Dean Stanley, in his _History of the Eastern Church_,[98] has well said that this is “one of those remarkable words which creep into the language of philosophy and theology and then suddenly acquire a permanent hold on the minds of men.” It was a word with a notable, if not a very remote past. It had been orthodox and heretical by turns, a fact which is not surprising when we consider the vagueness of the term “ousia” and the looseness with which it had been employed by philosophical writers. “It first distinctly appeared,” says Dean Stanley, “in the statement, given by Irenæus, of the doctrines of Valentius; then for a moment it acquired a more orthodox reputation in the writings of Dionysius and Theognostus of Alexandria; then it was coloured with a dark shade by association with the teaching of Manes; next proposed as a test of orthodoxy at the Council of Antioch against Paul of Samosata, and then by that same Council was condemned as Sabellian.” Obviously, therefore, it was not a word to command instantaneous acceptance; its old associations lent a certain specious weight to the repeated accusation of the Arians that the Trinitarians were importing into the Church fantastic subtleties borrowed from Greek philosophy, and were encrusting the simple faith and the simple language of Christ and the apostles with alien thoughts and formulæ. Athanasius meets that argument with a “_tu quoque_,” asking where in Scripture one can find the phrases which Arius had made his own. Modern theologians have replied with much greater force that this importation of philosophy into the Christian religion was inevitable. ----- Footnote 98: Lecture iv. ----- “The Church,” says Canon Bright,[99] “had come out into the open, had been obliged to construct a theological position against the tremendous attacks of Gnosticism and to provide for educated enquirers in the great centres of Greek learning. She had become conscious of her debt to the wise.” Elsewhere, in the same chapter, he says: “It would, indeed, have been childish to attempt to banish metaphysics from theology. Any religion with a doctrine about God or man must, as such, be metaphysical.” And for the Arians to complain of the borrowing of technical terms from philosophy by their opponents was palpably absurd. The whole _raison d’être_ of the Arian movement was its professed rationalism, its appeal to reason and logic, its consciousness, in other words, “of its debt to the wise,” and its desire to be able to debate boldly with the enemy in the gate. Really, therefore, the adoption of such a term was of great practical convenience, especially when once its meaning was rigidly defined. The Homoousion, whereby the Word or the Son was declared to be of one essence or substance with the Father, asserted the undiminished Divinity of the Son of God, through whom salvation came into the world. ----- Footnote 99: _Age of the Fathers_, chap. vi. -----