It will be noted that Basil explains this passage on different grounds from those suggested by the Clause in the Athanasian Creed, on which Waterland’s remark is that it “needs no comment.”  St. Athanasius himself interpreted the “minority” not of the humanity, or of the special subordination of the time when the words were uttered.  cf. Ath., Orat. c. Ar. i. § 58:  “The Son says not ‘my Father is better than I,’ lest we should conceive Him to be foreign to His nature, but ‘greater,’ not indeed in size, nor in time, but because of His generation from the Father Himself; nay, in saying ‘greater,’ He again shews that He is proper to His essence” (Newman’s transl.).  The explanation given in Letter viii., p. 118, does include the inferiority as touching His manhood.