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| Prologue.
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Prologue.
The presiding ministers of the “mystery of godliness”1935
have need of a system in their instructions,
in order that the Church may be replenished by the accession of such as
should be saved1936
, through the
teaching of the word of Faith being brought home to the hearing of
unbelievers. Not that the same method of instruction will be suitable
in the case of all who approach the word. The catechism must be adapted
to the diversities of their religious worship; with an eye, indeed, to
the one aim and end of the system, but not using the same method of
preparation in each individual case. The Judaizer has been preoccupied
with one set of notions, one conversant with Hellenism, with others;
while the Anomœan, and the Manichee, with the followers of
Marcion1937
| 1937 Marcion, a disciple of Cerdo, added a third Principle to the two
which his master taught. The first is an unnamed, invisible, and good
God, but no creator; the second is a visible and creative God,
i.e. the Demiurge; the third intermediate between the invisible
and visible God, i.e. the Devil. The Demiurge is the God and
Judge of the Jews. Marcion affirmed the Resurrection of the soul alone.
He rejected the Law and the Prophets as proceeding from the Demiurge;
only Christ came down from the unnamed and invisible Father to save the
soul, and to confute this God of the Jews. The only Gospel he
acknowledged was S. Luke’s, omitting the beginning which details
our Lord’s Conception and Incarnation. Other portions also both
in the middle and the end he curtailed. Besides this broken Gospel of
S. Luke he retained ten of the Apostolic letters, but garbled even
them. Gregory says elsewhere that the followers of Eunomius got their
“duality of Gods” from Marcion, but went beyond him in
denying essential goodness to the Only-begotten, the “God of the
Gospel.” | , Valentinus, and Basilides1938
| 1938 Of
the Gnostics Valentinus and Basilides the truest and best account is
given in H. L. Mansel’s Gnostics, and in the articles upon
them in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. It is there shown
how all their visions of celestial Hierarchies, and the romances
connected with them, were born of the attempt to solve the insoluble
problem, i.e. how that which in modern philosophy would be
called the Infinite is to pass into the Finite. They fell into the
fatalism of the Emanationist view of the Deity, but still the attempt
was an honest one. | , and the rest on the list of those who have
wandered into heresy, each of them being prepossessed with their peculiar
notions, necessitate a special controversy with their several.
opinions. The method of recovery must be adapted to the form of the
disease. You will not by the same means cure the polytheism of the
Greek, and the unbelief of the Jew as to the Only-begotten God: nor as
regards those who have wandered into heresy will you, by the same
arguments in each case, upset their misleading romances as to the
tenets of the Faith. No one could set Sabellius1939
| 1939 Sabellius. The Sabellian heresy was rife in the century preceding:
i.e. that Personality is attributed to the Deity only from the
exigency of human language, that consequently He is sometimes
characterized as the Father, when operations and works more appropriate
to the paternal relation are spoken of; and so in like manner of the
Son, and the Holy Ghost; as when Redemption is the subject, or
Sanctification. In making the Son the Father, it is the opposite pole
to Arianism. |
right by the same instruction as would benefit the Anomœan1940
| 1940 “We see also the rise (i.e. a.d. 350) of a new and more defiant Arian school, more in
earnest than the older generation, impatient of their shuffling
diplomacy, and less pliant to court influences. Aetius.…came to
rest in a clear and simple form of Arianism. Christianity without
mystery seems to have been his aim. The Anomœan leaders took their
stand on the doctrine of Arius himself and dwelt with emphasis on its
most offensive aspects. Arius had long ago laid down the absolute
unlikeness of the Son to the Father, but for years past the Arianizers
had prudently softened it down. Now, however, ‘unlike’
became the watchword of Aetius and Eunomius”: Gwatkin’s
Arians. For the way in which this school treated the Trinity see
Against Eunomius, p. 50. | . The controversy with the Manichee is
profitless against the Jew1941
. It is necessary,
therefore, as I have said, to regard the opinions which the persons
have taken up, and to frame your argument in accordance with the error
into which each has fallen, by advancing in each discussion certain
principles and reasonable propositions, that thus, through what is
agreed upon on both sides, the truth may conclusively be brought to
light. When, then, a discussion is held with one of those who favour
Greek ideas, it would be well to make the ascertaining of this the
commencement of the reasoning, i.e. whether he presupposes the
existence of a God, or concurs with the atheistic view. Should he say
there is no God, then, from the consideration of the skilful and wise
economy of the Universe he will be brought to acknowledge that there is
a certain overmastering power manifested through these channels. If, on
the other hand, he should have no doubt as to the existence of Deity,
but should be inclined to entertain the presumption of a plurality of
Gods, then we will adopt against him some such train of reasoning as
this: “does he think Deity is perfect or defective?” and
if, as is likely, he bears testimony to the perfection in the Divine
nature, then we will demand of him to grant a perfection throughout in
everything that is observable in that divinity, in order that Deity may
not be regarded as a mixture of opposites, defect and perfection. But
whether as respects power, or the conception of goodness, or wisdom and
imperishability and eternal existence, or any other notion besides
suitable to the nature of Deity, that is found to lie close to the
subject of our contemplation, in all he will agree that perfection is
the idea to be entertained of the Divine nature, as being a just
inference from these premises. If this, then, be granted us, it would
not be difficult to bring round these scattered notions of a plurality
of Gods to the acknowledgment of a unity of Deity. For if he admits
that perfection is in every respect to be ascribed to the subject
before us, though there is a plurality of these perfect things which
are marked with the same character, he must be required by a logical
necessity, either to point out the particularity in each of these
things which present no distinctive variation, but are found always
with the same marks, or, if (he cannot do that, and) the mind can grasp
nothing in them in the way of particular, to give up the idea of any
distinction. For if neither as regards “more and less” a
person can detect a difference (in as much as the idea of perfection
does not admit of it), nor as regards “worse” and
“better” (for he cannot entertain a notion of Deity at all
where the term “worse” is not got rid of), nor as regards
“ancient” and “modern” (for what exists not for
ever is foreign to the notion of Deity), but on the contrary the idea
of Godhead is one and the same, no peculiarity being on any ground of
reason to be discovered in any one point, it is an absolute necessity
that the mistaken fancy of a plurality of Gods would be forced to the
acknowledgment of a unity of Deity. For if goodness, and justice, and
wisdom, and power may be equally predicated of it, then also
imperishability and eternal existence, and every orthodox idea would be
in the same way admitted. As then all distinctive difference in any
aspect whatever has been gradually removed, it necessarily follows that
together with it a plurality of Gods has been removed from his belief,
the general identity bringing round conviction to the
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