(i.) The first result was the formulating of the speculations in definite propositions, and the insertion of such propositions in the Creed. The theory was that such insertions were of the nature of definitions and interpretations of the original belief. The mass of communities have never wandered from the belief that they rest upon an original revelation preserved by a continuous tradition. But a definition of what has hitherto been undefined is necessarily of the nature of an addition. Perhaps the earliest instance which has come down to us of such an expansion of the Creed, is in the letter sent by Hymenæus, Bishop of Jerusalem, and his colleagues to Paul of Samosata.[703] The faith which had been handed down from the beginning is “that God is unbegotten, one, without beginning, unseen, unchangeable, whom no man hath seen nor can see, whose glory and greatness it is impossible for human nature to trace out adequately; but we must be content to have a moderate conception of Him: His Son reveals Him ... as he himself says, ‘No man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son revealeth Him.’ We confess and proclaim His begotten Son, the only begotten, the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature, the wisdom and word and power of God, being before the worlds, God not by foreknowledge but by essence and substance.” They had passed into the realm of metaphysics. The historical facts of the earlier creed were altogether obscured. Belief was belief in certain speculations. The conception of the nature of belief had travelled round a wide circuit. It will be noted that there had been a change in the meaning of the word which has lasted until our own day. The belief in the veracity of a witness, or in facts of which we are cognizant through our senses, or the primary convictions of our minds—in which I may include the belief in God—admit of a degree of certainty which cannot attach to the belief in deductions from metaphysical premises.[704] Belief came to mean, not the highest form of conviction, but something lower than conviction, and it tends to have that meaning still. But with this change in the nature of belief, there had been no change in the importance which was attached to it. The acceptance of these philosophical speculations was as important as the belief in God and in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The tendency developed, and we find it developing all through the fourth century. In the Nicene Council the tendency was politically more important, but it was not theologically different from what had gone before. The habit of defining and of making inferences from definitions, grew the more as the philosophers passed over into the Christian lines, and logicians and metaphysicians presided over Christian churches. The speculations which were then agreed upon became stamped as a body of truth, and with the still deeper speculations of the Councils of