THE DECLINE AND FALL
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chap, ous, and even fetal, to mistake, became the fa-
XXI 7 7
miliar topic of private meditation and populardiscourse. The cold indifference of philoso-phy was inflamed by the fervent spirit of devo-tion ; and even the metaphors of common lan-guage suggested the fallacious prejudices ofsense and experience. The Christians , who ab-horred the gross and'impure generation of theGreek mythology, m were tempted to argue fromthe familiar analogy of the filial and paternalrelations. The character of Son seemed to imply a perpetual subordination to the voluntaryauthor of his existencebut as the act of gene-ration, in the most spiritual and abstractedsense, must be supposed to transmit the proper-ties of a common nature , 8 they durst not pre-sume to circumscribe the powers or the dura-tion of the son of an eternal and omnipotent fa-ther. Fourscore years after the death of Christ,the Christians of Bithynia declared, before thetribunal of Pliny , that they invoked him as agod; and his divine honours have been perpe-tuated in every age and country, by the various
m Lactantius , iv, 8. Yet the Probole or Pfolatio, which the mostorthodox divines borrowed without scruple from the Valentinians,and illustrated by the comparisons of a fountain and stream, thesnn and its rays, &c. either meant nothing, or favoured a materialidea of the divine generation. See Beausobre, tom . i, 1. iii, c. 7,p. 548.
“ Many of the primitive writers have frankly confessed, that theSon owed his being to the will of the Father. See Clarke’s ScriptureTrinity, p. 280-287. On the other hand, Athanasius and his followersseem unwilling to grant what they arc afraid to deny. The schoolmenextricate themselves from this difficulty by the distinction of a preced-ing and concomitant will. Petav. Dogm. Theolog . tom. ii, 1. vi,c.8, p.687-603.