What Bull and Waterland have urged in defence of the Nicene Fathers is (like every thing else from such men) most worthy of all attention. They contend that no other term but [Greek: homoousía] could secure the Christian faith against both the two contrary errors, Tritheism with subversion of the unity of the Godhead on the one hand, and creature-worship on the other. For, to use Waterland's mode of argument, [4] either Eusebius of Nicomedia with the four other dissenters at Nice were right or wrong in their assertion, that Christ could not be of the [Greek: ousía] of the self-originated First by derivation, as a son from a father:--if they were right, they either must have discovered some third distinct and intelligible form of origination in addition to 'begotten' and 'created', or they had not and could not. Now the latter was notoriously the fact. Therefore to deny the [Greek: homoousía] was implicitly to deny the generation of the second Person, and thus to assert his creation. But if he was a creature, he could not be adorable without idolatry. Nor did the chain of inevitable consequences stop here. His characteristic functions of Redeemer, Mediator, King, and final Judge, must all cease to be attributable to Christ; and the conclusion is, that between the Homoousian scheme and mere Psilanthropism there is no intelligible 'medium'. If this, then, be not a fundamental article of faith, what can be? To this reasoning I really can discern no fair reply within the sphere of conceptual logic, if it can be made evident that the term [Greek: homooúsios] is really capable of achieving the end here set forth. One objection to the term is, that it was not translatable into the language of the Western Church. Consubstantial is not the translation: 'substantia' answers to [Greek: hypóstasis], not to [Greek: ousía]; and hence, when [Greek: hypóstasis] was used by the Nicene Fathers in distinction from [Greek: ousía], the Latin Church was obliged to render it by some other word, and thus introduced that most unhappy and improper term 'persona'. Would you know my own inward judgment on this question, it is this: first, that this pregnant idea, the root and form of all ideas, is not within the sphere of conceptual logic,--that is, of the understanding,--and is therefore of necessity inexpressible; for no idea can be adequately represented in words:--secondly, that I agree with Bull and Waterland against Bishop Taylor, that there was need of a public and solemn decision on this point:--but, lastly, that I am more than doubtful respecting the fitness or expediency of the term [Greek: homooúsios], and hold that the decision ought to have been negative. For at first all parties agreed in the positive point, namely, that Christ was the Son of God, and that the Son of God was truly God, "or very God of very God." All that was necessary to be added was, that the only begotten Son of God was not created nor begotten in time. More than this