Hitherto we have been considering the relations within the Godhead of Father and Son, together with certain characters which belong to the Son in virtue of His eternal birth. We now come to the more original part of Hilary’s teaching, which must be treated in greater detail. Till now he has spoken only of the Son; he now comes to speak of Christ, the name which the Son bears in relation to the world. We have seen that Hilary regards the Son as the Creator This is one of Hilary’s many reminiscences of Origen. Athanasius brought the father into direct connection with the world; cf. Harnack, Dogmengesch. ii. 206 (ed. 3).. This was proved for him, as for Athanasius, by the passage, Proverbs viii. 22, which they read according to the Septuagint, ‘The Lord hath’ created Me for the beginning of His ways for His Works Trin. xii. 35 ff. The passage is treated at much greater length in Athanasius’ Discourses against the Arians, ii. 18 ff., where see Robertson’s notes..’ These words, round which the controversy raged, were interpreted by the orthodox as implying that at the time, and for the purpose, of creation the Father assigned new functions to the Son as His representative. The gift of these functions, the exercise of which called into existence orders of being inferior to God, marked in Hilary’s eyes a change so definite and important in the activity of the Son that it deserved to be called a second birth, not ineffable like the eternal birth, but strictly analogous to the Incarnation. This last was a creation, which brought Him within the sphere of created humanity; the creation of Wisdom for the beginning of God’s ways had brought Him, though less closely, into the same relation Trin. xii. 45; at the Incarnation Christ is ‘created in the body,’ and this is connected with His creation for the beginning of the ways of God., and the Incarnation is the completion of what was begun in preparation for the creation of the world. Creation is the mode by which finite being begins, and the beginning of each stage in the connection between the infinite Son and His creatures is called, from the one point of view, a creation, from the other, a birth. We cannot fail to see here an anticipation of the opinion that ‘the true Protevangelium is the revelation of Creation, or in other words that the Incarnation was independent of the Fall Westcott, essay on ‘The Gospel of Creation,’ in his edition of St. John’s Epistles, where, however Hilary is not mentioned.,’ for the Incarnation is a step in the one continuous divine progress from the Creation to the final consummation of all things, and has not sin for its cause, but is part of the original counsel of God Cf. Trin. xi. 49.. Together with this new office the Son receives a new name. Henceforth Hilary calls Him Christ; He is Christ in relation to the world, as He is Son in relation to the Father. From the beginning of time, then, the Son becomes Christ and stands in immediate relation to the world; it is in and through Christ that God is the Author of all things Trin. ii. 6, xii. 4, &c. He is also often named Jesus Christ in this connection, e.g. Trin. iv. 6., and the title of Creator strictly belongs to the Son. This beginning of time, we must remember, is hidden in no remote antiquity. The world had no mysterious past; it came into existence suddenly at a date which could be fixed with much precision, some 5,600 years before Hilary’s day According to Eusebius’ computation, which Hilary would probably accept without dispute, there were 5,228 years from the creation to our Lord’s commencement of his mission in the 15th year of Tiberius, a.d. 29., and had undergone no change since then. Before that date there had been nothing outside the Godhead; from that time forth the Son has stood in constant relation to the created world.