These brief references may serve to show that the ascription of the work of creation by some to the Father, in such a manner as to indicate that it is his personally, and by others to the Deity, in distinction from the delegated official Person and work of the Mediator, owed its origin primarily to the nature of the heresies and controversies by which the Church was agitated, and the methods of the orthodox in defending the doctrines of the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ, against the Judaizers, the Gnostics, the Arians, and others; and was handed down in their treatises and creeds from one age to another. In the same way the doctrine of _eternal_ generation, and all the phraseology in the Nicene Creed, for example, respecting the Son, which is not to be found in like terms in the Holy Scriptures, appears to have arisen. And it is to be observed that, in close connection with these opinions as adopted by Protestants, is the doctrine that the personal and official work of the Mediator had respect only to the redemption of man, and commenced in personal acts not till his appearance incarnate. In view of the origin, nature, and tendency of the heresies above referred to, their extended influence, and the manner in which they were controverted, one can hardly avoid the conclusion, that the order of Divine instruction in the most essential particulars was inverted, by the assumption of some and the acquiescence therein of others, that the Old Testament revealed only the one invisible Deity absolutely considered, as the Creator and Governor of the world, whose oneness or unity was so regarded by one class as to preclude the idea of any personal distinction in the Godhead; and so regarded by many others, who held both the unity and the distinction of Persons, as to lead them, irrespective of that distinction, to ascribe the works of creation and providence to the one Supreme Deity, or to the Father. Of the class first above mentioned were the Jews at the period of the Incarnation. They therefore opposed and rejected the Messiah, on account of his Divine pretensions, making himself a distinct Person of the Godhead, equal with God. They looked not for a Messiah of such a character, nor for deliverance from sin through faith in his vicarious sufferings, nor for a salvation which was to be extended to the Gentiles. They held to justification by their ritual services and obedience to the law of Moses, and desired only a Messiah or leader who should deliver them from temporal evils.