he lived, the men that adopted his dreams and the men that opposed them. For these adjuncts, Dr. Stuart well knows, may be pointed out in every innovation even of the slightest nature that has ever occurred at any time in the church of But since there exists not the smallest vestige of such an innovation or change, and since it must be conceded that Tertullian and the other anti-nicine Fathers speak of the eternal generation of the Son of God not as of a new dogma, but as of a common and ancient belief of the Church, good logic will force us to trace up this divine truth, this universal tradition to the very preaching of the Apostles, after the same manner as we trace every institution or fact to its origin; for instance, the existence of an Alexander, of a Cæsar, and Augustus to their respective ages in which they lived; for when remounting higher than the age in which they flourished, we meet with no vestige or mention whatever of them, we unhesitatingly conclude that they belong to that age in which, for the first time, mention is made of them; sound philosophy teaches us to reason after the same manner in matters of religion: but if it be once admitted, as it must be, that this doctrine is derived from the Apostles, and that it forms a part of that sacred deposit which they committed to the primitive Church formed by them, it must be granted likewise that it is a divine doctrine, to which all the fancies or uncertain theories of a short sighted reason can never oppose any thing like solid argument.

Next, Dr. Stuart adds, "How then could he be begotten or derived, if he be of the same substance, or of the same eternity?"

I ask in my turn, how, if Jesus Christ be not begotten by the Father from all eternity, the eternal Father could say: "From the womb before the day-star I begot thee,"* &c. and how could Jesus Christ constantly and uniformly call himself the only begotten Son of God, and exact from men that in him as such they should believe, in order to be saved?

* Psal. cix. 3.

Math. xvi. 16-John ix. 35, 36, 37.

If Christ do not proceed from the Father by way of eternal generation, how can God be Father and Jesus Christ Son? The first person in God is Father, the second is Son, there is no Father without Son, nor Son without Father, and neither without eternal generation; generation, no doubt, infinitely above the gross and corporeal generation of created beings, and above all that a created understanding can possibly imagine, but still a true generation, a divine, intellectual, substantial generation, of which we wear in our mind some faint and imperfect image, the intellect begetting the thought, and thus the thought being the offspring of the intellect; an idea, which is so ably illustrated by the illustrious Bossuet in his universal history.* All comparisons drawn from created objects, and all similies of that nature employed by the Fathers are, no doubt, utterly incompetent to give an adequate idea of this or any other divine intrinsic operation, nor were they ever resorted to by the councils or Fathers for the purpose of giving a full and adequate explanation of the divine nature, but merely of bringing such sublime matters as near the human understanding as its weakness will permit.

Dr. Stuart adds, "How then could Christ be begotten or derived if he were of the same substance and of the same eternity?"

I ask again in my turn, since Christ, as Dr. Stuart so ably demonstrates in these very letters, is true God, and of course of the same substance and of the same eternity with the Father, how can he be all that but through the eternal generation; since Christ is essentially Son and the first person essentially Father from all eternity according to the proofs I have just adduced, and the tenour of the whole New Testament, in which Christ styles himself constantly and most definitively the Son of God, the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, &c. and uniformly calls God his Father? For if the fathership in the first and the sonship in the second person are but empty or arbitrary names, if they signify nothing real, if they

* Part II, page 197-208.

have no relation to that eternal, essential, and immanent action, by which the first person communicates his whole substance to the second, and in virtue of which communication the first person is assentially and eternally Father, and the second Son, we will be obliged to admit what Dr. Stuart is as unwilling as I am to admit, viz: that the Eternal Father and Jesus Christ have constantly expressed themselves to men in a manner contrary to all the principles of human language, and so as to hurry them irresistibly into gross error: the scripture, in that case, would be of all books extant the most enigmatical, the most unintelligible.

Yes, Father is the true proper name of the first person, and Son of God of the second, or else there is no meaning in the whole New Testament. The Christian world has now read the Scripture for these eighteen hundred years past, and constantly read in it what I am contending for here, and this I deem to be more than a presumptive evidence that nothing else is contained in it.

"But after all," continues Dr. Stuart, "I am unable to conceive of any definite meaning in the phrase, eternal generation."

"You

But the learned professor has unanswerably demonstrated against a writer of the University of Cambridge, that the terms of a proposition and the fact, which they are designed to describe, may be very intelligible and clear, and still the subject of the proposition, that is, the thing itself, be undefinable. understand, says he, the fact that God exists without cause, but you cannot define underived existence. I believe, on the authority of the Scriptures, that there is a real distinction in the Godhead; but I cannot define it. Still the proposition that there is a real distiction is just as intelligible as the one that God is self-existent."* Might we not apply this excellent reasoning to the subject under consideration, and with great advantage say; the Christian world, on the authority of the Scriptures aud the uniform belief of past ages, believed that

* Page 37, 38,

the Son of God proceeded from the Father by way of eternal generation, although this eternal generation be as undefinable as the underived existence of God and the real distinction in the Godhead. That the scriptures are as explicit on the eternal generation as they are on the Trinity in general or the real distinction in the Godhead, is, I think, incontrovertible from the scriptural and traditionary authority adduced above; therefore the fact of the eternal generation, although undefinable, may be very intelligile and certain.

"Generation or production, like creation, necessarily implies in itself beginning, and of course contradicts the idea of absolute eternity."

Generation necessarily implies in itself beginning. In created beings, I grant it; in the infinitely perfect nature of God, I deny it. It is not possible to conceive generation among created beings without conceiving, at the same time, priority and superiority in him that begets, and posteriority, inferiority, and dependence on him that is begotten: not so in God.Generation in God, is such as becomes the infinite perfection of the Divine Being. To beget a Son inferior to himself, an imperfect, dependent Son, is unworthy of the infinite energy and fecundity of the Father, to whom it is as impossible to have an imperfect Son, as it is impossible to have but an im perfect knowledge of himself.

Men are too apt when about to fix their thoughts on divine things, to carry with them the train of their natural ideas. And hence, since reason and experience inform us that every cause is more noble than its effect, that it must exist prior to its effect, and that this latter necessarily depends for its existence on the former, we immediately conclude that since there is an order, as to their origin, between the three Divine Persons, and since the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one common principle, and the Son from the Father, there must be necessarily superiority and priority on the part of the producing principle, and inferiority and dependence on the part of the produced Person. But how far is all this from what faith teaches us in this ineffable mystery?

There is no cause or effect in the Godhead; the Father is not. the cause of the Son, nor the Son the effect of the Father, but the Father is the eternal and infinitely perfect principle, to whose infinite perfection it is as necessary and essential to utter or beget the eternal word, co-eternal, co-existing, and perfectly equal in perfection to itself, as it is to exist itself. There is no priority in the principle, or posteriority or dependence in the infinitely perfect term that proceeds from it; since it is as necessary and perfect for the Son to be begotten, as it is in the Father to beget, and as necessary and perfect in the Holy Ghost to proceed from the Father and the Son, as for the Father and the Son to be his common and necessary principle. As therefore the order in the origin of the Divine Persons, or the two processions in the Godhead of the Son and the Holy Ghost necessarily originate in the infinite perfection of the divine nature, which essentially implies in the Godhead two eternal, infinitely perfect, and immanent operations, the terms of which are necessarily as perfect as the power that produ ces them; since that power acts with infinite vigor, energy, and perfection, it is manifest, that the first term the Eternal Word of God, which is produced by way of the infinite intellect of the Father, and the Holy Ghost who proceeds from the Father and the Son, by way of the eternal will and love of both, cannot be less perfect than the principles from which they proceed, and of course the second and third persons are as self-existent as to their nature, as eternal, independent, and infinitely perfect as the first: although the eternal and inscrutible nature of God will have it so, that the Father be without principle, the Son be from the Father alone, and the Holy Ghost proceed from both the Father and the Son as a common joint principle, but all this eternally, necessarily, and by the absolute exigency of the infinite perfection of the adorable Godhead, of "him Who is." And of course the three Divine Persons are one and the same God-one and the same Supreme Being: to whom be honor and glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

Those who reject the eternal immanent operations of the