Now those controversies from the first with the Gnostics, the Cerinthians, Valentinians, Monarchians, Sabellians, Manichæans, Arians, and various others, related to the character of the Supreme Being, the Creator; the mode of Divine existence; the Trinity; the Person of Christ; and topics intimately connected with these. The changes and modifications of phraseology and sentiment which, for the sake of unity, or for other reasons, the more evangelical adopted, as in the Nicene Creed and in their theological writings, were regularly handed down to the period of the Reformation. These writings were studied, and had their influence with the Reformers, on their receding from the corruptions of Popery. In this way, a departure in some things from the patriarchal, the early Jewish and the primitive Christian faith, is believed to have taken place; particularly in the omission to ascribe the works of creation and providence to the Christ, in his delegated personal character as Mediator, and ascribing those works to the Father; and in adopting the sentiments that the mediatorial work commenced after the fall, and had for its sole object the salvation of men, and that his second coming and reign would not be personal and visible, but only spiritual, at least not until the final judgment and consummation of all things. The first of these errors--that of ascribing the creation to the Father personally, or to the invisible Deity, irrespective of any distinction of Persons in the Godhead--is to be traced back in the line of the Jews to the period of the Babylonish exile, and to the influences and state of mind under which they renounced idolatry, and with it the entire doctrine of mediation, and all belief in a divine, atoning, and interceding Messiah; and, obscuring by their traditions and glosses, or wholly rejecting, those prophecies which relate to the first advent and sufferings of the Saviour, looked for a human deliverer and temporal chief, a king to resume the throne of David, in those predictions of the second advent which indicate a period of universal peace and happiness.