lieve, that Noetus introduced the Spirit into his formula respecting the Godhead as little as Praxeas did. I know indeed that Hippolytus, and still more Theodoret, makes heavy charges against him; but much of this is only deduction in the spirit of controversy, and amounts to what Noetus himself never affirmed. I can easily believe that Noetus may have said, that there is no difference between the invisible God and him who made his appearance.* Tertullian, on the contrary, undertakes to shew a distinction in the divine Being, from the fact that there must be a difference between him who dwells in light inaccessible and him who makes himself visible to men.† In like manner, and in direct opposition to such views, Noetus may have undertaken to deny such a discrepancy between Father and Son, on the ground that God himself had never in reality become visible, but only his miraculous operations had been exercised upon finite and created things. And besides this, it is very natural to suggest, that the idea of theophany for the most part easily passes over, through the kindred one of the b-na [so familiar among the Rabbins as the name of a mediate theophany], into that of onucior or rigas. Noetus, moreover, had sufficient occasion to turn his attention to the idea of distinction between the invisible and the visible Deity, because all the Old

mention it as though it made nothing for the side of Noetus, viz., that on the one hand Christ says, he would again himself build up the temple [in case the Jews should destroy it], and on the other his resurrection from the dead [which was the building up of the temple that he meant to speak of], is ascribed to the Father. But a more accurate comparison of passages, e. g. Origen, IV. p. 199. c. D, shews, (what indeed belongs to the very nature of the case), that Noetus did not in fact pass by this passage without notice. Even his opponents felt themselves obliged to concede, that the raising from the dead is a thing that must be accomplished by peculiar power, and that such power has special claims to unity of subject. E. g. Hippol. VIII. : μία δύναμις τούτου, καὶ ὅσον μὲν κατὰ τὴν δύναμιν εἷς ἐστι Θεός. [ One is the power of this being; and so far as it respects power, there is one God.']

• Αφανὴς μὲν ὅταν ἐθέλῃ, φαινόμενον δὲ ἡνίκα ἂν βούληται ; Theod. Haeret. Fab. III. 3. ['Invisible indeed, whenever he pleases to be; but visible also, whenever he chooses to be so.']

[This Tertullian attempts to do at great length, in his Treatise against Praxeas, cap. 14; to which the reader must be referred, as it is too long to be quoted here. TR.]

Testament theophanies had already begun to be attributed to Christ.

If now we may suppose him to have affirmed, that there was no difference between the seen and unseen God; yet we can hardly believe him to have said, that there was no distinction between the begotten and unbegotten God.* This last is a mere deduction of those, who held that the divine nature in Christ was that which was begotten before all worlds. These ought to have said, that Noetus made no distinction between the unbegotten God, and him whom they called begotten. But Noetus himself could never have affirmed any thing more, than that the divine nature in begotten man, was the unbegotten God himself; and so he that was incapable of suffering, dwelt in man who could suffer. Surely he could not have said, as Theodoret charges him with saying, that the very same being was impassible and immortal, and yet was passible and mortal. Such an assertion could not be traced to any design of shunning polytheism; because he that is capable of suffering, cannot be conceived of as one simple being, to say nothing of his mortality.

With such considerations in view, it would seem that the expressions, örav ¿veλn, öre ißovλero, and the like, in reference to the theophanies related in the Old or New Testament, are peculiar to Noetus. What a pity, that we have no means of developing with certainty what he intended to designate by them. It may be, that he intended only to designate the idea of the unceasing activity of the Godhead, (somewhat after the manner of our own voluntary exercises of the mind in continual succession), now withdrawing and concealing himself as it were within himself, and then revealing himself by connection with a finite being. If this were the case, and he expressed himself so indefinitely as the formula örav ¿vily would seem to imply, there might be in this the meaning, that other and future revelations of the Godhead might still be looked for, besides those already made in the person of Christ; and this would have been an anti-christian notion. But inasmuch as the principal object of Noetus was to vindicate the divine nature of Christ, it would not be proper to assume that he had any design of making such an assertion; although one may concede, that the expression itself (ötav ¿in) would not exclude such a meaning.

Indeed we cannot well say that our common Symbols are

• See Theodoret, ut supra.

not exposed to such a construction. If, in addition to eternal generation, there is still another indescribable difference in the Godhead, viz. that of the procession of the Spirit; then (so far as this representation in and by itself is concerned) there appears to be no good reason why there may not be many such processions. Besides this, if the divine vous or λoyos, i. e. intelligence or understanding, could come forth out of the Godhead, and coming forth become a hypostatic and separate being, why may not every other divine attribute exhibit itself in like manner? In fact we cannot properly demand of a purely doctrinal representation of the Trinity, that all exclusion of any greater number than three, should be absolutely incorporated with it. We must seek the ground of such limitation as to number, in the appropriateness of a revelation through Christ and the Spirit in order to reclaim our sinful race. Only a speculative view of the doctrine of the Trinity can attempt the making out of such an exclusive construction; but on this very ground, viz., that such a construction is not an indispensable one, it cannot be regarded as truly belonging to the essence of theology.

If now Noetus represented to himself the manifestations of the Redeemer, as disclosed in revelation, under the form of a divine activity, as mentioned above; then there must always be attached to this mode of representation a high and scarcely allowable measure of anthropopathy, in case the otɛ and viza be referred equally to the divine counsel and to the accomplishment of that counsel; for in a case such as he presents, an action of the Godhead is represented as one altogether of a transitory nature. This was certainly an embarrassing circumstance in his theory and a disadvantage to it; for in the other theory, the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit may be represented as unlimited by time. On the other

hand, the theory of Noetus has this which is peculiar to itself, and which constitutes a kind of off-set against the advantage of the other theory just mentioned, viz., that divine activity or energy in making special revelations, is definitely to be contrasted with that which is exhibited in the government of the world; a thing contended for by many who admit the usual Symbols, but one which can hardly be made out with consistency by them. While nothing hinders our conceiving of each particular event as determined on and necessarily accomplished in such a way, that every particular occurrence seems to de

pend on some antecedent one; yet the particular times of making a revelation appear to intervene between those occurrences, as something depending merely on divine pleasure, and each one of these times is determined for itself by a free and independent ὅτε ήθέλησε.

It is unnecessary however to insist on this doubtful ground of preference. One may suppose that Noetus himself, in the further development of his system, would have separated the divine counsel as eternal, from its actual execution which was a temporal phenomenon; and then he might have stood on as good ground as those, who separate the eternal generation of the Son from his "becoming flesh and dwelling among us." He would then even have this ground of preference, viz., that his theory was very simple, while the other was compounded in a way that involves difficulty. For difficult indeed it is, when we assume an original plurality of persons in the Godhead, to determine whether the coming forth of the Son out of the Father is merely voluntary, or necessarily grounded in the nature of the divine Being. According to this last mode of representation, the persons of the Godhead seem to be subjected to a kind of law superior to themselves; somewhat in the manner in which the Grecian divinities are subject to eternal destiny. By the former mode, the Son is so definitively dependent for his existence on the will of the Father, that, if he pleased, he might have refrained from begetting him; and thus his dependence is made altogether like to that of other beings who are created.

Noetus, however, avoided this difficulty; and not only so, but the still greater one, viz., whether the incarnation which took place in time and space, depended solely on the will of the Father, or also on that of the Son. According to the first of these two suppositions, there must have been in the Godhead, command on one part and obedience on the other; a dissimilarity which involves an entire separation.* According to the second, it would hardly have been possible to make out the distinction between Father and Son, in case the exhibition of it had not been made by the incarnation; against which position the most zealous defenders of the common Symbols have

* So that one could not properly say, in such a case, μn dúo ¿ ¿vòs μεQiodivτa vósi; Basil, Hom. XXIV. ['You must not suppose two divided out of one."]

warmly protested.* All these difficulties Noetus avoided, inasmuch as he may be supposed to have acknowledged only one divine Will, whose eternal counsel was carried into execution in a definite way, and only at a definite period.

That Noetus regarded the one and undivided Deity as taking the place of a human soul in Christ, and dwelling directly in his human body; and that he thus was a predecessor of Apollinaris (as Martini supposes);†-all this appears to me not to follow from the passage of Hippolytus there quoted. Nor do I think it probable in itself; for such an opinion would approximate too near to the metamorphoses of the heathen gods, to leave any room for supposing that it would have been adopted by a strenuous opposer of polytheism. Besides all this, it would have involved some consequences savouring of the tenets of the Docetae, which the opposers of Noetus would by no means admit; and the context therefore would have taken a different turn, and occupied a more extensive ground. The view of Apollinaris, moreover, could be held by those only who made a special distinction in the divine Being, in reference to the incarnation, and limited the latter only to a particular person of the Godhead. And such appears to me to be the state of the case in regard to the passage in question of Hippolytus ;‡ viz., that he

⚫ E. g. Athanasius cont. Sabell. Greg. 10. 11. 15.

Martini, Geschichte des Logos, pp. 143, 144. [Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea in Syria (A. D. 366—382) held that the Logos took the place of a rational soul in Christ; and, consequently, that God in him was united with a human body and a sensitive soul. As a man and a scholar he was highly esteemed in his time. A party was formed at Antioch in his favour. After his death they divided into two sects; one holding his peculiar opinions, and the other maintaining that God became so united with the body of Christ as to make one substance with it, and consequently paying divine honours to the human nature of Christ. On account of this, they received the name of Sarcolatrae, i. e. worshippers of flesh. The whole party was of short continuance; and they were suppressed, in part, by imperial edicts. TR.]

Hippol. cont. Noetum, § 17. [The passage here alluded to runs thus: "We believe... according to the tradition of the apostles, that God the Logos came down from heaven into the virgin Mary; so that he, having become incarnate of her, taking to himself a human soul, I mean a rational one, and thus having become truly human in all respects, sin excepted, might save him who had lapsed, etc." Martini contends that this is said in direct opposition to an opinion of Noetus; VOL. VI. No. 19.

2