It may help us to a right use of the Creeds in worship, if we think of these controversies as the meditations of a very large family. When a deliberation can be held in a room, we can quietly put forward a suggestion, quietly find out what fault there is in it, and as quietly substitute a better statement than the first, guarded from the error into which we were likely to fall. But when the family which deliberates is distributed around such a space as the Mediterranean Sea, the voices are apt to become loud and harsh: instead of tentative suggestions, diffidently put forward, we are likely to hear dogmatic assertions, made with {119} all the energy of the human lungs. The voices which arose from the members of that Parliament of the Faith present a greater variety of languages than the tongues at Pentecost. In the Church's Meditation on the Being of God, and on the Person of Jesus, we hear the Spaniard, the Gaul, the Welshman, Italian, Greek, Syrian, Armenian, Alexandrian; there are voices from Arles, and from Carthage, as well as from Samosata on the Euphrates, and Jerusalem on its holy hill, and Caesarea on the sea-shore. We have to regard the Mediterranean Sea as the Council Table, with chairs at the back for such as could not find places on its shores. Three continents faced one another at an oval table, 13,000 miles in circumference. Even in thoughtful meditation, a voice must be raised to be heard in such a conference. This will to some extent explain how it happened that men, whom we account orthodox, are occasionally found uttering what we will call _suggestions_, unorthodox in character. I. _About God's Being_. 1. _The Jew_. There is but One God. 2. _The Ebionite_. Then Christ is but a Man divinely endowed--the only man so divinely endowed. 3. _St John_. No! He is the Word. By Him all things were made; the Word was God and was made flesh. 4. _The Sabellian_. Then perhaps,--God being One and being made flesh,--the Word, and the Holy Ghost, are but manifestations of God. {120} 5. _The Catholick Church_. No! They are Persons. A Father and a Son are different persons. 6. _The Arian_. Then, if the Father is a real father, and the Son a real son, perhaps the Father was before the Son, and the Son was made. 7. The Catholick Church. This will not do; because the Sonship would not be real sonship unless the Godhead were equal. The Godhead of the Son must be the same Godhead as that of the Father. 8. _Macedonius_. But at any rate the Holy Ghost may be a creature, or a manifestation of God the Father. 9. _The Catholick Church_. That will not do either; for His Personal Being and Godhead are implied by some verses; and in various passages He is ranked with the Father and the Son. 10. _The Semi-Arian_. Then you really say that there is an actual equality of the Three Persons, and yet that there is but one God? 11. _The Catholick Church_. Yes! That is the Catholick Faith.