But did I proceed to deny the Divinity of the Son? By no means: I conceived of him as in the highest and fullest sense divine, short of being Father and not Son. I now believed that by the phrase "only begotten Son," John, and indeed Christ himself, meant to teach us that there was an unpassable chasm between him and all creatures, in that he had a true, though a derived divine nature; an indeed the Nicene Creed puts the contrast, he was "begotten, not made." Thus all Divine glory dwells in the Son, but it is _because_ the Father has willed it. A year or more afterward, when I had again the means of access to books, and consulted that very common Oxford book, "Pearson on the Creed," (for which I had felt so great a distaste that I never before read it)--I found this to be the undoubted doctrine of the great Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, who laid much emphasis on two statements, which with the modern Church are idle and dead--viz. that "the Son was _begotten_ of his Father _before all worlds_," and that "the Holy Spirit _proceedeth from_ the Father and the Son." In the view of the old Church, the Father alone was the Fountain of Deity,--(and _therefore_ fitly called, The One God,--and, the Only True God)--while the Deity of the other two persons was real, yet derived and subordinate. Moreover, I found in Gregory Nazianzen and others, that to confess this derivation of the Son and Spirit and the underivedness of the Father alone, was in their view quite essential to save Monotheism; the _One_ God being the underived Father.