our worship as
the image of the Father, begotten before all worlds, as the Son of God,
by whom all things were made, who for us men took flesh and suffered and
rose again, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, and remains
both King and God for ever. Is not this a good confession? What more can
we want? Why should all this glorious language go for nothing? God
forbid that it should go for nothing. Arianism was at least so far
Christian that it held aloft the Lord's example as the Son of Man, and
never wavered in its worship of him as the Son of God. Whatever be the
errors of its creed, whatever the scandals of its history, it was a
power of life among the Northern nations. Let us give Arianism full
honour for its noble work of missions in that age of deep despair which
saw the dissolution of the ancient world.

[Sidenote: Its real meaning.]

Nevertheless, this plausible Arian confession will not bear examination.
It is only the philosophy of the day put into a Christian dress. It
starts from the accepted belief that the unity of God excludes not only
distinctions inside the divine nature, but also contact with the world.
Thus the God of Arius is an unknown God, whose being is hidden in
eternal mystery. No creature can reveal him, and he cannot reveal
himself. But if he is not to touch the world, he needs a minister of
creation. The Lord is rather such a minister than the conqueror of death
and sin. No doubt he is the Son of God, and begotten before all worlds.
Scripture is quite clear so far; but if he is distinct from the Father,
he is not God; and if he is a Son, he is not co-eternal with the Father.
And what is not God is creature, and what is not eternal is also
creature. On both grounds, then, the Lord is only a creature; so that if
he is called God, it is in a lower and improper sense; and if we speak
of him as eternal, we mean no more than the eternity of all things in
God's counsel. Far from sharing the essence of the Father, he does not
even understand his own. Nay, more; he is not even a creature of the
highest type. If he is not a sinner, (Scripture forbids at least _that_
theory, though some Arians came very near it), his virtue is, like our
own, a constant struggle of free-will, not the fixed habit which is the
perfection and annulment of free-will. And now that his human soul is
useless, we may as well simplify the incarnation into an assumption of
human flesh and nothing more. The Holy Spirit bea