
high subject._ The Christians were for the most part accustomed to use
scriptural expressions in speaking of the Father, and the Son, and the
Spirit, without defining articulately their relation to one
another.[380:5]

In these trinitarian controversies, which first broke out in
Egypt--_Egypt, the land of Trinities_--the chief point in the discussion
was to define the position of "the Son."

There lived in _Alexandria_ a presbyter of the name of _Arius_, a
disappointed candidate for the office of bishop. He took the ground
that there was a time when, from the very nature of _Sonship_, the Son
did not exist, and a time at which he commenced to be, asserting that it
is the necessary condition of the filial relation _that a father must be
older than his son_. But this assertion evidently denied the
_co-eternity_ of the three persons of the Trinity, it suggested a
_subordination_ or _inequality_ among them, and indeed implied a time
when the Trinity did not exist. Hereupon, the bishop, who had been the
successful competitor against Arius, display