I do not, however, imagine that Alexander and Arius were of one mind in all the parts of this controversy. They seemed to differ in the following things. Particularly about the strict eternity of the generation of the Son. Alexander affirmed, that it was “absolutely without beginning;” and, that there was no imaginary point of time in which the Father was prior to the Son; and, that the soul could not conceive or think of any distance between them. Arius, on the other hand, maintained, “The Son hath a beginning, there was a time when he was not;” by which he did not mean, that he was not before all times and ages, or the creation of the worlds visible and invisible; but that the very notion of begetting and begotten doth necessarily, in the very nature of things, imply, that the begetter must be some point of time, at least in our conception, prior to what is begotten. And this is agreeable to the ancient doctrine of the primitive fathers. They held, indeed, many of them,[88] such as Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Novatian, Lactantius, &c. that Logos, i. e. power, wisdom, and reason, existed in God the Father strictly from eternity, but without any proper hypostasis or personality of its own. But that before the creation of the worlds, God the Father did emit, or produce, or generate this Logos, reason or wisdom; whereby, what was before the internal Logos, or wisdom of the Father, existing eternally in and inseparably from him, had now its proper hypostasis, subsistence, or personality. Not that the Father hereby became “destitute of reason,” but that this production proceeded after an ineffable and inexplicable manner. And this production of the Word some of them never scrupled to affirm was posterior to the Father, and that the Father was prior to the Son as thus begotten. They considered the Son under a twofold character, as the reason, and as the word of God. As “the reason of God,” he was eternally in the Father, “unoriginated, unbegotten, underived.” As “the word of God,” he was Missus, Creatus, Genitus, Prolatus, and received his distinct subsistence and personality then, when God said, “Let there be light;” and on this account the Father was, as Novatian speaks, “as a Father prior to the Son.” And, as Tertullian says, “God is a Father and a Judge. But it doth not thence follow that he was always a Father and always a Judge, because always God: for he could not be a Father before the Son, nor a Judge before the offence. But there was a time when there was no offence, and when the Son was not, by which God became a Judge and Father.” ----- Footnote 88: Dial. p. 112. 413. p. 20, &c. De Reg. fid. p. 240. De ver. Sap. p. 371. -----