But the majority of theories expressed under various metaphors the idea, which was relative to the other theory of creation, that in some way the _Logos_ had come forth from God. The rival hypotheses as to the nature of creation were reconciled by the hypothesis that, though the world was created out of nothing, it was so created by the _Logos_, who was not created by God, but came forth from Him. The metaphors were chiefly those of the “putting forth” (προβολή, _prolatio_), as of the leaves or fruit of a plant, and of the begetting of a son. They were in use before the doctrine of the _Logos_ had established itself, and some of them were originally relative, not to the _Logos_, but to other conceptions of mediation between God and the world. They were supplemented by the metaphors, which also were in earlier use, of the flowing of water from a spring, and of the radiation of light.[531] That there was not originally any important distinction between them, is shown both by the express disclaimer of Irenæus and by the fact of their use in combination in the same passages of the same writers. The combination was important. The metaphors supplemented each other. Each of them contained an element in the theory which ultimately expressed the settled judgment of the Christian world. The main difficulty which they presented was that of an apparent inconsistency with the belief in the unity of God. The doctrine of the “sole monarchy” of God, which had been strongly maintained against those who explained the difficulties of the world by the hypothesis of two Gods in conflict, seemed to be running another kind of danger in the very ranks of its defenders. The _Logos_ who reflected God and revealed Him to rational creatures, who also contained in himself the form and forces of the material world, must be in some sense God. In Athenagoras there is a pure monism: “God is Himself all things to Himself, unapproachable light, a perfect universe, spirit, force, _logos_.”[532] But in other writers the idea of development or generation, however lightly the metaphor might be pressed, seemed to involve an existence of the _Logos_ both outside God and posterior to Him.[533] He was the “first-born,” the “first offspring of God,” the “first force after the Father of all and the Lord God;” for “as the beginning, before all created things, God begat from Himself a kind of rational Force, which is called by the Holy Spirit (i.e. the Old Testament) sometimes ‘the Glory of the Lord,’ sometimes ‘Son,’ sometimes ‘Wisdom,’ sometimes ‘Angel,’ sometimes ‘God,’ sometimes ‘Lord and _Logos_,’ sometimes he speaks of himself as ‘Captain of the Lord’s host:’ for he has all these appellations, both from his ministering to the Father’s purpose and from his having been begotten by the Father’s pleasure.”[534] It follows that “there is, and is spoken of, another God and Lord beneath the Maker of the universe.”[535] The theory