Witness. Justin Martyr says that it was Christ who appeared to Abraham in the plains of Mamre (Gen. xviii. 1.), who rained brimstone and fire from heaven upon Sodom (Gen. xix. 24.), who appeared in the form of a man and wrestled with Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 24.), and who appeared in the burning bush to Moses (Exod. iii. 4.). Irenæus, also, affirms the same: and these fathers are followed by Theophilus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, and others.1

Att. Gen. If God, or the Lord, be said in the Old Testament to have appeared to holy men in the form of an angel or other divine resemblance, what reason had these ancient Fathers to suppose that it was the Son of God?

Witness. No doubt because they were taught to believe this from the Apostles themselves and their immediate successors; and also for this reason; because, as God created the world by his Son, by the same Son he governs it; and as the Son had previously held converse with mortals before his incarnation, so he carries on the same intercourse with them after it.2

1 Defen. Fid. sect. i. ch. 1. § 3, 4, 5, and 6.

2 Deus in terris cum hominibus alius conversari non potuit, quàm Sermo, qui caro erat futurus.- Tertul. adv. Prax. c.16. See, also, Clem. Alex. Pædag. l.i. c. 11. Orig. cont. Cels. lib. 6.

Att. Gen. And you think the angel who appeared unto Jacob was God, and that God was the Son or The WORD.

Witness. I do: for Jacob or Israel when he blessed his grandsons said, "God, before whom my Fathers, Abraham and Isaac, did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day: The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." Here it is evident that God and the Angel are the same; but no created Angel could either confer blessing, or be the God of Abraham; and therefore it could be none other than He, the Son of God, who is "higher than the Angels," "and came forth from the Father."

Court. And you say that the early Fathers believed and asserted Christ, or the Son, to be consubstantial with God, the Father; do they also

that he was co-eternal with him and co-equal? Wit. Clemens Alexandrinus says, "The Son of God never comes down from his watchtower, as never being divided, never parted asunder, and never passes from place to place, but is always every where and contained no where, all mind, all the Father's light, all eye, sees all things, hears all things, knows all things, and by his power searches all things. To him all the host of angels and gods is in subjection.—Here

1 Gen. xlviii. 15, 16.

2 Strom. 1. vii. p. 702.

is a proof of his consubstantiality. In the Book ascribed to Hermas the Shepherd are these words:

"The Son of God is more ancient than any created thing, so that he was present in counsel with his Father at the creation."1- He was therefore not created; for had he been so, he would not have been older than all creation, but the oldest created thing: hence is he co-eternal with God. Clemens Alexandrinus further says of Christ, that "he was" the divine LOGOS or WORD, who is indeed true God, equal to the Lord of all ; because he is his Son and the WORD which was in God.2-Here Christ is said to be the Divine WORD,- very God of very God, — equal to the Father, and that for this reason Son of God, and the WORD himself.3

-because he is the

subsisting in God

Att. Gen. But though the early Fathers have declared the nature of Christ to be Divine, may not that heavenly and divine nature be in some degree different, and not altogether precisely the same with the Father?

Witness. No: I repeat it, that it is the belief of the earliest Christian writers, as well as the doctrine

1 L. iii. sect. 9.

See this abundantly proved, Def. Fid. sect. iii. v.

2 Epist. ad Tit. c. 2.

3 Def. Fid. 2. vi. 3.

of Scripture, that the Son is consubstantial with the Father; and that he participates equally in the same nature with him; that he is not of any created or mutable essence, but of the very self-same divine and incommunicable nature with the Father; and I affirm this to be the constant and unanimous opinion of the Catholic writers of the three first centuries. These Fathers, indeed, did, by way of distinction, call God the Father, the supreme and most high God, and even the one God; but they also constantly acknowledge the true and undoubted divinity of the Son of God, as I have proved at large, in that section of my Defence of the Nicene Faith, which treats "of the subordination of the Son to the Father as to his origin and source.1 " Origen and Dionysius of Alexandria both speak decidedly on these points.

Court. We cannot now take their opinions, because all that we are endeavouring to prove relates to the belief of the two first centuries.

Att. Gen. We have proved this from the Christian writers before the Nicene Council; and it is equally necessary to show that the same belief was current, and prevailed from those times to the present.

Court. I admit this may be necessary by and by; but as we are are now speaking exclusively of opinions held by the Fathers before the Nicene

1 Def. Fid. sect. iv.

Council, adduce, therefore, some further proofs from the early Fathers.

Witness. Barnabas, who wrote A. D. 72, says that Christ existed before the world, and that he made the world; for if he had not come in flesh, how could we men have been saved when we looked at him? For when men look at the sun, the work of his hands, which will cease to exist, they have not power to resist its rays."-The work of whose hands? Christ's. It was, therefore, Christ who made the sun; but it is said in Genesis, that "God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day:" hence, according to Barnabas, God and Christ are the same. Clemens Alexandrinus speaks, also, very clearly upon the same point when he says, "But the most perfect and most holy, the highest and most commanding, the most royal and beneficent nature, is that of the Son, which is most intimately united with Him who is alone Almighty."2 I am willing to rest the argument of the Son's divine equality with the Father, upon this passage alone; for this account effectually excludes the idea of Christ being a corporeal, or even an angelic being: it identifies him with the Father in essence, and ascribes to him those attributes which only belong to God.

Ep. c. v. p. 16.

Strom. 1. vii. c. 2.