Yet surely this would have been Athanasius's most legitimate form of denying Semi-Arianism.

In short, the Scriptural phrase, _Son of God_, conveyed to us either a literal fact, or a metaphor.

If literal, the Semi-Arians were clearly right, in saying that sonship implied a beginning of existence.

If it was a metaphor, the Athanasians forfeited all right to press the literal sense in proof that the Son must be "of the same substance" as the Father .-- Seeing that the Athanasians, in zeal to magnify the Son, had so confounded their good sense, I was certainly startled to find a man of Dr.Olinthus Gregory's moral wisdom treat the Nicenists as in obvious error for not having magnified Christ _enough_.

On so many other sides, however, I met with the new and short creed, "Jesus is Jehovah," that I began to discern Sabellianism to be the prevalent view.
A little later, I fell in with a book of an American Professor, Moses Stuart of Andover, on the subject of the Trinity.