thus formulated tended to ditheism and was openly accused of it.[536] It was saved from the charge by the gradual formulating of two distinctions, both of which came from external philosophy, one of them being an inheritance from Stoicism, the other from Neo-Platonism.[537] The one was that the generation or development had taken place within the sphere of Deity itself: the generation had not taken place by the severing of a part from the whole, as though the Divine nature admitted of a division,[538] but by distinction of function or by multiplication, as many torches may be lit from one without diminishing the light of that one.[539] The other was that the generation had been eternal. In an early statement of the theory it was held that it had taken place in time: it was argued that “God could not have been a Father before there was a Son, but there was a time when there was not a Son.”[540] But the influence of the other metaphors in which the relation was expressed overpowered the influences which came from pressing the conception of paternity. Light, it was argued, could never have been without its capacity to shine.[541] The Supreme Mind could never have been without His Thought. The Father Eternal was always a Father, the Son was always a Son.[542] (ii.) The question of the nature of the eternally-begotten _Logos_ was answered variously, according as the supra-cosmic or the transcendental idea of God was dominant in a writer’s mind.[543] To Justin Martyr, God is conceived as supra-cosmic. He abides “in the places that are above the heavens:” the “first-begotten,” the _Logos_, is the “first force after the Father:” he is “a second God, second numerically but not in will,” doing only the Father’s pleasure.[544] It is uncertain how far the idea of personality entered into this view. There is a similar uncertainty in the view of Theophilus, who introduced the Stoical distinction between the two aspects of the _Logos_, thought and speech—“ratio” and “oratio;”[545] while Tertullian still speaks of “virtus” side by side with these. It was only gradually that the subject was raised to the higher plane, from which it never afterwards descended, by the spread and dominance of the transcendental as distinguished from the supra-cosmic conception of God. It came, as we have already seen, mainly from the schools of Alexandria. It is in Basilides, in whom thought advanced to the belief that God transcended not merely phenomena but being, that the conception of a quasi-physical influence emanating from Him is seen to be first expressly abandoned.[546] But the place of the later doctrine in the Christian Church is mainly due to Origen. He uses many of the same expressions as Tertullian, but with another meaning. The Saviour is God, not by partaking, but by essence.[547] He is begotten of the very essence of the Father. The generation is an outflow as of light from light.