Professor Stuart is a very learned man, and thinks for himself.

It was a great novelty to me, to find him not only deny the orthodoxy of all the Fathers, (which was little more than Dr.Olinthus Gregory had done,) but avow that _from the change in speculative philosophy_ it was simply impossible for any modern to hold the views prevalent in the third and fourth centuries.

Nothing (said he) WAS clearer, than that with us the essential point in Deity is, to be unoriginated, underived; hence with us, _a derived God_ is a self-contradiction, and the very sound of the phrase profane.

On the other hand, it is certain that the doctrine of Athanasius, equally as of Arius, was, that the Father is the underived or self-existent God, but the Son is the derived subordinate God.
This (argued Stuart) turned upon their belief in the doctrine of Emanations; but as _we_ hold no such philosophical doctrine, the religious theory founded on it is necessarily inadmissible.

Professor Stuart then develops his own creed, which appeared to me simple and undeniable Sabellianism.
That Stuart correctly represented the Fathers was clear enough to me; but I nevertheless thought that in this respect the Fathers had honestly made out the doctrine of the Scripture; and I did not at all approve of setting up a battery of modern speculative philosophy against Scriptural doctrine.