n
almost every clause from the so-called Nicene Creed of our Communion
Service. Leaving, however, the spurious Nicene Creed till we come to it,
let us see how the genuine Nicene Creed dealt with Arianism. Its central
phrases are the two which refer to essence. Now the _essence_ of a thing
is that by which it is what we suppose it to be. We look at it from
various points of view, and ascribe to it first one quality and then
another. Its _essence_ from any one of these successive points of view
is that by which it possesses the corresponding quality. About this
unknown something we make no assertion, so that we are committed to no
theory whatever. Thus the _essence_ of the Father _as God_ (for this was
the point of view) is that unknown and incommunicable something by which
He is God. If therefore we explain St. John's 'an only-begotten who is
God'[7] inserting 'that is, from the _essence_ of the Father,' we
declare that the Divine Sonship is no accident of will, but belongs to
the divine nature. It is not an outside matter of creation or adoption,
but (so to speak) an organic relation inside that nature. The Father is
no more God without the Son than the Son is God without the Father.
Again, if we confess him to be _of one essence_ with the Father, we
declare him the common possessor with the Father of the one essence
which no creature can share, and thus ascribe to him the highest deity
in words which allow no evasion or reserve. The two phrases, however,
are complementary. _From the essence_ makes a clear distinction: _of one
essence_ lays stress on the unity. The word had a Sabellian history, and
was used by Marcellus in a Sabellian sense, so that it was justly
discredited as Sabellian. Had it stood alone, the creed would have been
Sabellian; but at Nicaea it was checked by _from the essence_. When the
later Nicenes, under Semiarian influence, came to give the word another
meaning, the check was wisely removed.

[Footnote 7: John i. 18 (the best reading, and certainly familiar in the
Nicene age).]

[Sidenote: Its caution.]

Upon the whole, the creed is a cautious document. Though Arianism is
attacked again in the clause _was made man_, which states that the Lord
took something more than a human body, there is no attempt to forestall
later controversies by a further definition of the meaning of the
incarnation. The abrupt pause after the mention of the Holy Spirit is
equally significant, for the nature of his divini