-v:-v / THE ANGUS LECTURESHIP II THE CHRISTIAN CREED AND THE CREEDS OF CHRISTENDOM SEVEN LECTURES DELIVERED IN 1898 AT REGENT’S PARK COLLEGE LONDON BY yy SAMUEL G. '’GREEN, B.A., D.D. iLontion MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY I898 All rights reserved . Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/christiancreedcrOOgree PRELIMINARY NOTE The Angus Lectureship has its origin in a Fund raised as a Testimonial to the Rev. Joseph Angus, M.A., D.D., as an expression of the sense entertained by the subscribers of his character and services as President of the Baptist Theological College formerly situated at Stepney and now at Regent’s Park, London. Dr. Angus having inti- mated his desire that the Fund should be devoted to the establishment of a permanent Lectureship in connection with the College, a Trust has been constituted for the purpose ; ‘ its income to be administered and applied by the College Com- mittee for the establishment and maintenance of a Lectureship, to be called “ The Angus Lecture- ship,” in connection with the said College, for the delivery of periodic Lectures on great questions connected with Systematic, Practical, or Pastoral VI THE CHRISTIAN CREED Theology, or the Evidences and Study of the Bible, or Christian Missions, or Church History, or kindred subjects.’ It is further provided that the College Com- mittee, in conjunction with the Trustees, shall once in two years, or oftener (should exceptional circumstances render it desirable), ‘ appoint and engage a Lecturer, who shall ordinarily be a member of the Baptist denomination, but who may occasionally be a member of any other body of Evangelical Christians, to deliver a course of not more than eight Lectures, on some subject of the nature hereinbefore mentioned.’ In accordance with these provisions, the Rev. Dr. Angus delivered, at Regent’s Park College, in the year 1896, a Course of Six Lectures on RE- GENERATION, afterwards published. The Second Course, delivered in 1898, is con- tained in the following volume. Note. — The sentences above marked as quotations are from the Deed of Trust, executed March 1896. CONTENTS LECTURE I INTRODUCTORY PAGE Creed, the Expression of Faith on its Intel- lectual Side 2 Different aspects of Faith : ‘The Faith’ ... 4 Dogma and doctrine ....... 5 Futility of a non-doctrinal religion ..... 8 Importance of Clear, Well-grounded Doctrinal Belief 9 Truth to be sought for its own sake .... 10 Connection between Belief and Salvation . . .10 Opposite tendencies of thought to be avoided . . 12 1. Attributing a necessary moral quality to belief 12 2. Regarding belief as morally indifferent . . 13 Verification, a test of doctrines .... 18 The attestation of experience . . . . . . 19 The formation of Beliefs ...... 20 To be worth anything, they must be a man’s own . . 21 Yet they first come through Authority . . .21 Help from Dogma ....... 22 But not submission to Church Authority ... 23 The claim examined ..... 23 A certain authority conceded ... 24 General Councils : Majorities ... 26 But nothing can supersede individual responsibility . 28 Ruskin on Church Authority ..... 30 The true function of the Church . . . 31 Ecclesia docens . . . . . . . 3 1 VIII THE CHRISTIAN CREED PAGE Attitude of the true disciple . . 31 Scripture, Conscience, Reason .... 32 Creeds as guide-posts : the Spirit as Life . 33 LECTURE II THE EARLIEST CREEDS Contrast between the Method of Scripture and the Method of the Churches 34 Yet the Formation of Creed in Accordance with the Laws of Thought 35 Bible Creeds : Old Testament and New 35 Spontaneous Confessions of Disciples ... 36 Apostolic references to ‘ type ’ or ‘ form ’ of Doctrine 37 Articles of Belief indicated in the Epistles . . 38 The Baptismal Commission. Symbolum ... 42 Its expansion into Creed ..... 43 The Three Creeds 43 1. The Apostles’ Creed 44 Not formulated by the Apostles. Legends as to its o ri g'n 45 Course of its development ..... 46 Traces in early Christian Literature ... 47 Irenseus, Tertullian, Cyprian ... 47 The primitive Roman Creed .... 49 Additional Articles : final form of the Creed . 50 Particular Articles discussed . . .51 Reception of the Creed by the several Churches 54 2. The Nicene Creed 55 Settlement by Councils : a new departure . . 56 Main purpose of the Creed . . ... 56 The Homoiousion conflict .... 58 Original form and supplemental Articles ... 61 Councils of Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon . 63 Fourfold form of errors repudiated ... 64 Reception of the Creed by the Churches . . 66 The Filioque ...... 66 CONTENTS IX PAGE 3. The Athanasian Creed (or the Hymn Qt/icunque) 68 Not by Athanasius : its probable origin ... 69 A document of affirmation rather than of explanation 70 Its chief purpose . . . . . 71 The terms ‘ Trinity ’ and ‘ Person ’ : how employed . . . . . . .71 English translation . . . . -72 Revision proposed : the anathematising clauses ....... 73 Discussions in the English Church . . 74 Safeguards of Orthodoxy .... 76 LECTURE III CONFESSIONS OF THE REFORMATION PERIOD Chief Characteristic of the Earlier Creeds . . 78 Theology and Christology, not Anthropology or Soteri- ology 79 Theological Discussions in the Western Church . 80 Rise of Sacerdotalism and Sacramentarianism . . 80 Formulated Dogmas and Beliefs .... 81 Movement toward higher religious ideals : ‘Heresies’ . 82 Precursors of the Reformation ..... 83 Martin Luther: the Ninety-five Theses, 1517. . 84 Beginning of the era of Confessions : Luther’s Catechisms 85 Ulrich Zwingli : the Sixty-seven Conclusions . 86 The Ten Articles of Berne ...... 87 Meeting of Luther and Zwingli : Articles agreed upon . 88 Diet at Augsburg 90 Confession, prepared by Melanchthon . . . 91 Reply by Dr. Eck, and Melanchthon’s Defence . 96 Articles of Schmalkald .... • • ■ 97 ‘ Confessions ’ and ‘ Creeds ’ : distinction ... 97 Confessions intended for reconciliation . . 98 Heads of the Augsburg Confession .... 99 Progress of the Swiss Reformation : leading principles . 101 b X THE CHRISTIAN CREED PAGE John Calvin : his Institutes 103 The Two Swiss Confessions ...... 104 Calvin’s Catechism ....... 105 The Heidelberg Catechism : its prevailing spirit . . 106 The Harmony of Confessions ...... 109 Second Generation of Continental Protestantism, iio ‘ Evangelical’ and ‘ Reformed ’ Churches . . .110 The Lutheran Formula of Concord . . . .110 Note on the Helvetic Formula of Consent . . 1 1 1 Activity of Romish Theologians 112 The Council of Trent . . . . . . .112 Creed of Tope Pius the Fourth . . . 113 Comparison of Dates .114 LECTURE IV BRITISH CONFESSIONS OF FAITH Characteristics of the British Reformation — Two Opposing Forces 116 The Ten Articles of Henry VIII. : ‘ The Bishops’ Book ’ 1 1 7 Negotiations with the Lutherans . . . . .121 The Thirteen Articles . . . . . .122 Reaction : Act of the Six Articles : ‘ The King’s Book ’ . 122 Publication of the English Bible . . . .123 Persecution: Melanchthon’s ineffectual protest . 124 Accession of Edward VI. — Cranmer’s proposals for general Protestant Union . . 125 His letters to Melanchthon, Calvin, and Bullinger . 126 Frustration of the scheme : its fatal defect . 127 The Forty-two Articles, 1552 ..... 127 Death of Edward : arrest of the Protestant movement 12S Accession of Elizabeth — Provisional scheme of Eleven Articles . . . .128 The Thirty-nine Articles of Archbishop Parker . .129 Differences from the Forty-two of Cranmer . .129 Proposed Lambeth Articles . . . . . . 13 1 CONTENTS xi PAGE Accession of James I. : His Directions to Preachers 132 Accession of Charles I. — Injunction to accept and believe the Articles . . .133 Scottish Confessions — First by John Knox, 1530 ...... 134 Special points in this Confession . . 135 Theory of National Religion 136 Uprise of Puritanism in Great Britain . . . 137 Robert Browne and the Independents . . . -138 Ainsworth’s Confession, 1578 . . . . .138 Confession of Baptists in Holland, 1611 . . . 139 The latter non-Calvinistic . . . 1 39 Growth of Arminianism 140 Synod of Dort, 1619 ....... 141 The Quinquarticular Formula .... 141 John Robinson, and his Valedictory Address at Leyden 142 The Long Parliament and the Westminster As- sembly, 1643 — Composition of the Assembly . . . . .144 Its proceedings : Confession and Catechisms . . . 144 Struggles for Freedom of Conscience : how resisted . 147 Presbyterians and Independents . . . . .148 The Commonwealth — A new Confession proposed . . . . . 1 49 The Savoy Declaration, 1658 . . . .150 The Baptists and the Westminster Assembly . . 150 The Fifty-two Baptist Articles of 1644 .... 151 Accession of Charles II. — Arminian Confession of 1660 . . . . . -152 The Revolution — Baptist Confessions of 1677 and 1689 .... 152 The days of John Bunyan . . . .152 XU THE CHRISTIAN CREED PAGE The Society ok Friends — Robert Barclay’s Apology . . . . . .153 Modern Confessions : Congregationalism . . -155 Union of ‘General’ and ‘ Particular ’ Baptists . 155 LECTURE V VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF CREEDS Creed and Scripture 157 Certain Advantages in Declarations of Belief — 1. Historical : — The Creeds an index to men’s thoughts about God, and to the changeful, progressive life of the Church . . . . . . . .158 2. Expository : — Help from the interpretation of competent minds . 159 3. Aids to clearness of thought : — Technicalities of theology thus serviceable . . 160 Creeds give definite form to our own conceptions . 161 Yet the Standard not Absolute and Final — 1. The Creed, at the best, man’s version of God’s Word 162 This Word we have, set forth in God’s own way . 162 The Creed is definite : Scripture is inexhaustible . 163 Illustrations from various Confessions . .164 Shall we then construct our Creed simply of classified Texts?. . . . . . .167 Difficulties of such method . . . .167 The selection necessarily incomplete . .168 Choice and arrangement of texts itself a comment . . . . . .168 Use of ‘ Proof-Texts ’ : illustrations . . . 169 Right and wrong ways of dealing with Scrip- ture • .171 The so-called ‘ Higher Criticism ’ . . 172 CONTENTS xiu PAGE 2. The Creed but the voice of a single age . . 1 73 Changes in the perspective of truth . . . 1 73 Marks of conflict in the Creeds . . . 174 Anachronisms in the use of ancient Creeds . 175 New questions for every age . . . . .176 Progressiveness in Theology — Differentiated from other sciences . . . . 177 Room for new generalisations and larger induction . .178 Truth itself eternally the same . . . . .178 But human conceptions of the truth admit of development 178 Theology has actually progressed . . . . 1 79 Illustrations: Doctrine of Atonement . . 1 79 The Fatherhood of God . . .180 Doctrine of the Incarnate and Risen Christ — The main subject of the early Creeds . . . .180 The modern spirit : ‘ The Return to Christ ’ . . . 181 Not wholly in the ancient metaphysical sense . . 181 Nor with limitation to Plis earthly life . . .182 Theology more than Ethics in Christ’s teaching 182 Gospel of a living Saviour . . . . .183 Meaning of His Resurrection and Reign . . . 184 The ‘ Real Presence’ . . . . .185 Poetic contrasts : Scepticism and Faith . . . 186 ‘God in Christ ’ : Incarnation an Eternal purpose . 190 An ancient question : Miltonic theology . . . 191 Way to the Deeper Understanding of God and Man 193 LECTURE VI ON SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH Nica;a : the Requirement of Constantine . . 194 Beginnings of Evasion in Creed-Signature . . 195 Unity of the Church preserved by Law, not by Subscription xg6 XIV THE CHRISTIAN CREED PAGE Demand of Rome : Acceptance of Dogmas on Autho- rity 196 The Protestant Position: Assent to Dogmas Sever- ally 197 Extremes in such requirement. Duke J ulius of Brunswick 1 98 Law of Subscription in Great Britain — Proposals of Cranmer in 1552 ..... 198 Method of distinguishing Romanist from Protestant Clergy 199 Moderate provisions for carrying out the pro- posals ........ 199 First enforcement of subscription in 1571 . . 200 Requirement by Act of Uniformity in 1662 . . 201 Conditions under the Act of Toleration ; and their repeal 201 Burdens increasingly felt by the Clergy .... 202 Relaxation of subscription in 1865 .... 203 Forms of subscription in non-Episcopal bodies . . 203 The Presbyterians : modifications . . . 204 The Congregational Union : resolution of 1878 205 The Baptist Union : statement of 1888 . . 206 Criticism of this statement .... 208 ‘ Prevalent uneasiness ’ as a ground for such declarations 209 The Evangelical Alliance and its Articles . 210 The ‘ Alliance ’ undertaking the proper work of the Church . . . . . . .210 Limitations in its statements . . .212 Question whether Subscription is not Requisite at least from Teachers — Convenience in this requirement ..... 214 But, 1. Subscription is not needful to definite belief . . 215 2. Every true Teacher must form his own creed . . 216 A responsibility not to be evaded . . .216 3. The Teacher has better ways of intimating his belief 217 A mutual understanding between Pastor and People 218 4. Ambiguities of language make Subscription dubious 219 Changes in the significance of terms . . .219 CONTENTS xv PAGE 5. Subscription tempts to evasion and insincerity . 220 Illustration from the old requirement from under- graduates . . . . . . .221 Explanations by Chillingworth, Paley, Dr. Arnold 222 ‘ Multitudinism ’ ; ‘ Non-natural sense ’ . . 224 Oxford Tract No. 90 and its conclusions . . 225 Difference between doubtful meanings in Creed and in Scripture ... . . . . 227 Comprehensive phrases with diverse possible meanings ....... 228 6. Subscription has not in fact been a safeguard of orthodoxy ....... 229 Modern illustrations in literature .... 229 Case of Professor Jowett ..... 230 Conflict in conscientious minds . . . . -231 Freedom does not Lead to License . . . .231 Agreement closest where Subscription is not im- posed . . 232 Basis of Church Fellowship, Renewal of Life — The Spirit in the Church may be trusted . . . 233 Human authority renounced for the yoke of the Divine . 233 Encumbrances mistaken for bulwarks (quotation from Dean Stanley) ........ 233 LECTURE VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITH : THE CATHOLIC CHURCH OF THE FUTURE How to Deal with Those who Differ from Us — ■ 1. Agreement in opinion is not to be substituted for the yoke of charity. The New Testament rule . . . 235 Differences in opinion consisting with unity of heart 236 1 Toleration ’ an inadequate description of our attitude 237 XVI THE CHRISTIAN CREED PAGE 2. Assured belief does not imply absolute certainty . . 238 Practically, many mistake their own certainty for infallibility ........ 239 Two opposite errors to be avoided: intolerance and indifferentism ....... 240 The Grounds of Christian Certainty — 1. Some things absolutely sure to the believer . . 243 If Christianity is Divine, these must be true . . 243 The threefold revelation, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 243 ‘ We know,’ in the writings of St. John . . . 244 Two criteria : — (1) Personal experience. Life to one’s own soul 245 (2) General adaptation : a Gospel for Mankind 247 2. Other matters of subjective conviction, more or less definite and decided ....... 248 Beliefs on ‘ non-essentials ’..... 248 Discrimination difficult between the fundamental and the non-fundamental . .... 249 Essential agreement under diverse expression . . 249 Christian life coexisting with apparent denial of the Christian doctrine ...... 250 Fact and theory : — In the statement of fact, doctrine is implied . 251 Revealed verities and human explanations . 253 Illustrations : Atonement, Revelation, Immor- tality ........ 254 With regard to such truths three things are important : — (1) To attain definite convictions regarding them . 257 (2) To hold these convictions in due proportion . 257 (3) To seek for truth rather than to strive for victory 258 In this the approximation of Christians will more and more appear .... 259 3. Other subjects lie beyond the boundary of human knowledge : — Such questions have often troubled the Churches . 260 Difficulties confessed insoluble .... 260 CONTENTS xvn PAGE Illustrations : The invisible world : the meta- physics of theology ..... 260 The sphere of light and the uncertainty beyond 262 Uniting Realities Idea of the Catholic Church ...... 263 Universality its note ....... 263 This a truth to be made manifest .... 264 Its manifestation hindered by sectarian exclusiveness 264 One Body and one Spirit ..... 265 Not to be realised by reorganisation, or by separatist societies ........ 266 Individual communities to be assimilated to the ideal . 266 The Church and a Church ...... 267 Way to universal concord through the denominations . 268 The Congregational model ..... 268 Church of the Future ....... 269 The New Jerusalem, and its open gates .... 270 The secret of Catholicity is with every true believer . 272 The Greatest of all is Charity APPENDIX Lecture I 1. Archdeacon Hare on the words designating Faith . 273 Lecture II 2. Latin Text of the Apostles’ Creed ..... 274 3. Tradition of the joint authorship of the Creed. Latin Verses ......... 274 4. Correspondence on the Liturgical use of the Creed. Geneva 1869 ........ 275 5. Greek Text of the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed . 278 6. The Epiphanian additions ...... 279 7. Latin original of the Athanasian Creed : Parallels from Augustine ......... 279 xvm THE CHRISTIAN CREED Lecture III PAGE 8. The Augsburg Confession (Confessio Augustana), 1530 . 284 9. The Creed of Pope Pius IV. 1564 ..... 294 Lecture IV 10. Articles of the Reformed Church of England, 1552-1571 . 296 11. The Lambeth Articles, 1595 . . . . 314 12. Articles of the Dutch Remonstrants, 1615 . . 315 Lecture V 13. Comparative Symbolics : the Harmony of Confessions . 317 14. The Inexhaustibleness of Scripture (Archbishop Trench, Henry More, Robert Boyle, and Bishop Butler) . . 320 Lecture VI 15. Articles of the Presbyterian Church of England, 1S90 . 322 16. Declaration of Faith of the Congregational Dissenters, 1833 33 ° 17. Professor Henry Sidgwick on the Ethics of Subscription . 334 Lecture VII 18. Dean Alford on the Catholicity of orthodox Nonconformists (Notes of a discussion) 336 * # * For detailed information on the several Creeds, the student is referred to the encyclopaedic volumes of the late Dr. Philip SchafF, 1877 : — 1. A History of the Creeds of Christendom ; 2. The Creeds of the Greek and Latin Churches ; 3. The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches. Many of the original documents, as well as translations, are given by Dr. Schaff ; and much information, especially with respect to the Confessions of the Greek Church in vol. ii. , and to those of the Reformation period in vol. iii., both formerly almost inaccessible to the English reader, is now placed within easy reach. The article ‘ Creed ’ in the Dictionary of Christian Biography , by Dr. C. A. Swainson, contains not only a succinct and lucid account of the ancient Western Creeds, but a most useful series of references to original authorities. The same writer’s elaborate work ( The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds ; their Literary History ; together with an Account of the Growth and Reception of the Sermon on the Faith commonly called ‘ The Creed of St. Athanasius .’ Murray, 1875), and, on the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, the Harmonia Symbolica of Dr. Heurtley, are of great value. Other important works are specified in the Notes to the Lectures, and in the Appendix. LECTURE I INTRODUCTORY : FAITH AND DOGMA I CANNOT enter upon my allotted task without a grateful reference to our venerable friend, of whose eminent services to the Church, as well of whose high disinterestedness, this Lectureship is the last- ing memorial. Dr. Angus has already discussed, in the First Course of Lectures, a great doctrine of our common faith . 1 I have ventured to choose a subject connected with Faith itself, in the varied modes of its expression from age to age, — tech- nically the Science of Christian Symbolics. Let me premise one thing. I am convinced that all here will welcome, and indeed expect from every Lecturer, the unfettered expression of individual 1 On Regeneration : the Angus Lectureship, First Series, 1896, by the Rev. Joseph Angus, M.A., D. D., President Emeritus of Regent's Park College. B 2 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. opinion. I could not have come before you as a mere advocate of prescribed formulas or foregone conclusions : whatever our denominational position may be, I trust that we are, above all, a company of serious religious inquirers ; knowing that the Spirit of God is honoured best by the free as well as reverent investigation of Divine Truth. Creed is simply Credo , ‘ I believe,’ the first word of the so-called Apostolic formula. It is the intellectual expression of Christian Faith. Yet, at the very outset of our discussion, it is needful to bear in mind that the Faith which Christianity claims is something far larger and deeper than aught belonging to the Understanding or Reason. Faith in its true and highest sense is Trust — a loving, practical trust in God as revealed in Christ, for pardon and redemption from sin, with all gifts of light and help and grace. It is, in the words of Calvin, ‘ of the heart more than of the head, and rather of the affections than the under- standing.’ There is perhaps no subject in the whole range of theological science on which the inadequacy of human language is more to be deplored, and where it is more needful to press for exactness of defini- I INTRODUCTORY: FAITH AND DOGMA 3 tion. 1 For the same words, Faith and its cognate verb to believe , 7 rierrt?, 7 narevco, may be variously used to denote almost any degree of assent, from the bare acceptance of a fact up to the full reliance of the soul upon God. In the Epistle of James, the brother of the Lord, Faith occurs in its simplest meaning ; and the futility of mere belief in securing acceptance with God is vigorously shown. The Apostle Paul, on the other hand, lays hold of the larger, deeper significance of Faith, and speaks of trust in God through Jesus Christ as the means by which the soul is made right with Him ; while, again, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, more intent upon the practical issue of such trust than on any complete definition, pre- sents it as the source of obedience, endurance, and heroism. In these several representations there is a deep interior harmony ; and no view of Christian Faith can be adequate which does not include them all. But we have now to do with Faith on its in- tellectual side. For undoubtedly there is implied in Christian Trust a definite act of the under- 1 See Note I. Appendix: The Influence of Words on our Conceptions of Faith. 4 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. standing. It is trust in a Person, but this trust will necessarily be conditioned by our thoughts, conceptions, beliefs concerning Him. ‘ He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek after Him.’ 1 Here we have the beginnings of Theology. The system or summary of Christian beliefs is sometimes termed, collectively, ‘ the Faith.’ Of this usage there is a definite example in the Epistle of Jude: ‘Exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all de- livered unto the saints ’ : manifestly here a body of doctrine ; so, perhaps, in a following verse : ‘ Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.’ 2 There is, however, no other passage in the New Testament where the phrase can be certainly shown to have this meaning ; 3 although some expositors suppose it implied in parts of the First Epistle to Timothy, as ch. iii. 9 : ‘ Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience ’ ; iv. 6 : ‘ Nourished in the words of the faith ’ ; as well as in passages which speak of departure from this 1 Heb. xi. 6. 2 Jude 3, 20. 3 Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, Eng. tr. ii. p. 200. But see Weiss, A T . T. Theol. 107, note A (Eng. tr. ii. 126). I INTRODUCTORY : FAITH AND DOGMA S standard ; i. 19 : ‘ Some . . . made shipwreck con- cerning the faith ’ ; iv. 1 : ‘ In later times some shall fall away from the faith ’ ; v. 8 : ‘ He hath denied the faith’; vi. 10: ‘Some . . . have been led astray from the faith ’ ; vi. 2 1 : ‘ Some . . . have missed the mark concerning the faith.’ Yet, in all these instances, the reference seems to be less to doctrine intellectually apprehended than to its character as a rule of life. Especially is this shown in the case of those who are described as having departed from the faith. Their errors are described, not as erroneous beliefs, but as moral obliquities. But, regarding ‘ the Faith ’ in its intellectual aspect, as the system or framework of facts and doctrines presupposed in coming to God, there will be a natural tendency of thought to formulate its contents in propositions, few or many, simple or complex. ‘ God is ’ — ‘ He is the rewarder of them that seek after Him,’ — these may be regarded as Dogmas — a form of expressing truth on which much will have to be said hereafter. For the present let it suffice to point out that ‘ Dogma,’ in its primary sense, is Opinion or Judgment — ‘ that which seems good to a man ’ — predicated especially 6 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. of those cases in which the man is in a position to dictate his opinion to others. Hence, in general, the added connotation of Authority. In the LXX. and the New Testament, the word always signifies decree , whether of a secular ruler, as Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Augustus , 1 or else of ecclesiastical authorities — either Jewish, as in the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians : ‘ The law of commandments contained in ordinances ’ — dogmas — and ‘ The bond written in ordinances — dogmas — that was against us, which was contrary to us ’ ; ' or Christian, as in the Acts of the Apostles , 3 of the decisions of the Church with the Apostles and elders in Jerusalem. But in later Greek classical literature the word had already come to mean the doctrine of a philosopher or teacher, whose formula was ‘ So it seems to me.’ Hence its post-apostolic Christian usage, as in Ignatius , 4 who speaks of ‘ the dogmata , or precepts of the Lord and His Apostles.’ So in the Epistle of Barnabas : ‘ The dogmata of the Lord are three — having reference to life, faith, and hope.’ 1 ’ The Greek Fathers generally employ the term in a 1 Dan. ii. 13 ; iii. 10, etc. ; Luke ii. 1. 2 Eph. ii. 15 ; Col. ii. 14 (where see Bp. Lightfoot’s note). 3 Acts xvi. 4. J Ep. ad Magn. xiii. 5 Barn. Ep. i. 6. I INTRODUCTORY : FAITH AND DOGMA 7 similar sense, including both doctrines and ordi- nances. Thus Basil speaks of ‘ the dogma of Christ’s Divinity,’ and Chrysostom of ‘ the dogmata of the Church .’ 1 In general, however, it came to be applied chiefly to doctrine, the declaration of things to be believed. These are sometimes ex- pressed as heads or titles of doctrine, as when we speak of the Dogma of the Trinity, or of the Atonement ; and sometimes as formulated state- ments or definitions, as in the clauses of the Nicene and so-called Athanasian Creeds relating to the Nature of our Lord. It should be noted, in passing, that the word dogmatic may be used in two different senses ; between which it is necessary to distinguish. It may express either whatever relates to the formu- lated statement of belief, as when we speak of ‘ dogmatic theology,’ or, less technically but per- haps more frequently, the spirit and temper with which such belief is presented, — assertion without proof, authoritative and peremptory. So again ‘ dogmatism ’ has by usage become almost re- stricted to the latter sense — the style of the 1 Basil, De Sp. Sancto, cxxvii. ; Orat. vi. in Hexaern. ; also on Ps. vii. p. 144 ; Isa. xvi. p. 1123 ; Chrysostom, Horn. vi. on Ep. to Philip., also Horn, xlvii. on Acts, and Horn, xxxiii. on 1 Cor. 8 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. teacher who affirms without reasoning, and de- mands the assent of his disciples on the strength of mere assertion. This temper, it may be re- marked, is by no means peculiar to the Christian advocate. There is a dogmatism of unbelief, quite as unreasonable and overbearing as that of the most passionate sectarian. The spirit is that of the individual rather than of the Creed ; and its only remedy lies in the culture of wisdom, justice, and charity. Observe that Dogma and Doctritie are not quite the same thing. Many vindications of a ‘ dog- matic Christianity ’ are found, when examined, to consist mainly of arguments for doctrinal clearness and precision. The validity of such arguments may be fully recognised ; and they are especially valuable in counteracting certain prevalent tend- encies of thought. The possibility — even the desirableness — of a religion without doctrine is sometimes openly affirmed, oftener implicitly assumed. Hence we see on the one hand a vague indefinite religious sentiment, anchored upon no strong or clear convictions, and on the other a weak effeminate Evangelicalism, that never seeks coherence or system or comprehensiveness, but I INTRODUCTORY: FAITH AND DOGMA 9 confines itself to the quickening of emotion, with- out any solid basis of knowledge or of thought. ‘ Religion without Theology ’ does but illustrate the aphorism of Bacon : ‘ Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief .’ 1 There is, however, an important distinction between doctrine as accepted by faith and the embodiment of it in dogma. ‘ Doctrine ’ is simply Teaching ; and is the term employed throughout the Gospels for the instructions of our Lord. There, and afterwards in the Epistles, it is applied quite as much to the ethical as to the intellectual aspect of religion. The things that, in the First Epistle to Timothy, are described as ‘ contrary to the sound doctrine,’ that is, ‘ to the healthful teaching,’ are not heresies but immoral- ities . 2 The question, therefore, as to dogma is by no means prejudged when the value of Christian doctrine, definite, comprehensive, harmonious, has been fully vindicated. We shall have hereafter to dwell upon the inferences to be drawn from this distinction : enough that we simply note it now, and maintain as the starting-point of discussion the importance of a clear and correct doctrinal Essay I. Of Truth. 2 i Tim. i. io. io I HE CHRISTIAN CREED .ECT. belief. For if truth on the great subjects with which Theology has to do is attainable, we ought with our whole hearts to dedicate ourselves to the search. And that, first of all, because it is Truth. We need no further reason. Truth, for the Truth’s own sake, must be the principle of the inquirer — truth, independent of results. This, I know, is very elementary ; yet in practice how frequently is it disregarded ! That an opinion is ‘ dangerous’ is often employed as an argument against it, when the readier confutation would have been to show that it is false. For whenever there is falsity, there must be danger, whether we discern it or not. And, conversely, it avails but little to argue that an opinion is safe ; the question is always, whether it is true. Then, secondly, because there is an intimate connection between Belief and Salvation. In stating this, it is necessary once more to be quite clear as to the significance of our terms. What is salvation ? What does it mean, not merely for the unseen future, but for the living present ? What is the man, here and now ? Is he already saved ? — or, at least, is he being saved ? i INTRODUCTORY: FAITH AND DOGMA II Is he converted from selfishness, unrighteousness, and lust, from blindness to the spiritual world, and disregard of God ? Is he sincere and upright, faithful and devout ? Does he love God and man ? Is holiness his supreme desire and aim ? Then in him are the beginnings of salvation ; and from these we may discern what he shall hereafter become. Now, if thus saved, it is, in Bible language, ‘through faith,’ which has brought him into con- tact with those mighty forces that have transformed his character and life. But again we must be accurate in the use of language. It is not ‘ for faith,’ as seems often loosely to be understood ; as though faith were either a meritorious work, or an arbitrary condition of acceptance with God. Still less is it ‘for’ or ‘on account of’ his belief. Belief is valuable only as the answer of the in- tellect to the Faith that attaches the soul to Christ, and so affects the whole spiritual nature. Nay, we may point to cases not a few, where that answer is but feeble or mistaken. The man clings to the Saviour, but so clings amid the darkness. Interrogate him theologically ; he can give no definite reply ; or if he attempt one, it is such a 2 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. reply as you must needs condemn. The Creed may be erroneous, but the trust is real. Yet it is important that a definite reply should be given. A mistaken belief must be, in one way or another, and sooner or later, an injury to faith ; and unbelief condemns because it renders faith impossible, and so seals the separation of the soul from God. Here are two sides of the same great truth, both worthy to be specially noted because of their frequent exaggeration and perversion. Un- doubtedly there are two prevailing tendencies of thought, opposite to each other, but equally tend- ing to misapprehension. First, It has always been the disposition of theologians to attribute to belief, in itself con- sidered, a moral character ; so that every error, in all circumstances, is a sin. Hence many an olden creed thick-sown with anathemas ; hence also the appalling series of religious persecutions, carried on in many cases by men devoutly in earnest, and as far as possible from being naturally cruel. These things belong to the history of the past, yet the spirit that prompted them lurks among us still. Often quoted is the text, doubtful I INTRODUCTORY: FAITH AND DOGMA 13 in itself, 1 and made more terrible in its transla- tion : ‘ He that believeth not shall be damned.’ These words, whether spoken by our Lord or not, have been so misapplied by ecclesiastics as to sustain the impression that mistaken views of re- ligion are necessarily and essentially criminal. So easy has it been to read the text as though the words ‘ He that believeth not ’ meant ‘ He that believeth amiss/ that is, ‘ He who does not inter- pret Scripture as I do,’ or ‘as the Church enjoins.’ The impression has enstamped itself upon our very language. The word miscreant , etymologi- cally, is simply ‘ misbeliever ’ ; but (perhaps owing to the associations of the Crusades) it has long come to mean a criminal of the very vilest class. So, even now, it is not uncommon to hear such epithets of condemnation hurled at the erroneous convictions of sincere men as ought to be reserved for the deepest moral obliquity. This is one mistake ; but I apprehend that in our own day there is far more danger of falling into the opposite extreme, and of forgetting that there is a distinctly traceable connection between 1 Mark xvi. 16. See marginal note, R.V. , and all critical editions of the Greek Testament. On the other hand, consult Dean Burgon’s The Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark' s Gospel. 14 THE CHRISTIAN CREED lect. creed and character. Dr. Pusey writes in one of his letters that ‘ to maintain that “ it is of no im- portance what we believe,” and that “ one creed is as good as another,” is the central heresy of our day.’ Without going so far as this, we may still recognise that the spirit is abroad, expressed by Pope more than a century and a half ago : For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight ; He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right . 1 Belief, it is said, in the last resort, is founded upon evidence. Define it as the acceptance of the testimony of God ; it is still a question of evidence whether the testimony be really His or not ; and the purely intellectual process by which this question is to be solved cannot have any moral quality. The process, we may reply, is not * purely intellectual.’ Its validity presupposes certain conditions — that the inquirer be honest, that the evidence be candidly and seriously weighed, that the desire to arrive at the truth be simple and sincere. These conditions are in many cases notoriously lacking. Some take up their opinions indolently, without any sense of 1 Essay on Man, III. 305, 306. I INTRODUCTORY: FAITH AND DOGMA 15 responsibility or correspondingly earnest en- deavour ; often, again, the judgment is warped by passion, inclination, self-interest ; and the will, biassed by pride, cowardice, or ambition, becomes a powerful factor in determining the conclusion. The Apostle Paul speaks of men who refused, or literally ‘did not approve 1 to have God in their knowledge.’ So the affirmation : ‘ He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right ’ is either the most barren of truisms, or else an impressive warning. A truism, if by ‘ life ’ we are to under- stand the inward principles of a man as well as the outward conduct. Let these principles be * in the right,’ and the conduct be framed in ac- cordance with them ; then the man, of course, ‘ cannot be wrong.’ But, if any more than this be intended, the words become a direct warning to see that the life be pure, in order that the faith may be pure also. I think our Lord intended something very like this by His profound saying: ‘ If any man willeth to do the will of God, he shall know of the teaching .’ 2 It is a test that one must apply cautiously to others, severely to oneself. Our belief, it may be, is a sure though 1 Rom. i. 28 ; oi jk dSoKinairav. - John vii. 17. i6 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LF.CT. unsuspected index to what we are. A belief which takes its form from a heart sincere before God and pure and true, whatever that belief may be, will not ruin the soul. What Richard Baxter wrote of his Papist opponents two hundred years ago, may be applied with a difference to not a few whose theological errors we are constrained to-day to condemn : ‘ I doubt not that God hath many sanctified ones among them, who have received the true doctrine of Christianity so prac- tically that their contradictory errors prevail not against them, to hinder their love of God and their salvation ; but that their errors are like a conquerable dose of poison, which a healthful nature doth overcome. And I can never believe,’ Baxter adds, ‘ that a man may not be saved by that religion which doth but bring him to the true love of God and to a heavenly mind and life ; nor that God will ever cast a soul into hell that truly loveth Him .’ 1 This is as true as it is finely said. But it forms no such apology for hesitancy on matters of faith as is often pleaded in these days ; as though it were somehow to a man’s 1 Baxter's Life and Times (Sylvester, 1696), p. 131. See Cole- ridge, Aids to Reflection, Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion, viii. note. I INTRODUCTORY : FAITH AND DOGMA 17 credit not to have made up his mind. Has not a great poet written — There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds . 1 The comparison is, indeed, a little difficult to understand. ‘Doubt’ is an attitude of mind: ‘ the Creeds ’ are documents. The things con- trasted are not upon the same plane. But what is meant, I suppose, is that the doubt which is sincere has more of the element of faith in it than unthinking acquiescence in any creed. To the dictum, so put, we should all assent. Only this is no reason for cherishing doubt, for resting in doubt. If there is a faith that ‘lives in doubt,’ it is the faith that there is a solution which the earnest inquiring spirit will not fail to find. It is believing in the light, although the light for the time may be eclipsed. The word sceptic , we are often reminded, literally means ‘ inquirer ’ ; and, if we are honest, our purpose in inquiring is to get our questions answered. To linger in the twilight of half- convictions is but a melancholy position, especially for those who are to be the 1 Tennyson, In Memoriam xcvi. (too often quoted apart from the context). C THE CHRISTIAN CREED LEXT. teachers and guides of others. Their highest hope must be that their doubts may be resolved, through earnest endeavour and prayer. Then, indeed, that twilight will prove to have been the twilight of the morning ; and the dawn of day will bring to the inquirer the priceless blessing of an honest Faith. And here we meet the demand for verification, often pressed upon theologians by scientific thinkers. For, in science, this is the one sufficient test of any propounded doctrine. We believe in gravitation, because the theory is verified by every experiment that we try. We believe in the revolution of the earth round the sun, because all the known phenomena are thus explained. So in other than scientific beliefs. I trust the dis- interested affection of my friend, because it has been tested and may be tested again. It stands as a truth of daily life, as much as of religion, that we ‘ walk by faith ’ — faith, that we are always of necessity putting to the proof, for verification, or else for disillusion and disappointment. But what of the supersensuous facts which the Christian Creed affirms ? Can we test them by I INTRODUCTORY: FAITH AND DOGMA 19 any analogous methods of proof? Now, in meet- ing this question, we do not in the least surrender the other arguments by which our belief is con- firmed. Our Apologetic is manifold. The Revela- tion that wins our belief commends itself on historical grounds ; and its external evidence is reinforced by its intrinsic qualities, its self-con- sistency, its moral perfection, its accord with a sound philosophy, its proved adaptation to the spiritual needs of man . 1 These points may all be reasoned out, but still the chief attestation is in the experience of those who have accepted the Revelation as true, and can show what it has wrought in their own hearts and lives. To trust this answer is in accord with the highest Reason. God speaks within us, and we hear His voice. This again gives weight and cogency to the his- torical proof. The realities to which it bears attestation are closely, inseparably connected with the facts and events to which Revelation bears 1 See Dr. A. B. Bruce : Apologetics , or Christianity Defensively Stated , ch. v. Prebendary Wace well remarks : ‘ The testimony of Christians to the fact that in their personal experience they have found the promises of the Gospel fulfilled, must carry, and does carry, the greatest possible weight, but it can only afford indirect support to the truths beyond their experience which are alleged in the Creeds.’ The attestation, however, is primd facie. 20 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. witness. It is thus that they are accounted for, and in no other way. The key is verified by the opening of the lock. Their evidence may be indirect, but it is sufficient and triumphant. Such verification is to be trusted, beyond all processes of the understanding. To those who impugn our faith in the Son of God, we have the answer ready with which the man to whom He had given sight met the cavils of Jewish rationalism. ‘Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes.’ 1 So in moments when we are tempted to doubt or to distrust : If e’er, when faith had fallen asleep, I heard a voice : ‘ Believe no more ’ ; And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the godless deep ; A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason’s colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answered : ‘ I have felt .’ 2 For the sake, then, of a man’s own self, for his salvation in the highest sense, it is of importance that he should be led into the Truth, that his 1 John ix. 30. 2 In Memoriam, cxxiv. I INTRODUCTORY : FAITH AND DOGMA 21 view of religious matters should accord with the reality, that his Faith in its intellectual aspect should harmonise with that deeper Faith that controls and inspires his life. But now the ques- tion returns — How is this intellectual view to be gained, clearly, adequately ; and, when gained, how is it to be expressed ? In answer to these questions, it must, first of all, be said that the belief, to be worth anything, must be the man’s own, the dictate of his own understanding, with the consent of his own will. He cannot believe to any good purpose on the mere testimony of other men, experts though they be : he must be himself the expert, and the verification of which I have spoken must at least have begun in his own soul. No doubt our religious beliefs have generally, in the first instance, come to us on authority. The child who has had the happiness of a Christian education has been schooled to belief by parents and teachers. In the earlier stages of his mental history, there has not been, and could not be, any question of independent judg- ment ; and the verification by the experiences of childhood, though real, has been almost uncon- 22 THE CHRISTIAN CREED I.ECT. scious. From this attitude of receptiveness the first step to independence is often one of hesitation and resistance. ‘ Man’s first word,’ says Arch- deacon Hare, ‘is Yes ; his second No; his third and last Yes. Most stop short at the first ; very few get to the last .’ 1 But it is the period marked by that second word that forms the crisis of his spiritual career. Unspeakably momentous is the summons to meet the Divine Oracle face to face, and in place of following the most trusted teachers, to hear what God the Lord hath spoken. Not until that great transition has been made has any one the right to say ‘ I believe, and therefore speak.’ It is true that individual responsibility by no means excludes or renders unnecessary the help of other minds. The Dogma, which is man’s version of the Divine thought, is valuable as testimony 7 , helpful as interpretation. The belief of any wise and good man must needs exert some influence upon our own ; and how much more the belief of many ? Undoubtedly there is a strong presump- tion in favour of what is witnessed to us by a multitude of accordant minds, declaring kindred 1 Guesses at Truth , p. 263 (ed. 1866). I INTRODUCTORY : FAITH AND DOGMA 23 convictions and common experiences from age to age. To such utterance we cannot afford to be indifferent, whether expressed in Creed or Song (for our hymns also are often virtual creeds). We listen with grateful deference, yet never with abso- lute surrender. Such surrender, as we know, is in these days claimed from us with a new imperiousness, in the name of Church Authority. The claim, in its extreme form, is that of Romanism. Thus the late Cardinal Manning asserted — That God has not only revealed His Truth, but has made a divine and imperishable provision for the custody, perpetuity, and promulgation of His Truth to the world ; that is to say, through the channel of His Church, divinely founded, divinely preserved from error, and divinely assisted in the declaration of Truth . 1 Now to meet claims like these, urged some- times from very unexpected quarters, will unques- tionably be among the chief necessities of the coming generation. The old questions, between the Church and the Bible, the Church and the individual, are pressing upon us with new force ; and conflicts are waged around us in which it is Contemporary Review, vol. xxiv. 153. 24 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. not always the avowed Romanist who appears as the antagonist of Christian freedom. Very im- portant is it therefore on every ground to go back to the first principles of ecclesiastical truth. And we at least in this place have no difficulty as to the right definition of the Church. Such defini- tion must clearly be given before we can decide respecting the claim. The Church, then, is the whole company of those who trust and follow Jesus Christ. And it may be at once conceded that an ideal Church, could its testimony but be obtained, would be a competent witness to Divine Truth. That is to say, if you could first discover the whole company of the faithful upon earth, separating them from false professors and the secretly rebellious, and could then interrogate their deepest consciousness as to the basis of their belief and the grounds of their hope, laying out of the question all that was non-essential, or adven- titious, or due to mere human infirmity, thus securing a declaration at once adequate and com- plete — the answer you would receive would go far to make a perfect Creed. In an important sense, also, the testimony would be authoritative ; that is, it would have the authority of experience and I INTRODUCTORY: FAITH AND DOGMA 25 conviction, and would be a true witness to the Spirit of God in the soul. Such is the spirit of the well-known rule of Vincentius of Lerinum. He pronounces that to be the Truth, quod semper , quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est 1 — ‘ That which is believed always, everywhere, and by all.’ A rule, in truth, of imposing sound, of which the best brief criticism that I know was given by the late Archbishop Magee, who writes — ‘ I have just two difficulties respecting it : ‘ First, that I have never been able to prove the rule. ‘ Secondly, that I have never been able, assum- ing it to be true, to prove anything by it .’ 2 The conditions are, in fact, impossible. The true Church is unseen, excepting by the eye of God. Its voice is broken and confused at the best. It could but bid us back to Scripture and Conscience ; and thither, as the Reformers saw, we might as well have repaired at the first. When the very reasonable inquiry is made where this voice of the Church has been uttered, and through what authoritative channels, we are oftentimes referred to Christian Antiquity, and to 1 Commonitorium , ii. (a.d. 434). 2 Life , vol. ii. p. 103. 16 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. General Councils, by which some at least of the Creeds were settled. But the reference to such assemblies as authoritative breaks down at every step. For one thing, there never has been a General Council, in the sense in which cecumenicity is claimed. The assembly in Jerusalem, of which we read in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, was not a General Council, but a Church- meeting ; nor did it attempt to formulate articles of faith, only to ascertain and express the Divine will concerning some important points of discipline and practice. And the rest of these assemblies, from Nicsea onwards, were, one and all, such imperfect representations of the Church Universal, and their proceedings were so marred by human infirmities and secular ambitions, as to make it impossible to accept them as the authorised ex- ponents of Divine Truth. I know it is said that the Holy Spirit, promised to the people of God in council assembled, directed and overruled their proceedings for good, in spite of these infirmities. But this is mere assumption. Many links would have to be supplied, in a chain of argument that would show the promise made by our Lord to His disciples to lead them into all truth, to have introductory: faith and dogma 27 been applicable to the clergy in distinction from the laity, to the bishops pre-eminently among the clergy, and most of all to bishops assembled in council, at the call of Constantine or any other earthly potentate. The dogmas of Councils also must be submitted to the test of Scripture, and the result of such examination will only too surely be to confirm the Twenty-first Article of the Church of England : ‘ That when General Councils are gathered together, forasmuch as they be an assembly of men whereof all be not governed by the Spirit and Word of God, they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of Holy Scripture.’ That any dogmas, again, should be enforced by vote upon the intellect and conscience of the faithful, is a painful absurdity. Votes go by majorities, and the majority may depend, as it has been said, upon the ‘ odd man.’ There is no doubt that in mere questions of expediency, of social convenience, or of political arrangement, this rough-and-ready rule of submission to the 28 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. greater number is inevitable. But majorities have no divine claim to infallibility ; and very possibly, on the deeper questions of life, the minority, to say the least, is quite as often right as wrong ! Then, the vote of a majority is reversible, as the tide of feeling turns ; and the dogma of to-day becomes the heresy of to-morrow. This belief in a majority, says the late Dr. Hatch — Is a conception which comes rather from politics than from philosophy. It is the conception, that the definitions and interpretations of primary beliefs which are made by the majority of Church officers assembled under certain conditions are in all cases and so certainly true, that the duty of the individual is, not to endeavour, by whatever light of nature or whatever illumination of the Holy Spirit may be given to him, to understand them, but to acquiesce in the verdict of the majority. The theory assumes that God never speaks to men except through the voice of the majority. It is a large assumption. It is a transference to the transcendental sphere in which the highest conceptions of the Divine Nature move, of what is a convenient prac- tical rule for conducting the business of human society : Let the majority decide I Nothing can supersede either the responsibility or the right of the individual ; and Athanasius contra mundum, as the old saying runs, declared 1 Hibbert Lectures, xi. p. 331. I INTRODUCTORY: FAITH AND DOGMA 29 the will of God as truly in the evil days of Rimini and Sirmium as when the whole Council of Nicaea had acclaimed his testimony. Again, the notion that when once dogmas are voted they henceforth become conditions of eternal salvation, although they might have been contra- dicted with impunity before, is an absurdity if possible more monstrous still. I have before me a Romish Controversial Catechism, published in 1 846, 1 with an ecclesiastical imprimatur, where the following question and answer occur : — ‘ Q. Must not Catholics believe the Pope in himself to be infallible ? ‘ A. This is a Protestant invention : it is no article of the Catholic faith : no decision of his can oblige under pain of heresy, unless it be re- ceived and enforced by the teaching body ; that is, by the Bishops of the Church.’ But at the Vatican Council of 1 870, the dogma of Papal Infallibility (apart from such concurrence of the Bishops) was decreed as an article of the Faith. In 1846 it was a ‘Protestant invention,’ 1 Controversial Catechism, or Protestantism Refuted and Catho- licism Established, by an Appeal to the Holy Scriptures, the Testimony of the Holy Fathers, and the Dictates of Reason. By the Rev. Stephen Keenan. Edinburgh. 30 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. which the faithful Romanist was free to repudiate; in 1871 it had become a doctrine to be professed under pain of mortal sin ! Common-sense would decide that if true now, it had been true always, unless a new gift of inspiration had been divinely imparted to the Popes of the nineteenth century, — a thesis which probably no one will venture to affirm. Mr. Ruskin has written in his picturesque way : There is therefore, in matter of doctrine, no such thing as the Authority of the Church. We might as well talk of the authority of a morning cloud. There may be light in it, but the light is not of it ; and it diminishes the light that it gets ; and lets less of it through than it receives, Christ being its sun. Or, we might as well talk of the authority of a flock of sheep — for the Church is a body to be taught and fed, not to teach and feed ; and of all sheep that are fed on earth, Christ’s sheep are the most simple (the children of this generation are wiser), always losing them- selves ; doing little else in this world but lose themselves ; never finding themselves ; always found by Some One else ; getting perpetually into sloughs, and snows, and bramble thickets ; like to die there, but for their Shepherd, who is for ever finding them and bearing them back, with torn fleeces and eyes full of fear . 1 The half-truth thus eloquently expressed needs, no doubt, to be supplemented by another view of 1 Notes on the Construction of Sheep folds, p. 19. I IN TROD UC TOR Y : FA ITH A ND D 0 CM A 3i the Church’s mission. Ecclesia docens is still a reality. The Church, as part of its high calling, is set to teach. It is a pillar and support of the Truth ; although it is not, as both the Authorised and Revised Versions make it in 1 Tim. iii. 1 5, ‘ the pillar and foundation.’ There are few passages of the New Testament (writes the late Dr. Anthony Hort) in which the reckless disregard of the presence or absence of the Article has made wilder havoc of the sense than this. To speak of either an Ecclesia or the Ecclesia as being the pillar of the truth, is to repre- sent the truth as a building, standing in the air supported on a single column. Again, there is no clear evidence that the rare word eSpauo/xa ever means ‘ ground ’ = ‘ foundation.’ It is rather, in accordance with the almost universal Latin rendering, firmament um , a ‘ stay ’ or ‘ bulwark.’ St. Paul’s idea, then, is that each living society of Christian men is a pillar or stay of ‘the Truth,’ as an object of belief and a guide of life for mankind ; each such Christian society bearing its part in sustaining and supporting the one truth common to all . 1 While, then, we reverently listen to the voice of the Christian Congregation, whether in the smaller societies of the faithful or in their aggre- gated numbers, so far as their collective utterance can be heard, we still claim the right to hear and to interpret for ourselves, as far as in us lies, the 1 The Christian Ecclesia, p. 174. 32 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. Oracles of God. For vve are personally respon- sible. In fact, we are compelled to take this in- dividual position ; for the voices that we hear are discordant, as, in the course of these Lectures, we shall often have occasion to remark. Meantime, the principle may be reiterated, that not the most widely accepted Dogma, not the most venerable Creed, must be suffered to prevail against the voice of Conscience, informed by independent study of the Divine Scriptures, with the resources of enlightened Reason, and in humble dependence upon the promised guidance of the Spirit of God. I remember well how, nearly twenty years ago, in a discussion on the question of Creeds, at a great gathering of Nonconformists in London, the Articles of a Creed were likened approvingly by one of the speakers to guide-posts, fixed at intervals along an Alpine pass, rising high above the snows, and marking out the road for travellers, who else might have been bewildered and lost. The simile was felt by many to be appropriate and felicitous. But another speaker afterwards rejoined : I am afraid that I have but an imperfect appreciation of guide-posts in matters which concern spiritual faith and I INTRODUCTORY : FAITH AND DOGMA 33 hope in a human soul. They seem to me chiefly helpful to those who have lost sight of or faith in the living Leader. 1 When foemen watch our tents by night,’ I would get me nearer to the living Captain ; ‘ when mists hang wide o’er moor and fell,’ 1 would feel for the hand of the living Guide. 1 In the spirit of these words, let us enter upon our investigation of the Church’s Creeds and Con- fessions. These great utterances of Christian thought we would not undervalue ; only we would estimate them rightly. We shall find in them both help and warning ; and the result of our inquiry will have been achieved if only we be led back, with a larger appreciation and a deeper confidence, to the living and mighty Word of the Living and Eternal God. 1 See Proceedings of the Congregational Union , 1878. D LECTURE II THE EARLIEST CREEDS : SCRIPTURE AND THE ANCIENT CHURCH My present purpose is to trace what may be called, in current phrase, the Evolution of Creed. The contrast between the method of Scripture and the methods of the Churches in the presentation of Truth is so striking that we may well inquire into the process by which the transition was effected, from the historical and unsystematic way in which doctrine is set forth by Evangelists and Apostles, to the order, symmetry, and attempted complete- ness of ecclesiastical formulas. We shall have here- after to dwell upon this contrast, and to educe from it some lessons for ourselves ; meantime, we simply note that the tendency to selection, arrangement, classification, theory, is but according to the laws of the human mind. Theology, like I.ECT. II CREED IN SCRIPTURE 35 every other science, has formed its systems by collocation and comparison of facts or phenomena, with the generalisations thence resulting. Such phenomena, in the present case, are the records and declarations of Scripture, with the facts of man’s own spiritual being. These form a sufficient groundwork for theological system : the recourse to tradition, and the influence of current philo- sophies, have given a direction to Christian thought which, as we shall see, has been in more than one respect opposed to the simplicity that is in Christ. First of all, then, we turn to Scripture, with the inquiry whether we have there in any form the rudiments of Creed. The Old Testament Church had its formula, simple and sublime : ‘ Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God is one Jehovah.’ This was the confession of every devout Jew — his watchword in life, his viaticum in death. What have we in the New Testament answering to this ? i. We may note the spontaneous confessions of disciples on whom the truth has dawned with sudden glory, or who have been led to it by their own thought and reflection. Thus, Nicodemus 36 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. begins his interview with Jesus by declaring a belief in Him founded upon miracle : ‘ Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God : for no man can do these signs that Thou doest, except God be with him .’ 1 Nathanael had already given utterance to a larger and deeper faith : ‘ Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God ; Thou art King of Israel .’ 2 Such words expressed a preliminary stage of conviction — the first lesson of the King- dom. Then, afterwards, in the central hour of our Lord’s ministry, we have the great avowal of the Apostle Peter, on his own behalf and that of his fellow-disciples. ‘ Who say ye that I am ? ’ the Master had solemnly demanded ; ‘ and Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God .’ 3 These words have well been called the first Apostles’ Creed, the confession of the Truth upon which the Church is so built that ‘ the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.’ Akin to this was the creed of Martha, the sister of Lazarus: ‘Yea, Lord: I have believed that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, even He that cometh into the world .’ 4 Thus was the 1 John iii. 2. 3 Matt. xvi. 16. 2 John i. 49. ■* John xi. 27. II CREED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 37 climax of belief attained, so far as was possible during the earthly ministry of Christ. But when that ministry was over, a yet profounder faith in Him was to spring from His resurrection — a faith which found utterance in one burning phrase from the lips of Thomas— the voice of overwhelming conviction and a sublime confession of belief : ‘ My Lord and my God ! ’ 1 2. In the Apostolic writings we repeatedly find references to a type or form of doctrine based upon such early confessions, regarded by many of the best modern expositors as indicating the existence of a recognised standard of belief enjoined by the teachers of the Church. Thus the Apostle Paul, in writing to the Romans, gives God thanks that ‘ they became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching into which they were delivered ’ 2 — the teaching being, perhaps, represented by a bold figure as the mould or matrix in which their Chris- tian character had received its shape. And after- wards (assuming that the Pastoral Epistles are his), in writing to Timothy, he bids his young disciple to ‘ hold the pattern of healthful words which he had heard ’ 3 — an injunction which has 1 John xx. 28. - Rom. vi. 17. 3 2 Tim. i. 13. 3§ THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. been thought to imply some formula of doctrine in which the great verities of the Gospel were expressed. If this interpretation be admitted, it would also explain the exhortation given to Timothy in both Epistles to ‘ guard the deposit ’ — ‘the good deposit’ — something specific; as when the same disciple is reminded that he ‘ had confessed the good confession in the sight of many witnesses .’ 1 A similar reference, but of a more general kind, was quoted in the first Lecture from the Epistle of Jude, exhorting professed believers to ‘ contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints .’ 2 Now, supposing these passages to point to any recognised form of Christian confession, we are left very much to conjecture with regard to its character. Something, however, may be gathered from scattered indications. Thus in the Epistle to the Romans : ‘If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved .’ 3 In the first Epistle to the Corinthians : ‘ I delivered unto you first of all 1 i Tim. vi. 20 ; 2 Tim. i. 14 ; 1 Tim. vi. 12. 2 Jude 3. 3 Rom. x. 9. II CREED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures ; and that He was buried ; and He hath been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures .’ 1 The note of simplicity is in all such Creeds. They single out some great Christian truth which implies the rest, or which, it may be, pre-eminently met the need of the hour — a truth that was challenged, and which it was therefore specially important to Assert. Such a declaration, again, occurs in the First Epistle to the Corinthians : 1 To us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto Him ; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him ’; 2 as well as in the repeated protests of the beloved disciple against the heresies of his day : 1 Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father : he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also ’ ; ‘ Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus is not of God ’ ; ‘ Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God ?’ 3 1 i Cor. xv. 3, 4. 2 1 Cor. viii. 6. 3 i John ii. 23 ; iv. 2 ; v. 5. 40 THE CHRISTIAN CREED I.ECT. In a different way, the elementary articles of the Christian Creed are recognised in the Epistle to the Hebrews as rudiments, presupposed in the endeavour after higher knowledge : ‘ Leaving the word of the beginning of the Christ, let us press on unto perfection ; not laying again a founda- tion of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the teaching of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment .’ 1 Here the several articles of belief are presented in their more prac- tical aspect, relating to the first principles of the Christian life, the ordinances of the Church, and the revelation of futurity. A profounder view of the foundation truth of Christianity is given in the Epistle to the Colossians : ‘ the full assurance of understanding,’ — ‘ to know the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wis- dom and knowledge hidden .’ 2 Here, in no uncer- tain way, Christ in His revealed personality is set forth as the centre of all creeds ; a truth expanded in the First Epistle to Timothy, where the same mystery is declared to be ‘ One who was mani- fested in flesh, justified in spirit, beheld by angels, 1 Heb. vi. i, 2. 2 Col. ii. 2. II CREED IN THE NEIV TESTAMENT proclaimed among nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory ’ 1 : a series of antithetic statements, in which the balanced sentences sug- gest elaboration, as of a prepared Confession, or perhaps of a Hymn, celebrating the successive steps of the great manifestation ; personal — in flesh and spirit ; revealed — to angels and men ; glorified — by faith upon earth and exaltation in heaven. Such expressions would naturally pass into formulas, imprinted on the memory of be- lievers, and serving as guides and supports of their faith until, with a larger and clearer appre- hension, they should discern and grasp the truth for themselves. The great variety, however, of these statements of the truth seems to show that they were not intended to indicate, much less to enforce, any specific form of declaration. They set the teach- ing in different lights ; but they do not, separately or together, constitute a Creed. Rather do they sug- gest that the manifoldness of the truth forbids its limitation to any fixed dogmatic forms ; and that every attempt in this direction will be only too likely to miss some phase or aspect of the Divine 1 i Tim. iii. 16. 42 THE CHRISTIAN CREED I.ECT. teaching essential to completeness. It is here, as in much besides, that we recognise the difference between the Creeds of the Churches and the Oracles of God. 3. Beyond these separate statements, we find the germ of the greater Creeds of the ancient Church in the Baptismal Commission of the risen Christ. ‘ Make disciples of all the nations, baptiz- ing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’ 1 The confession of this Name, then, was the indispensable condition of baptism ; while yet it is not a little singular that neither in the Apostolic history nor in the Epistles is there any direct indication of the form in which such confession was made. 2 The form, indeed, seems to have been kept ‘ as a treasure too precious to be profaned by publicity.’ In the writings of Cyprian, about A.D. 250, it appears as symbolum, afterwards, in Greek writers, av/i/3o\ov, ‘ symbol ’ or ‘ pass-word,’ as between soldiers in an army or confederates in some hazardous enter- prise. It is easy to understand how appropriate, 1 Matt, xxviii. 19. 2 The confession attributed to the Ethiopian eunuch, Acts viii. 37, although no part of the original text, is a valuable testimony to early Church tradition on the subject. II CREED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT in days of persecution, this word would be felt to be. We find other formulas, without any adjunct or/ explanation, in the Didache : — ‘ Now concerning baptism, baptize thus : Having first taught all these things, baptize ye into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, in living water .’ 1 The teaching here indicated, it is worth while to note, is simply ethical. In this oldest of Church documents there is no dogmatic creed whatever. The era of theological definition had not yet set in ; and when afterwards a further confession of truth was engrafted on the baptismal form, it was purposely guarded as a secret — a fact which renders it difficult to trace the steps by which the simple baptismal confession was ex- panded into a Creed. Such expansion, however, plainly forms the groundwork of the three Creeds which have come down to us as the chief monuments of Christian antiquity ; having their origin in the controversies of successive generations, and by degrees absorbing all other proposed Confessions of Faith. Of these Creeds, every one of which, it has been observed, 1 Ch. vii. 44 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. bears a title to which it has no real right, the first, called the ‘ Apostles’ Creed,’ was formed by a very gradual process of development, in several Churches and through successive centuries. The second, known as the 1 Nicene Creed,’ was the outcome of long theological controversy, and was ratified by the solemn decisions of ecclesias- tical councils. The third, the so-called ‘ Athan- asian Creed,’ is of unknown origin, and acquired currency in great measure from its adaptation to liturgical use. Various as these documents are in their several characteristics, they are one in being expositions of the Triune Name. I The so-called Apostles’ Creed, the first of the three in value and importance, was in reality chronologically the second — at least in its com- plete shape . 1 There is no evidence, I need scarcely say, to connect it directly with the Apostles. This fact is known by every student of Christian Antiquity, although in our own day the Creed is constantly grouped by ecclesiastics with the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, as though 1 See Appendix, Note 2, Latin Text of the Apostles' Creed. II THE ‘ APOSTLES’ ’ CREED 45 all three were co-ordinate in authority. Even Richard Hooker writes — ‘ We have from the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ received that brief Confession of Faith which hath been always a badge of the Church, a mark whereby to discern Christian men from infidels and Jews.’ 1 An early Church tradition, first found in a sermon erroneously attributed to Augustine, ap- pears to rest, like so many other traditions, on a mistaken etymology. The word symbol , avfj,/3o\ov, was read as from the Greek av^oXrj, or in the plural avfA/3o\ai, a repast to which every one brought his own contribution — a kind of picnic. Thus — Peter said, John „ James „ Andrew „ Philip „ Thomas ,, Bartholomew ,, ! I believe in God the Father Almighty.’ ‘ Creator of Heaven and earth.’ ‘And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.’ ‘ Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.’ ‘ He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.’ ‘ He descended into hell, the third day He rose again.’ ‘ He ascended into Heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.’ 1 Ecclesiastical Polity , v. 42. 46 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. Matthew said, ‘ From whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.’ James the Less „ ‘ I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church.’ Simon Zelotes „ ‘ The Communion of Saints, the forgive- ness of sins.’ Jude the bro- therof James Matthias ‘ The resurrection of the flesh.’ ‘ The life everlasting. Amen .’ 1 There are, in other versions of the story, some different distributions of the articles among the Twelve ; but the whole is a monkish fiction, probably of the sixth century, only worth noting here as a specimen of the kind of belief which could retain a hold upon the minds of theologians otherwise intelligent and cultured. For even the learned Bishop Beveridge, so late as the beginning of the eighteenth century, in his Exposition of the Thirty -nine Articles , could gravely repeat the story, without expressing any doubt as to its authenticity . 2 We turn then to the actual course of develop- ment. There are traces in early fragments of Christian literature of the Baptismal formula in a 1 See Appendix, Note 3, The Tradition in Latin Verse. Long- fellow employs the legend as Epilogue to his Divine Tragedy. 2 Beveridge, Works (ed. Hartwell Horne, 1824), p. 283. II THE ‘ APOSTLES’ ’ CREED 47 catechetical shape; the candidate being asked, ‘ Dost thou believe in God the Father ? ’ and again, ‘ in Jesus Christ His only Son ? ’ and again, ‘ in the Holy Spirit ? ’ immersion in many instances taking place at each several avowal of belief. The facts and doctrines inculcated, in addition to this simple profession, formed the symbolum or secret, indi- cated in many early writings, but nowhere explicitly detailed, until we come to Irenaeus, near the close of the second century, who, in combating the errors and speculations of his time, repeatedly declares the substance of the Christian faith. One passage is as follows : — The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the Apostles and their disciples this faith : In one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and all things that are in them ; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation ; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the Prophets the dispensa- tions of God, and the advents, and the birth from a Virgin, and the Passion, and the Resurrection from the dead, and the Ascension into Heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus our Lord, and His manifestation from Heaven in the glory of the Father, to gather all things into one, and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race . 1 1 Against Heresies, book i. ch. x. (Clark’s ed. vol. i. p. 42). 48 THE CHRISTIAN CREED l.ECT. But even this enumeration is hardly in any true sense a Creed. It lacks succinctness ; it is essentially rhetorical, and plainly incomplete. Whilst it constitutes, no doubt, a declaration of the general belief of the Church, this belief is evidently set forth in the language of Irenseus himself, as in other passages of his writings, where the same truths are variously expressed. So like- wise with Tertullian, ten years later, who uses, it may be observed, the term Regula Fidei : — The Rule of Faith is wholly one, alone, immovable, and irreformable — the rule, to wit, of believing in one only God omnipotent, the Creator of the Universe, and His Son Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised again the third day from the dead, received in the Heavens, sitting now at the right hand of the Father, destined to come to judge living and dead, through the resurrection of the flesh as well as of the Spirit . 1 The pupil and follower of Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, gives substantially the same Articles, but in a catechetical form, as a Baptismal Con- fession ; and from a comparison of these in corre- sponding passages from other writers, we arrive 1 De Virginibus Velandis, c. i. (Clark’s ed. vol. iii. p. 154). See also De P ret script 10 ne Hcerelicorum , c. xiii. (vol. ii. p. 16). II THE ‘ APOSTLES' ' CREED 49 at the following, as in substance the primitive Roman Creed. (I am quoting from the late Dr. Hatch ). 1 I believe in God Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, His Son our Lord, who was born of a Virgin, crucified under Pontius Pilate, the third day rose again from the dead, sitteth at the right hand of the Father, from whence He is coming to judge the living and dead ; and in the Holy Spirit. 2 To this simple Creed early additions were made, varying in different communities, and lead- ing to a larger general recension. Two almost identical forms of the Creed in the fourth century are respectively given — in Greek by Marcellus of Ancyra in Galatia, and in Latin by Rufinus of Aquileia in North Italy, which agree in the clauses — ‘ the Father Almighty, Only-begotten Son, born of the Holy Ghost, crucified and buried, ascended into Heaven, the Holy Church, the Resurrection of the flesh.’ In succeeding writers fresh articles appear, either as the attacks of heresy might seem to require, or as individual theologians might dwell 1 Hibbert Lectures, xi. p. 318. 8 Compare Harnack, Apostolische Glaubensbekenn/niss, 1893 (tr. in Nineteenth Century of that year), and Dr. Swete's criticism in The Apostles' Creed, Cambridge, 1898. E 50 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. on special points. Thus the phrase, ‘ He de- scended into Hell ’ — descendit in inferna — appears for the first time near the end of the fourth cen- tury, in the writings of Rufinus ; the epithet ‘ Catholic,’ as applied to the Church, comes also from Aquileia, its earliest known occurrence, as an epithet of the Church, being in the writings of Nicetas, about the middle of the fifth century. The ‘ Communion of Saints ’ appears just a hun- dred years later ; and the whole Creed as we have it is given for the first time in a Treatise by the German abbot Pirminius, two hundred years after that, or A.D. 750. 1 It is a significant fact that this evolutionary process was conducted without the interposition of authority. No General Council, no ecclesias- tical rulers, enforced the Creed : its adoption rested entirely on the consensus of Churches ; and the reference to it by various authors is simply by way of testimony — ‘ Such and such are the beliefs of Christians ’ — selected from the great mass of opinions as worthy to be put forth as dogmas. Selection was here, as always, a main factor in 1 Heurtley's Harmonia Symbolica, p. 70. The work of Pirminius is entitled * Libellus Pirminii de singulis libris Canonicis scarapsus (? scriptus)' (Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. lxxxix. ). II THE ‘ APOSTLES’ ’ CREED 5i the process of development. Some Articles were evidently held and declared from the beginning, others mark a growth of opinion, and belong, both in belief and in declaration, to a later age. Some clauses again were added, and afterwards elimin- ated as inexact, or ambiguous, or unnecessary. Thus in Rufinus we find the epithets ‘ invisible ’ and ‘impassible’ applied to God the Father; and, what is yet more significant, the earliest mention of the ‘ Holy Church ’ is directly associated with the forgiveness of sins ; the candidate for baptism, as we read in Cyprian, being required to say : ‘ I believe the remission of sins and the life ever- lasting through the Holy Church .’ 1 This form of expression is afterwards dropped, and belief in the Holy Church is afifixed as a separate article, the epithet ‘ Catholic ’ being subsequently added, and ‘ the Communion of Saints ’ appended. The question is an interesting one, whether ‘ the Com- munion of Saints ’ was at first intended as a further definition of the Church, or as an added particular ; whether the Creed declared that the Universal Church is the fellowship or communion 1 Epistle to Januarius 69 (Oxford ed. 70), sec. 2 ; lip. to Magnus 75 (Oxford ed. 69), sec. 7 (Clark’s ed. vol. i. pp. 251, 308). 52 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. of all the holy, or whether that the Church, as a definite and visible Society on earth, is in fellow- ship with the Saints everywhere, especially with the glorified. On the whole, I am inclined to hold by the former explanation. It is remarkable that Luther, in adopting the Creed, altered the word Catholic into Christian — ‘ I believe in the Holy Christian Church ’ ; while the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism retain ‘ Christian,’ but translate the word ‘ Catholic ’ as universal — ‘ a holy universal Christian Church.’ There is much to be said for these readings of the Creed — only the effect is to surrender the word Catholic ; and we may well ask whether the wiser policy would not have been to maintain the claim of the Evangelical Churches to the word in its true significance. Let the word be once aban- doned, and the concession will be used to the disadvantage of those who thus appear to disclaim the thing signified by it. It is, in fact, often represented as a contradiction that Protestants should claim a place in the Holy Catholic Church. There is a point at which the yielding to con- ventionality in such a matter becomes thought- lessness, and leads to grave misapprehension. II THE 1 APOSTLES' ' CREED S3 Unless we distinctly mean ‘ universal,’ the word ‘ Catholic ’ had better not be employed. But granting this definition, the word is of unspeak- able value as expressing one of the most glorious characteristics of the great invisible Church of God . 1 This clause is perhaps the principal ambiguity of the Creed. But there are others which prove a stumbling-block to thoughtful minds. Thus when it is said of our Lord that ‘ He descended into hell,’ it is asked whether this is to be under- stood of the abode of lost souls, or of Hades, the place of all the departed ; much more, again, why such an Article should have been included among the essentials of the Faith. On these points there have been many controversies ; and it is doubtful whether the clause conveys any definite meaning to the average mind. It is unfortunate when a Creed requires more explanation than the Scrip- ture which it is intended to elucidate. The West- minster Confession, it may be noted, so interprets the Article as to evade the difficulty ; adding the note, ‘ i.e. continued in the state of the dead and under the power of death until the third day.’ 1 Ignatius, Ep. to the Smyrntzans, c. vii. : ' Wherever Christ Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church' (tiirou y Xpiorbs ’IrjooCs, ^kcl t; KaOoXlKT) (KK\l]ola). 54 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. A similar remark applies to the clause which affirms ‘ the resurrection of the flesh ’ 1 — or, as it reads in an early document, 1 the resurrectibn of this flesh .’ 2 In the usual English form in the Prayer Book, we have 1 the resurrection of the body ’ — a free translation of the original ; the word flesh, however, being retained in the Baptismal Service and the Office for the Visitation of the Sick. The phrase seems to have been originally derived from a misapplication of Job’s words in the well-known passage, 1 Yet in my flesh shall I see God ’; 3 but apart from this, it was used as an anti- dote to the false gnosis which restricted the bless- ing of redemption to the spiritual nature of man. This Creed, it should be added, belongs to the Western Churches alone. It is unknown in the East. The Papal, the Lutheran, the Calvinistic Reformed, the Moravian, and the Anglican com- munions unite in its adoption. For many genera- tions, and in countless assemblies, it has been the one accepted utterance of the Christian verity. 1 ' Resurrectionem carnis’ : ' hujus carnis ’ (Rufinus). 2 See the discussion of the use of carnis in Dr. Swete’s The Apostles' Creed : its relation to Primitive Christianity , 1894, ch. ix. 3 Job xix. 26. I THE NICENE CREED 55 We are not blind to these claims upon our reverential regard ; but even these are secondary to the authority of Scripture, and must be no bar to our serious and devout criticism. 1 The West- minster Divines, in appending the Creed to their Confession, well and wisely say : Albeit the substance of the doctrine comprised in that Abridgment commonly called the Apostles’ Creed be fully set forth in each of the Catechisms, so as there is no neces- sity of inserting the Creed itself, yet it is here annexed, not as though it were composed by the Apostles, or ought to be esteemed canonical Scripture, as the Ten Command- ments and the Lord’s Prayer, but because it is a brief view of the Christian Faith, agreeable to the Word of God, and anciently received in the Churches of Christ. II Side by side with the process of development which has been described, were other ecclesiastical movements, resulting in the formulation of a second Creed, commonly called the Nicene, from the famous Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325, at which its main Articles were adopted, although they were in great measure taken from earlier confessions by individual teachers and churches. In this Council 1 See Appendix, Note 4, Discussion of the Creed in the Reformed Church of Geneva, 1869. 56 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. vve witness an entirely new departure. Instead of the gradual development of Christian thought, seeking greater definiteness of expression from age to age, and resting upon general acquiescence, we have profound theological discussions, the settlement of dogmas by vote, and the claim of infallibility. The history of the Nicene Council has been often told, and is familiar to all students of ecclesiastical history. Its immediate occasion was the outbreak of the Arian controversy re- specting the Person of the Son of God ; and the Creed, in the fulness and precision of its state- ments on this great subject, plainly declares its origin. In fact, as it left the Council, the Creed was rather a manifesto on the Deity and Humanity of Christ than in any general sense a Christian Confession. As will be shown in a subsequent Lecture, it had a direct controversial bearing against the various heresies of the age. It terminated abruptly. After the Articles relating to the Son of God, it simply added : ‘ And in the Holy Ghost ’ ; appending an anathema, and so setting the example which other ecclesiastical assemblies have only too faithfully followed. The sentence II THE NICENE CREED 57 runs — ‘ But those that say — There was a time when He was not ; and Before He was begotten, He was not ; and that He came into existence from what was not ; or who profess that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or substance, or that He was created, or changeable, or variable, are anathematised by the Catholic Church.’ The Confession was signed by the bishops present, to the number of 318, the first recorded instance in ecclesiastical history of subscription to articles of faith. 1 I fear it must be added that the practice of evasion, and the subterfuge of ‘ a non-natural sense ’ in the case of some who appended their names, entered at the same time. But of this hereafter. 2 It appeared for the moment as if the contro- versy were settled. Constantine, in imperial rough-and-ready style, at once decreed the banish- ment of Arius, with all who might refuse to subscribe the Nicsean formula. They were hence- forth to be called ‘ Porphyrians,’ after the early Pagan opponent of the Gospel ; the books of Arius were to be consigned to the flames, and any 1 See Lect. VI. 2 See Appendix, Note 5, Greek Text of the Creed. 58 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. one detected in concealing them was to be put to death . 1 But it was not so easy to check the movements of thought. One word in the Creed, homoousios, ‘ of the same substance (with the Father) ’ — a word that had come down from the Greek literature of the Early Church 2 — failed to command universal concurrence. There were still many who pleaded for homoiousios , ‘ of the like substance.’ Synod after synod discussed the difference. One Council, held at Sirmium thirty-five years after that of Nicaea, affirmed the homoiousion by a great majority. The whole world, it was said, was startled to find itself Arian. But the advocates of Scriptural truth held on their undaunted way, although Athanasius, the foremost champion of the Nicene doctrine, with Hilary of Poitiers, his chief coadjutor in the Western Churches, died before the final victory was won. Very striking is the picture which Hilary gives of this stormy period : — Since the Nicene Council, we have done nothing but write about the Creed. While we fight about words, in- 1 Socrates, Eccl. Hist. i. c. 9, ‘Letters of Constantine.' 2 The word occurs in Origen. II THE NICENE CREED 59 quire about novelties, take advantage of ambiguities, criticise authors, fight on party questions, have difficulties in agreeing, and prepare to anathematise one another, there is scarcely a man who belongs to Christ. First we have a Creed which bids us not use the Nicene homoousionj then comes another which decrees and preaches it ; next a third excuses the word substance as adopted by the Fathers in their simplicity ; then a fourth which, instead of excusing, condemns. Every year, nay every month, we make new Creeds to describe inscrutable mysteries. We repent of what we have done, we defend those who repent, we anathematise those whom we defended. We condemn the doctrine of others in ourselves, or our own doctrine in that of others ; and reciprocally tearing one another to pieces, we have been the cause of each other’s ruin . 1 So, in a well-known passage, the historian Gibbon sarcastically remarks upon ‘ the furious contests which the difference of a single diphthong excited between the Homoousians and the Homoiousians .’ 2 Yes; the difference was only an iota , yet the interests involved were too vast for the sceptical historian to understand. There is a very noteworthy reference in Froude’s Life of Carlyle to a conversation with the veteran sage, then in his eighty-third year : — ‘ In earlier years Carlyle had spoken contemptuously of the Athan- 1 ‘Second Address to Constantine II.,’ a.d. 360 (Migne, Patrol Hil. vol. ii. p. 567). 2 Decline and Fall, ch. xxi. 6o THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. asian controversy, of the Christian world torn to pieces over a diphthong ; and he would ring the changes in broad Annandale on the Hom^ousion and the Honwz'ousion. But now,’ adds Mr. Froude, ‘ he told me that he perceived Christianity itself to have been at stake. If the Arians had won, it would have dwindled away into a legend .’ 1 The struggle lasted for fifty-six years. It is no part of my purpose to speak of the great men, defenders of the faith, who arose during this period in the Eastern Churches — Basil of Caesarea, the two Gregories, the two Cyrils, and Chrysostom ; still less of the teachers of new and strange doctrines concerning the nature of Christ and the Personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit — Nes- torius, Apollinarius, Eutyches, Macedonius. These all in their way kept the theological strife alive ; and we hardly wonder that Julian, surnamed the Apostate, whose brief reign, with his abortive effort to revive Paganism, belonged to this half- century, should have issued an edict, at once recalling the bishops who had been exiled for their faith and commanding universal toleration. ‘ He 1 Thomas Carlyle: a History of his Life in London, vol. ii. ch. xxxv. p. 462. II THE NICENE CREED 61 would invite,’ we are told, ‘ the leaders and chief laity of different sects into his palace, and inform them with all suavity that they were at liberty to follow any form of belief they chose,’ his hope perhaps being, as a Christian historian of the period suggests with more shrewdness than charity , 1 that if free license were given to every shade of opinion, the Christian people would be no longer dangerous from their unanimity. It is at least certain that unanimity was not secured. It had become evident in the course of years that the Creed of the Nicaean Fathers needed some supplemental declaration. New questions had arisen, on which that Creed was silent. The belief in the Holy Ghost was left without any explanation. The doctrines regarding the Church, the Sacraments, the Future Life, were altogether omitted. Gregory of Nazianzum, next to Athan- asius the greatest theologian of the period, writes in a letter to a friend : ‘To that faith (as declared at Nicaea) we belong and will belong, even while we add some Articles, in explanation of that which was stated there concerning the Holy Spirit, 1 Sozomen, Eccl. Hist. lib. v. c. 5. But the Pagan historian Ammianus hints the same motive (Hist. xxii. 5). 62 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. somewhat defectively, because the question had not then been stirred .’ 1 Cyril of Jerusalem re- affirms the Creed with some added articles of his own ; 2 and Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, an orthodox and very earnest man, although of narrow understanding, wrote a treatise which is of some importance in the history of Creeds. The treatise is entitled Ancoratus, ‘the anchored one,’ and is intended to set forth the fundamental truths of the Gospel. At its close it contains a copy, somewhat modified, of the Nicene Creed much as we have it now, with an important para- graph added after the expression of faith in the Holy Ghost, which paragraph concludes the Creed . 3 How Epiphanius came by this paragraph no one can tell. Did he compose it himself? Hardly likely, considering what manner of man he was. Did he derive it from Cyril, or Gregory, or from any other bishop, or from some Synod, amid the discussions of that distracted age? This last ex- planation seems on the whole the likelier ; but in the lack of positive evidence we must leave the 1 ' Letter to Cledonius, ii.' (Migne, Patrol. Grcec. xxxvii. col. 178), Swainson, p. 84. 2 Catechetical Lectures , xix. xx. 3 See Appendix, Note 6. Epiphanian Additions to the Nicene Creed. II THE N 1 CENE CREED 63 question undetermined. Nor does it matter much. Enough that the Creed with this addition was declared at a subsequent Council to be the voice of the Universal Church. At which Council is again uncertain. There was a Synod of one hundred and fifty bishops, declared oecumenical, held at Constantinople A.D. 381, about seven years after the publication of Epiphanius ; and the adoption of the complete Creed must probably be attributed to that assembly. The Creed is accord- ingly known as the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan. Many of the records of that Council have, however, perished, and all that is certain is that its First Canon decrees : ‘ The Confession of Faith of the three hundred and eighteen Fathers who were assembled at Nicaea in Bithynia shall not be abolished, but shall remain ; and every heresy shall be anathematised,’ these heresies being then recounted. 1 Thus far the Article mentions only the formula as it left the hands of the Nicsean Fathers, and we know that again and again in Synods of the 1 See Hefele, Hist. Councils, vol. ii. p. 53. The heresies are those of ' the Eunomians or Anomoeans, the Arians or Eudoxians, the Semi- Arians or Pneumatomachians, the Sabellians, Marcellians, Photinians, and Apollinarians. ’ 64 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. Churches it had been declared that this ‘ Nicene Creed ’ should be held, unchanged and unaltered. To decide whether what we may call the Epi- phanian additions were authoritatively recognised at Constantinople, we turn in the first instance to the acts of the next so-called oecumenical Council at Ephesus, A.D. 431, memorable for its dealings with the Nestorian doctrine, and its decree of the deoToicos, ‘ bearer of God,’ as the title of the Virgin Mary. This Council, however, simply announced its adherence to the Nicsean symbol, without any reference at all to Constantinople. But at the next General Council, at Chalcedon, A.D. 451, the assembled bishops, between five and six hundred in number, accepted the Creed in its completed form, as ‘ from the three hundred and eighteen Fathers at Nicaea and the one hundred and fifty Fathers at Constantinople.’ This Creed, in the main, agrees with that set forth by Epiphanius nearly eighty years before, omitting, however, the anathematising clauses, and is substantially the Nicene Creed as we all know it to-day. To meet the new forms of perverted doctrine respecting the person of Christ, a signifi- cant clause was inserted, not in the Creed itself, II THE NICENE CREED 65 but in a supplemental declaration by the Council. In this clause four expressive adverbs were em- ployed, at the instance of Pope Leo I., whose genius dominated the assembly at Chalcedon. The words declared the doctrine of the Two Natures of our Lord as united, acrvyyyTw^, aTpeir- t to?, a&LcupeTws, a^aiptcrTW? — without confusion, without change, without division, without separa- tion — words directed severally against the Sabel- lian, Eutychian, Apollinarian, and Nestorian theories. These words are landmarks in the history of thought, although the Creed itself was regarded as complete without them. The fourfold form of error thus noted is no doubt natural to speculative minds. The late Sir William Hamilton of Dublin tells a story of his little boy, six or seven years old, who came to him one day to ask how it was that Christ Jesus could be both God and man, suggesting an explanation. The child’s father told him it would not do, and sent him away to think out the matter again. The little fellow soon came with another theory, but was once more sent back in the same way. So again, and yet again ; by which time, Sir William Hamilton says, * my son had hit substan- F 66 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. tially, in his childish way, upon the four chief heresies of the fourth and fifth centuries!’ Unlike the ‘Apostles’ Creed,’ the Nicseno- Constantinopolitan formula was accepted by both East and West, with one important difference, turning again upon a single phrase. This phrase, added in the West, was the famous Filioquc. In the original Greek form of the Creed, the Holy Spirit was set forth as ‘ proceeding from the Father ’ ; the Western Churches, in a synod held in Toledo, A.D. 589, added ‘and the Son ’ ; and the doctrine of the 1 Double Procession of the Holy Ghost ’ was one of the occasions of the great schism between Eastern and Western Churches which has lasted to our own time. It is hard for us to conceive the fervour- — I may add, the rancour — with which this abstruse metaphysical point was debated. For, it must be borne in mind, the question was not of the Mission of the Comforter in the work of Redemption — called in theological language His Temporal Mission, His mission in the Economy of Grace. The point at issue was the mode of existence in the Triune Godhead : whether the Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father alone — a view which was said to deny the identity of the II THE NICENE CREED 67 Father with the Son — or from the Father and the Son conjointly ; against which opinion it was argued that there would then be in the Divine Essence two principles or originating powers. The discussion was at one time very real and earnest ; but in the clearer light of modern philosophy it is seen to turn upon matters of which we know nothing. In the phrase of the day, either alternative is alike ‘ unthinkable,’ and the whole controversy is an instructive example of those theological debates, so frequent in the past and possibly not unknown even now, which are interminable so long as the limit of our intellectual powers is unexamined, but which, when our ignor- ance is once acknowledged, are for ever laid to rest. There are many questions besides that of the Double Procession of the Holy Ghost, hotly debated in more recent times, of which we hear no word of controversy now, not because the prob- lems are solved, but because they are seen to be insoluble . 1 1 It is only just to give a somewhat opposite view to the above, in the words of Charles Kingsley to F. D. Maurice in 1865 : ‘The pro- cession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son,' Mr. Kingsley writes, ‘ is most practically important to me. If the Spirit proceeds only from the Father, the whole theorem of the Trinity, as well as its practical results, falls to pieces in my mind. I do not mean that good 68 THE CHRISTIAN CREED I.ECT. Ill When we come to the third great Creed of the Ancient Church, that which wrongly bears the appellation Athanasian, otherwise termed, from its metrical form and its first word, ‘ The Hymn Qiiicunque', we are met by an altogether different class of facts. Instead of being gradually evolved, like the Apostles’ Creed, from the thought and conviction of the Church through successive generations, or of being discussed and settled, like the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed, at oecu- menical councils, this so-called Athanasian Creed emerges no one can tell whence or how, and is found mysteriously incorporated in the Liturgies of the Churches without any hint as to the source of its authority. That this Latin document was not the work of the Greek father Athanasius is abundantly evident. No Greek original of it was even pretended to exist, and almost every fresh investigation of the evidence leads to some new men in the Greek Church are not better than I. On the contrary, I believe that every good man therein believes in the procession from both Father and Son, whether he thinks he does so or not.' The writer of these words probably had in his mind the ' Temporal Mission' of the Comforter rather than the mode of His Being. If so, his language is quite consistent with what has been said above. II THE ‘ A THAN ASIAN ’ CREED 69 theory as to its authorship. What is certain is that it was still directed against the different theories as to the Person of Christ maintained during the ages of controversy which followed the Nicaean Council, and that its origin was in the Western Church, probably in its African or its Gallic portion. The date has been very variously assigned. On the one hand, it is plainly later than Augustine, who died A.D. 430 ; as it con- tains obvious quotations from that Father’s works ; and it is as plainly earlier than a synod at Augustodunum 1 in France, A.D. 670, by which the acknowledgment of the Creed was enjoined upon the clergy. 2 Again, the substance of it, though not in the form of direct quotation, is found in the Acts of three Spanish synods (Toledo, A.D. 589, 633, 638), from which it appears probable that the document itself already existed in the sixth century. Higher than this we cannot go. It is more than likely that the Creed, or Psalm, as it has been called, came from some monastery of the 1 Otherwise Bibracte, now Autun. 2 Another note of its date is in the fact that it contains no reference to the Monothelite controversy, defined at the Sixth General Council (Constantinople III. ). Had the Creed been later it could scarcely have missed this point. 70 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. West, and was gradually accepted on its own merits, without reference to its authorship. We note its use in Divine service in the ninth century at Basle ; in the tenth century in England. At first it was chanted before the Apostles’ Creed, as a kind of introduction to that succinct formulary ; we all know the place it now holds in the Anglican Prayer Book ; its use being enjoined on just thirteen days of the year, including the great Church festivals. Its use is discontinued in the Episcopal Church of the United States, and is made optional in the disestablished Church of Ireland. The discussions that have arisen in our own times regarding this formulary are interesting even to those not immediately concerned in them, in the light that they shed upon religious thought both past and present. One thing may be con- ceded to the defenders of the Creed. It does not, as often contended, attempt to give an explana- tion of the Divine mysteries which it asserts. It is a series of declarations, with little or no attempt at metaphysical analysis. The formula meets those who endeavoured to explain the Divine mode of existence, not by counter-explanation II THE ‘ A THAN A SI AN ’ CREED 7 but by reiterated dogmatic forms of definition. On this point Mr. Balfour cogently remarks, in his Foundations of Belief. The Church held that all such partial explanations inflicted irremediable impoverishment on the idea of the Godhead which was essentially involved in the Christian revelation. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its inexplicable fulness ; and so it has come about that while such simplifications as those of the Arians, for example, are so alien and impossible to modern modes of thought that, if they had been incorporated with Christianity, they must have destroyed it, the doctrine of Christ’s divinity still gives life and reality to the worship of millions of pious souls, who are wholly ignorant both of the controversy to which they owe its preservation and of the technicalities which its discussion has involved. Like the Nicene Creed, the Hymn Quicunque throws the main stress on the doctrine of the Godhead ; and especially on the Divine nature of the Son ; the clauses concerning Redemption being brief and condensed. The words Trinity and Person now first occur in articles of belief. ‘ Trinity,’ found in Tertullian , 1 was a convenient phrase, avowedly non-biblical, in which to sum up the biblical teaching. ‘ Person,’ altogether a more equivocal term, and the source of endless confusion 1 Adv. Praxean, c. ii. iii. (Clark's ed. vol. ii. pp. 337 sq.). 72 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. of thought, was taken as the equivalent of the Greek virbcrTacns. Yet, properly speaking, ‘hypo- stasis ’ means substance, or subsistence ; and ‘ persona ’ or 7 rp 6 aa> 7 rov denotes the character under which a being appears. Thus, in place of interpreting the mystery, the theologians of the period effected a compromise ; decreeing that person in Latin and substance in Greek should represent the same ineffable reality ; whereas for a Greek to say ‘ person ’ in his own language, or for a Latin to say substantia , would be heresy. The English translation of the Quicunque , made in 1552, has some obvious errors ; and among the subjects mooted at the Lambeth Pan- Anglican Conference of 1897 was the advisable- ness of preparing a new version for the English- speaking Churches. The present version begins ambiguously : ‘ Before all things it is necessary to hold the Catholic faith.’ The meaning of ante omnia is not before all things in importance , but first of all in point of time. Then, in the clause ‘ The Father incomprehensible, the Son incom- prehensible, the Holy Ghost incomprehensible,’ the word immensus should plainly be rendered ‘ unmeasured ’ or ‘ infinite.’ II THE ‘ A THANASIAN ’ CREED 73 But the chief ground for proposing revision is in the uncompromising character of the clauses which assert the everlasting condemnation of those who do not hold the Catholic faith as therein defined. Some modification of these clauses undoubtedly would at once be closer to the original and less offensive to Christian charity. Such amendments, however, would be but palliative ; and although the language may be softened by re-translation, the main anathema remains. The composers of the Quicunque meant it so, and, in fact, did but repeat in a more explicit way the anathemas of earlier Creeds. When we argue that the doom pronounced is too terrible to be literally believed in, we are but importing the spirit of the nineteenth century into the sixth or seventh. The theologians of those early days would have scorned your compromises. To deny, for instance, the Double Procession of the Holy Ghost, as asserted again in this formula, would be to deserve hell-fire. Such, all the world over, is the spirit of intolerant ecclesiasticism. It is fair to add that, within the English Church, the protests have not been few. Thus 74 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. Bishop Jeremy Taylor writes : ‘ It seems very hard to put uncharitableness into a Creed, and so to make it become an article of Faith.’ Archbishop Tillotson wrote to Bishop Burnet : ‘ The account given by you (in Burnet’s Exposition of the Thirty- nine Articles') of Athanasius’s Creed seems to me nowise satisfactory : I wish we were well rid of it.’ And Bishop Hoadly says : ‘ I confess that I cannot apprehend how the public service could suffer, were there no such damnatory sentence ever read in it. Nay, I am of opinion that the doctrine of the Trinity would be better secured, and this very account of it better received, without such sen- tences than with them.’ Recent discussions have brought the subject more clearly into light. A Royal Commission, appointed in 1867, pronounced by a vote of nine- teen out of twenty-seven members, against the compulsory public use of the Creed ; their recom- mendation, however, was never carried out. In 1873 the Convocation of Canterbury, after long and anxious debate, adopted two resolutions which, it was hoped, would ease the minds of thousands of the clergy who had sought relief : 1 — 1 See history in Swainson, On the Creeds, pp. 523-526. II THE ‘ A THAN ASIAN ’ CREED 75 1. That the confession of our Christian Faith, com- monly called the Creed of St. Athanasius, doth not make any addition to the Faith as contained in Holy Scripture, but warneth against errors which from time to time have existed in the Church of Christ. 2. That inasmuch as Holy Scripture in divers places doth promise life to them that believe, and declare the con- demnation of them that believe not, so doth the Church in this Confession declare the necessity for all who would be in a state of salvation of holding fast the Catholic faith, and the great peril of rejecting the same. Wherefore the warn- ings in this Confession of Faith are to be understood no otherwise than the like warnings in Holy Scripture ; for we must receive God’s threatenings even as His promises, in such wise as they are generally set forth in Holy Writ. Moreover, the Church doth not herein pronounce judgment on any . . . particular person or persons, God alone being the Judge of all. This declaration, moderate and guarded as its language seems, was rejected by the Convocation of York; and the attempt to do anything more than simply to re-translate the Quicunque is prob- ably now abandoned as hopeless. No doubt the balance of opinion in the Church of England remains in favour of the Creed. Dr. Waterland expresses the general view : ‘ The use of it will hardly be thought superfluous so long as there are any Arians, Photinians, Sabellians, 76 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. Macedonians, Apollinarians, Nestorians, or Euty- chians in these parts.’ And to the same effect, in the course of the more recent discussions, Dr. Pusey wrote to Bishop Wilberforce : 1 ‘ I believe that the Athanasian Creed is the only safeguard against our clergy and people falling into Nes- torianism and Eutychianism, some into one, some into the other.’ ‘ The only safeguard ’ ! I cannot help pausing to ask, into which of these heresies we are likely to fall, who have no Athanasian Creed in our formularies to keep us right ! No doubt there are theologians of a more liberal school who concur in the fears expressed by Waterland and Pusey. Thus, while Dean Stanley, as is well known, was strongly opposed to the continued use of the Athanasian formula, his friends Charles Kingsley and F. D. Maurice were equally strenuous upholders of it ; 2 the latter expressing, according to his wont, his deep thank- fulness for such a guide. And Dr. Arnold of Rugby wrote to an old pupil : 3 ‘ I do not believe the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed, 1 19th October 1871 : Life of Pusey, vol. iv. 2 See Maurice's Essays, note at the end ; also his pamphlet, ' Sub- scription no Bondage.’ 3 22nd June 1858 : Stanley’s Life of Arnold, vol. ii. p. 125. II THE ‘ A THAN ASIAN ’ CREED 77 under any qualification given of them, except such as substitute for them propositions of a wholly different character. . . . But I read the Athan- asian Creed, and have subscribed, and should again subscribe, the Article about it, because I do not conceive the clauses in question to be essential parts of it, or that they were retained deliberately by our Reformers, after the propriety of retaining or expunging them had been distinctly submitted to their minds.’ Do not think that all this belongs to the inner affairs of the Church of England, without applica- tion to ourselves. It does bear, most clearly and significantly, upon the questions that we shall have to discuss in a subsequent Lecture, regarding Subscription to Creeds and Confessions. Mean- while, we have to pass from the Creeds of the early Church to the Mediaeval and Reformation period, where we shall meet with an entirely different class of phenomena, and shall trace together the operation of those intellectual movements and spiritual forces from which the Church life of modern days has sprung, with its supreme rule of faith and doctrine in the ‘ living Oracles,’ the written Word of God. LECTURE III CONFESSIONS OF THE REFORMATION PERIOD The Creeds of the early Church, as considered in the preceding Lecture, will have been seen to agree in this one marked particular, that they relate chiefly to the being and nature of God in His Triune revelation. Especially do they con- centrate attention upon the Lord Jesus Christ, His Deity and Sonship, His Incarnation, suffer- ings, and glory. The question of questions for the time was, Who and What was He ? On this there was full expansion. The further question, What has He done for man ? was answered, in the Nicene Creed, by the unexplained statement of a single clause, * For us men and for our salva- tion,’ and in the Quicunque by the phrase, ‘ Who suffered for our salvation,’ — declarations left in their bare simplicity to the interpretation of Chris- in DOGMAS OMITTED IN EARLY CREEDS 79 tian consciousness and faith, with no details on the important connected topics of Sin and Atone- ment, the Mediatorial work of Christ, Justifica- tion through Faith, and the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit. It can hardly have been that these topics were omitted as of subordinate im- portance : the probable explanation is that they were as yet comparatively undisputed, or rather that they lay implicitly in the Christian conscious- ness, accepted without analysis. Yet it is not a little remarkable that the Pelagian controversy respecting Divine grace and human freedom should have left no traces at least upon the latest of these Creeds. The inference is that these declarations of ‘ the Catholic faith ’ were intentionally devoted to one phase of the truth, passing by the whole range of subjective theology as beyond their scope. Thus, technically speaking, in modern phrase, the three Creeds contain a Theology proper, and a Christology ; but not an Anthropology or a Soteri- ology. Nor is this fact wholly a disadvantage. Looking at some ancient speculations respecting Atonement and Redemption, one trembles to think what the result might have been had these become stamped with the authority of ecclesiastical dogma 8o THE CHRISTIAN CREED I.ECT. and inculcated as a necessary part of Catholic belief. The ages that followed were marked by con- stant discussions on these and kindred themes — at least in the Western Church. The unpro- gressive East held fast by the Nicene Creed, with little or no doctrinal development ; but the West, which gradually became the realm of the Papacy, witnessed much activity of thought, especially during the long scholastic period, when the doctors of the schools, with great subtlety and immense industry, employed all the resources of the Aris- totelian dialectic in the attempt to build up Theo- logy upon a basis of philosophy, with admixtures of mysticism, and further speculations into which it is no part of my present purpose to inquire. Tradition and Church authority were made co- ordinate with Scripture as guides of religious be- lief ; nay, they became practically supreme, as an authentically inspired living voice must be superior to the written page. Christianity in outward form was increasingly a sacramental system : to the masses it was little more. Salvation was to be obtained through the baptismal waters, the out- Ill GROWTH OF DOGMA 81 ward rite determining the limits of the Holy Catholic Church ; and the mystery of Incarnation, rightly represented as the secret of all true spiritual life, was to be realised only through the Eucharist. Thought, will, and conscience were held under the sway of a ubiquitous and all-dominating priest- hood. During this period certain beliefs, long debated, by degrees assumed shape, and were formulated into dogmas. We shall meet with them again in the Roman Creed of i 564, known as the Creed of Pope Pius IV. Suffice it now to say, that the most important of these were the dogma of Transub- stantiation, affirmed as an Article of Faith at the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, and that of Purgatory, laid down as a credendum at the Council of Florence, 1439. Other tenets there were, as those relating to the adoration of images, the invocation of saints, the imputation of their merits, the number and efficacy of the Sacraments, and the like, asserted in Papal Bulls or at succes- sive Councils, and afterwards finding a place in the same memorable Creed. But meanwhile there were movements of thought towards higher religious ideals ; partly G 82 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. on scholastic lines, by men who strove to interpret the Scriptures according to a profounder and more spiritual philosophy ; and partly in the healthy reactions of common -sense against the supersti- tions imposed upon the multitude. Some of these protests were denounced as ‘ heresies,’ and the reports of them have come down to us with that stigma attached to them. It is always important . to remember that it is the dominant party that tells the tale. It has been too much the way with ecclesiastics to give the doctrine an evil name, as an easier process than refuting it ; and many a reputed heretic has been cast out of the pale of the professedly Catholic Church only because his faith was more spiritual and scriptural ♦ than that of his triumphant opponents. We need, therefore, much discrimination to judge aright amid the perversions and suppressions of historical truth that have reached us. We know, for instance, that the Albigenses, and the earlier so- called Anabaptists, have been greatly slandered ; so perhaps has it been in more ancient times than theirs, from the days of Vigilantius downwards. The might in Church matters is not always with the right. Ill PRECURSORS OF THE REFORMATION 83 But we are on yet firmer ground when we come to those precursors of the Reformation whose works remain to speak for themselves. Thus Anselm, the great scholastic divine, Arch- bishop of Canterbury in the eleventh century, in his Cur Deus Homo ? met the crude theories of the Atonement which had prevailed up to his day by a doctrine based (whether we can now wholly accept it or not) upon the character of God and the needs of man. But undoubtedly the chief battle-ground between the dogmatic theology of the period and the dawning liberalism of inde- pendent minds was the Eucharist, the discussion of which was largely philosophical, conducted in hard scholastic fashion, with much subtle distinc- tion between corpus and species , ‘substance’ and, ‘accident’ Thus Berengarius of Tours, in the eleventh century, endeavoured to interpret the Real Presence in a spiritual sense ; and although silenced and condemned, he had his followers in succeeding generations, among them notably our own Wyclif and the Bohemian John Hus. These men represent the philosophical aspect of the question ; while in the minds of simpler people there was a growingly indignant sense of Church 8 4 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. abuses, with a revolt against priestly tyranny, that heralded the mighty struggles of a future generation. The general course of religious thought, how- ever, concerns us now only so far as it was led to embody itself in Creed and Confession. For this the time was hardly ripe until the Reformation period of the sixteenth century. Then the hour had come, and the man for the crisis was Martin Luther. The first decisive act that heralded the Reformation, as all the world knows, was the posting of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses upon the door of the church at Wittenberg in 1517. It must be noted that these formed neither a Creed nor a Theological Confession. For that the time had not yet arrived. The one duty of the hour was to protest against the traffic in Indulgences. Yet this protest, in principle, whether the Reformers clearly discerned it or not, involved that doctrine regarding Sin, on the apprehension of which all true Soteriology must rest. True repentance must be of the heart, and the only valid forgiveness is from God. These principles Luther clearly affirms, yet he scarcely saw at first whither the Ill PRELIMINARY WORK OF I.UTIIER §5 affirmation would lead. For, if carried to their logical, scriptural conclusion, they call the soul away from Pope and Priest to Christ Himself. This Luther soon discovered, and events moved rapidly. ‘ The Reformation,’ it has been truly said, ‘ was born of the conviction of Sin.’ The Theses had appeared in 1517; the Diet of Worms, where Luther made his memorable stand on behalf of the Bible and Conscience, was in 1521 ; the era of Confessions may be said to have begun in 1529, when Luther prepared his Catechisms : the Longer, a theological treatise which need not concern us now ; and the Smaller, a succinct, and even beautiful, manual for children and the unlettered. It contains the Ten Com- mandments, arranged after the Roman fashion, uniting the first two, and dividing the tenth ; with the ‘ Apostles’ Creed,’ the Lord’s Prayer, and a section on Baptism and the Lord’s Supper — the whole accompanied with succinct explanations, which prove Luther, beyond almost all men, to possess the priceless gift of being able to express the thoughts of the wise in the words of the simple. In the course of the immediately following 86 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. years there were influences actively at work, which not only determined the course of the Reformation, but eventually led to much doctrinal divergence among Protestants. Chief among these influences were the teachings and labours of Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland. At a very early period Zwingli had been attracted by Luther’s teachings ; but he was led by independent study of the Scriptures to different conclusions on some important points. At a great religious conference at Zurich in 1523, the Swiss Reformer had propounded sixty-seven Theses, or, as he termed them, Conclusions, which, like the Theses of Luther at Wittenberg six years previously, rather opened the way for further discussion than attempted any complete syllabus of doctrine. They went, however, considerably farther than Luther in their divergence from traditional belief, and were the herald of a greater Reformation than his. In Luther’s Theses the chief topics were sin, repentance, and forgiveness ; Zwingli’s Conclusions are ‘ full of Christ as the only Saviour and Mediator, and recognise the Scriptures as the only rule of faith.’ ‘ The Sum of the Gospel,’ the Swiss Reformer declares, ‘ is that our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, II! LUTHER AND ZWINGLI 87 has made known to us the will of His heavenly Father, and redeemed us by His innocence from eternal death, and reconciled us to God.’ And again, ‘ Christ is the Head of all believers.’ ‘ All who live in this Head are His members, and children of God. And this is the true Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints.’ Once more, ‘Christ, who offered Himself once upon the Cross, is the sufficient and perpetual Sacrifice for the sins of all believers. Therefore the Mass is no sacrifice, but a commemoration of the one Sacrifice of the Cross, and a seal of the redemption through Christ.’ In this last Article, especially, Zwingli definitely broke with the teaching of Luther, who, to the last, maintained a real presence of our Lord’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist, although in a different way than that maintained by Romish theologians. But the Swiss Reformer gained enthusiastic adherents, especially CEcolampadius and Martin Bucer, who maintained the same positions in the Ten Articles of Berne , prepared after an animated discussion with the representa- tive of the Papacy, Dr. Martin Eck. The pro- mulgation of these views, it must be confessed, alarmed and grieved the German reformers even THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. more than they irritated the Romanists. Melanch- thon himself, with all his large-heartedness, could not understand Zwingli ; and he especially feared that the opinions of the Swiss Reformer on the • Sacraments would hopelessly injure the Protestant cause. Once only during their career did Luther and Zwingli meet face to face. This was at Marburg, in Cassel, fifty miles north of Frankfurt, in 1529, the year of the Catechisms. Luther was accom- panied by Melanchthon, Zwingli by CEcolam- padius. Long was the conference, conducted at first in private and by pairs, Zwingli being matched with Melanchthon, CEcolampadius with Luther. It was feared, perhaps, that if the two principals confronted each other, their strong wills and fiery tempers might lead to some disastrous issue. A more general conference ensued after the ground had been thus broken ; and the points at issue were debated before a great assembly. As might have been expected, the disputants remained of the same opinion still. I11 the preliminary debate Luther had chalked in large letters, on the table where he and his antagonist sat, Hoc est corpus meum , ‘ This is My body,’ putting his finger Ill LUTHER AND ZWINGLI 89 down emphatically on the word est ; and from his literal interpretation of the saying he could not be moved. Melanchthon thought that Zwingli must be out of his mind ! After the general discussion Zwingli offered Luther his hand ; I am sorry to say that Luther refused it. ‘ No,’ he said, ‘ you have another spirit.’ Afterwards, however, he seems to have relented, and the upshot of the conference was the drafting of fourteen articles 1 on which the combatants could agree — the fif- teenth being left undetermined ; 2 thus — XV. (1) That the Eucharist should be received in both kinds. (2) That the sacrifice of the Mass is inadmis- sible. (3) That the Sacrament of the Altar is a sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, and that the partaking of it is salutary. 1 1. The Trinity; 2. Incarnation of Christ; 3. Birth, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ ; 4. Original Sin (but with a difference between the two Reformers) ; 5. Redemption ; 6, 7. Justifi- cation by Faith ; 8. Operation of the Holy Ghost through the written Word and the Sacraments ; 9. Baptism ; 10. Good works as the fruit of Faith ; 11. Confession and Absolution; 12. Civil Authority; 13. Tradition ; 14. Necessity of Infant Baptism. 2 See Hagenbach, History of the Reformation (Clark’s ed. ), vol. ii. p. 107. 90 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LF.CT. ‘ And although,’ it was further stated, ‘we are not at this time agreed as to whether the true Body and Blood of Christ are physically present in the Bread and Wine, we recommend that either party manifest a Christian love to the other, to the extent that the conscience of every man shall permit, and that both parties entreat God Almighty to confirm us by His Spirit in the right doctrine. Amen.’ It is pleasant to think that Luther and Zwingli parted thus. There was a Christian magnanimity in this concord of those two strong souls which may commend the example to con- troversialists everywhere, and which at the time augured well for the progress and success of the Reformation. In the meantime, preparations were in active progress for the solemn consideration of the points at issue between the Reformers and the Romanists, at a specially convened Diet or Assembly of the States of the German Empire. The Emperor Charles V. had been crowned by the Pope in September, and now made it his first business to convoke this diet, in the Bavarian city of Augs- burg, for two purposes. First, to deliberate con- cerning the Turkish power, the incursions of which Ill THE DIET OF AUGSBURG 9i in Europe were at this time exciting alarm ; and secondly — to quote the language of the Address to the Emperor by which the Confession is pre- faced — ‘ because of dissensions in the matter of our holy religion and Christian faith ; and in order that in this matter of religion the opinions and judgments of diverse parties may be heard in each others’ presence, may be understood and weighed among one another, in mutual charity, meekness, and gentleness ; that — those things which in the writings on either side have been handled or understood amiss being laid aside and corrected — these things may be harmonised and brought back to the one simple truth and Chris- tian concord ; so that hereafter the one unfeigned and true religion may be embraced and preserved by us, so that, as we are subjects and soldiers of the one Christ, so also, in unity and concord, we may live in the one Christian Church .’ 1 This promised well. The Lutheran leaders, with the princes of the State that had espoused their cause, were ready to respond in the same spirit ; and Melanchthon, in the absence of Luther, who remained at Coburg (as near, probably, as he 1 Schaff, The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches, pp. 3, 4. 92 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. could safely venture), was commissioned to prepare a Confession. Luther in his retreat was eagerly interested, for none better than he knew what interests were at stake. The words of his famous version of the forty-sixth Psalm, ‘ Eiri festc Burg ist wiser Gott’ expressive of his own faith and resolution, were often upon his lips. To the Elector John of Saxony, leader of the Protestant princes, he wrote — ‘ I have read the Apology of Master Philip ; it pleases me very well, and I know of nothing by which I could change it for the better ; nor would it be becoming, for I cannot move so softly and gently. May Christ our Lord help, that it may bring forth much and bear fruit, as we hope it may. Amen.’ The Zwinglians had also prepared Confessions in explanation of their special views . 1 One was the Confessio Tetrapolitana, the Confession of four cities — Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau — mainly written by Bucer ; the other was prepared by Zwingli himself, who was absent from the Diet, and was sent by him to the Emperor. Neither of these documents, however, was per- mitted to be publicly brought forward : the 1 Hagenbach, History of the Reformation, vol. ii. 125. Ill THE CONFESSION OF AUGSBURG 93 Lutherans had the field to themselves. Perhaps it was as well that the rivalry of Creeds between the two sections of Protestants should not be made prominent on such an occasion. Thus was the celebrated Confession of Augs- burg, otherwise known as the Augustan Confession (' Confessio August an a), introduced to the magnates and theologians of the German Empire ; and I do not think that in all the history of the Church since apostolic times there has been a more memorable day than the 25th of June 1530. The annalists of the period have given a full description of the scene, with many graphic details. The Confession, called by Melanchthon an Apology, had been prepared on the basis of an earlier and briefer statement by Luther, dated from Thorgau in Saxony. The Reformation leaders had pro- posed that it should be signed by theologians and ministers. But the Protestant princes had other- wise determined. In their esteem, the question was not for the clergy alone, but for the whole body of Christian people. Councils of ecclesiastics had hitherto claimed to guide the faith of the multitude ; now let the royal priesthood of the laity be asserted. This also was a new departure, 94 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. as characteristic of the Reformation as anything in the contents of the Confession. But the point was not yielded without difficulties on the part of Melanchthon. In discussing the question with John of Saxony, leader of the Protestant princes, the cautious Reformer urged that the Elector’s prominence in the matter might endanger his crown. But John replied : ‘ God forbid that you should exclude me ! I am resolved to do what is right without troubling myself about my crown. I desire to confess the Lord.’ The other princes followed suit ; and so it came to pass that this Confession of Luther and Melanchthon, henceforth to be the accepted standard of the Evangelical Church of Germany, was delivered to the Emperor, not by the body of Protestant divines, but by the secular authorities. Seven princes signed it on behalf of their States, and it was signed also by the representatives of two free cities. On such a phase of the question as between Church and State we might on another occasion have some criticisms to offer, in considera- tion of the altered times in which we live ; but, at any rate, it suited the circumstances of the hour, and stands as an instructive incident in the Ill THE CONFESSION OF AUGSBURG 95 changeful history of the relations between ecclesias- tical hierarchies and Christian peoples. Another circumstance is equally significant. Almost as a matter of course, the Emperor ex- pected the Confession to be written and read in Latin, the tongue of the clerics and the learned. 1 Not so,’ the signatories respectfully urged. ‘ We are on German soil,’ added the Elector of Saxony, ‘ therefore I hope your Majesty will permit the German language to be used.’ At length the Emperor reluctantly gave consent. The scene was imposing. Charles the Fifth occupied his chair of state in the chapel of the episcopal palace, a larger place of audience having been refused. The Electors of the Empire, Pro- testant and Papist, sat on either side ; the build- ing, which held but two hundred persons, was crowded by the officials of the several courts ; while the open door was beset by an eager throng, anxious to catch if but a few words of the great manifesto. The Confession, we are expressly told, was read by the Vice-Chancellor of the Saxon Electorate, Dr. Christian Bayer, in loud, clear tones, so that those assembled outside the door could hear. The reading occupied two hours ; in the 9 6 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. midst of it the Emperor fell fast asleep ; but at the close he woke up, and hastily appointed, by advice of the Diet, a Committee of Romish theo- logians to prepare a reply. The answer, when it came, mainly written by Dr. Eck, Luther’s inde- fatigable opponent, was deemed by the Emperor and his advisers a sufficient refutation. Not so, however (naturally), by Melanchthon, who wrote to Luther that of all the wretched productions of their antagonists this Confutation was the most miserable ! Another conference followed in August, but nothing came of it. The Emperor intimated his displeasure that a minority should introduce ‘ a strange doctrine, adverse to the faith of the world. The minority,’ he naively intimated, ‘ ought to follow the lead of the majority.’ It was the best argument, probably, that his Imperial Majesty could employ. The Protestants, however, were not abashed ; and Melanchthon proceeded to write an elaborate Defence of the Confession, presenting it to the Emperor, who, however, re- fused to accept it. This Defence, or Apology , as it is generally called, admirably written, is now, in a somewhat altered form, among the recognised standards of the Lutheran Church, as are also the Ill RE FORMA T10N CONFESSIONS 97 Articles of Schmalkald , in Thuringia, prepared by Luther himself seven years later, to be submitted to a General Council proposed to be held at Mantua, with a last faint hope of reconciliation between the Reformation and the Papacy. For it must be borne in mind, however strange the fact may seem to us, that there was, through all these stirring transactions, a real desire for some way of concord between the Reformed beliefs and the ancient Church. Even Melanch- thon wrote, in subscribing Luther’s Schmalkald Articles : ‘In regard to the Pope, I hold that, if he would admit the Gospel, we might also permit him, for the sake of peace and the common concord of Christendom, to exercise by human right his present jurisdiction over the bishops who are now or may hereafter be under his authority.’ Strictly speaking, these documents of the Luther- ans were rather Confessions than Creeds. The difference, as originally understood, was this : — The Creed was for the Church Universal ; those who rejected it were heretics, altogether without the pale ; the Confession was the voice of a special community, pleading with their fellow-Christians, H 98 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. and propounding articles for common acceptance and mutual agreement. The Creeds, again, were partly for liturgical use ; the Confessions were theological manifestoes, intended for instruction and defence rather than for worship. Hence the great length of many of these documents, as com- pared with the Three Creeds of the ancient churches. Not until the hope had been abandoned of securing that agreement, did the Confessions become authoritative standards of Faith, thus rendering the separation final and complete. The Augsburg Confession, with the documents that followed it, contains, it is true, so emphatic a repudiation of Romanism, as now understood, as to excite some wonder that its articles could have ever been propounded as articles of peace. But we must remember that the Council of Trent had not yet been held, nor the Creed of Pius the Fourth promulgated. There was, or seemed to be, some room for discussion of questions and prin- ciples which now have been closed for more than three centuries ; and although we, in looking back, can see clearly enough that the Reformation and the Papacy were irreconcilable, we may understand how both parties may have met at Augsburg with Ill THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 99 a sanguine expectation which in these days would be the most baseless of dreams. Bearing this in mind, we may glance at the more important parts of Melanchthon’s memorable Confession . 1 In the twenty-two articles of which its doctrinal part consists, it first of all affirms the Nicene' « doctrine concerning the Godhead ; entering then into the greatest questions of Anthropology, Redemption, and the Sacraments. In the strongest terms it affirms Original Sin, and declares Salva- tion to be through the Sacrifice of Christ alone. It is explicit on the doctrine of Justification, although without stating any forensic theory. ‘ Men are justified freely for Christ’s sake through faith, when they believe that they are received into favour and their sins forgiven for Christ’s sake, who by His death hath satisfied for our sins. This faith doth God impute for righteousness before Him.’ Such is the statement of the doctrine which Luther declared to be the Article of a standing or a falling Church. In the Apology for the Confession, it should be added, the forensic theory does appear. The Confession maintains that faith must of necessity result in good works, 1 See the Confession in detail, Appendix, Note 8. 100 THE CHRISTIAN CREED I.ECT. and carefully draws the distinction between the meritorious cause and the effects of justification. It makes no mention of predestination, but de- clares the impotence of the human will without the Holy Spirit to work out spiritual obedience or things pleasing to God. In the strongest language it affirms the everlasting happiness of the saved and the eternal misery of the lost. The Church it defines (without using the word Catholic) as ‘ a Congregation (or, the Congrega- tion) of all believers, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments rightly administered.’ Baptism it declares to be necessary to salvation ; and, as a corollary, it affirms that infants ought to be baptized. In the Lord’s Supper the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present under the form of bread and wine. At the same time, the Sacraments are not efficacious cx opere operato , but only according to the faith of the recipient. How, under such conditions, the efficacy of Baptism extends to infants, the Confession does not explain. A second part of the document relates chiefly to those practices in which the Lutherans regarded the Roman Church as having departed from primitive usage ; for instance, the denial of the Ill ZWINGL1AN TEACHINGS IOI cup in the Lord’s Supper to the laity, the injunc- tion of celibacy upon the clergy, the abuses of the mass, auricular confession, and absolution ; traditional observances, monastic vows, and ecclesi- astical authority. Meanwhile the Swiss Reformers, denied a hearing at Augsburg, were actively inculcating their yet wider and more spiritual belief. Zwingli was pre-eminently a man in advance of his age. Without reserve he held the absolute and exclusive authority of Scripture in Christian faith and practice, rejecting Church tradition far more decidedly than Luther and Melanchthon had done. To him the Sacraments were but symbols and seals of spiritual gifts, which might, however, be imparted without them. Thus baptism might be without true regeneration, and there might be true regeneration without Baptism. Infant baptism he approved ; but unbaptized infants dying would be saved. The belief, in which the Romish Church had followed the teaching of Augustine, that such infants would be excluded from heaven, he utterly repudiated, reconciling their certain salvation with his doctrine of Election, on the 102 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. ground that such infants also were among the elect. To the elect the upright among the heathen likewise belonged, as he for the first time boldly declared ; and ‘ the fate of Socrates and Seneca,’ he said, ‘ is no doubt better than that of many Popes.’ In the Lord’s Supper there was no com- munication of our Lord’s body in any physical or literal sense. Bread and wine remained bread and wine ; the Transubstantiation of Rome and the Consubstantiation of Luther were equally denied. The Eucharist, therefore, was a simple festival of commemoration. Such views, alarming to the Lutherans, and scorned by the Papists, were the precursors of all that is most spiritual in the Creeds of modern times ; and when Zwingli passed away, slain in battle (1531), at the early age of forty-seven, he had initiated a Reformation of which perhaps the end is not even yet. His greater successor was John Calvin, a young man of twenty-two when Zwingli fell ; a year later he espoused the cause of the Reformed faith, to which his career henceforth belongs. The two divisions of the Protestant community were now known by different names, the Lutherans, hi CONFESSIONS OF THE REFORMED CHURCH 103 or adherents of the Augsburg Confession, being termed the Evangelical Church, the Zwinglians, the Reformed. These latter, for a time, had no Confession corresponding to that of Augsburg, although the Conclusions of Berne in 1528, and the Confession of the Four Cities , with Zwingli’s letter to the Emperor, have already been men- tioned. At Basle also, in the year following the Augsburg Diet, a brief Confession was prepared by CEcolampadius and afterwards published by his successor Myconius, also a friend of Zwingli, in which his doctrines are reaffirmed, with the very noteworthy addition, not always found in dogmatic Creeds : ‘ We submit this our Confession to the judgment of the Holy Scriptures, and hold ourselves ready always thankfully to obey God and His Word, if we should be corrected out of the said Holy Scriptures.’ This Confession, how- ever, like that of Berne in 1528, was chiefly local in its use; and it was not until 1536, five years after Zwingli’s death, that the first great Confession of the whole Reformed Church was issued from Basle. In that year also Calvin’s famous work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion , in substance a Commentary on the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, 104 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. was published, the author being but twenty-seven years of age. In the Confession itself (Confessio Helvetica Prior ) he probably had no hand, it having been prepared by Bullinger, Myconius, and other disciples of Zwingli. It reiterates his well- known doctrines, but lays greater emphasis than he had done upon the value of the Sacraments. Unexpectedly this Confession gained the approval of Luther, and it seemed for a time as if the Evangelical and Reformed branches were to be- come united. But this was not to be. The most distinctive feature of this Confession, and of its more elaborate successor, the Second Helvetic Formula , issued from Zurich thirty years later, was the prominence given to Holy Sc rip ture. The Augsburg Confession had stated in its preface that it is drawn from the Scriptures and the pure Word of God, but makes no further mention of the Bible. In the Swiss Confessions, on the other hand, we find the Bible in the foreground. The first five articles out of the twenty-eight in the former are devoted to the assertion of the authority of Scripture, with the repudiation of all human tradition. The second Article affirms that ‘ these Scriptures, holy and divine, are not to be inter- Ill CALVIN'S CATECHISM 05 preted and expounded otherwise than from them- selves through the rule (literally, plumbline) of faith and love.’ In the same year, 1536, Calvin prepared a Catechism, based upon his Institutes , under the title of The Catechism of the Church of Geneva , and containing a short Confession of Faith, which was to be binding upon all the citizens. For a time this Catechism, first written in French, and afterwards translated into several other languages, had very considerable currency. It was, however, never formally adopted by the Reformed Churches as a symbol of their faith, being superseded, as we shall see, by others ; although in Scotland the First Book of Discipline , 1560, directs it to be taught to children as ‘ the most perfect that ever yet was used in the Kirk.’ The first answers of this Catechism are interesting, as a suggestion of what we afterwards find in that of the Westminster Assembly. ‘ What,’ asks Calvin, ‘ is the chief end of human life ? ’ ‘ That men may know God, by whom they were created.’ ‘ For what reason dost thou say this ? ’ io6 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. ‘ Because He created and placed us in this world that He might be glorified in us. And truly it is right that our life, of which He is the beginning, should be dedicated to His glory.’ 1 Then what is the highest good of man ? ’ 1 That very thing.’ The spirit of Calvinism is here. All for God ; too much forgetting, however, that He is not only Will and Power, but also Love. In the end the use of Calvin’s manual was superseded by the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563. This Catechism, prepared by direction of the Elector Palatine Frederick III., became at once a standard of doctrine and a guide to religious thought in the Reformed congregations of Germany and Switzerland. No book, perhaps, except the Bible, the Imitatio Christi , and the Pilgrim's Progress , has been so frequently translated and so largely used. Its clearness of arrangement and transparency of style, though with some rhetorical diffuseness, together with the moderation and devoutness of its tone, have commended it alike to professed theologians and the common people. Its authors were two young men, Bar and Olewig, latinised after the fashion of the time into Ursinus Ill THE HEIDELBERG CATECHISM 107 and Olevianus. The former was the more scholarly of the two ; he had been a pupil of Melanchthon at Wittenberg, and was a friend of Calvin and Beza. To these young divines belongs the honour of having prepared what, more than any other document, has been from the time of’ its publication the charter of the German Reformed Church. Characteristically, it begins on a different keynote from that of Calvin’s Catechism. The older reformer had asked almost sternly, ‘ What is the chief end of human life?’ The theologians of Heidelberg begin with the question, ‘ What is thy only comfort in life and in death ? ’—the answer being, ‘ That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood has made full satisfaction for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil ; and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head ; yea, that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready hence- forth to live unto Him.’ Then follow three io8 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. divisions : first of Man’s Sin and Misery ; then of Man’s Redemption, including the revelation of Father, Son, and Spirit, the work of Christ, and the Sacraments ; and, lastly, of Thankfulness, under which head, it is interesting to note, is included whatever belongs to the practical Christian life ; all obedience, devotion, and holy service being regarded as forms of gratitude to God for His great gift of Redemption. French, Belgic, and Scottish Confessions fol- lowed upon similar lines ; being respectively adapted to the particular circumstances of their different countries, and chiefly distinguished from the Helvetic Confessions and the Catechism by the greater stress laid, no doubt through the in- fluence of Calvin, on Predestination and the Divine Decrees. In all, no fewer than thirty elaborate Confessions of the Reformed faith have been noted, agreeing in principle but differing in details, into which we need not follow them. It was, in fact, an era of Confessions. Pro- testant theologians everywhere were busy in defin- ing their faith ; with minute distinctions, attempted solutions of difficulties, correction of one another’s in VARIETY AND HARMONY OF CONFESSIONS 109 mistakes, and the praiseworthy attempt to confirm every statement by the teaching of Scripture. Even where they taught the same thing, they s would differ in the point of view from which they regarded it. Thus it has been noted that in re- gard to Predestination, on which Lutherans and Calvinists mainly agreed, Luther started from the facts of human corruption and moral im- potence, requiring Divine power to overcome them, and Calvin from Divine sovereignty, hence deducing % the powerlessness of human nature. The attempt to illustrate the Harmony of Protestant Confessions has been repeatedly made ; and in the pages of Dr. George Benedict Winer especially, it is in- structively shown how great and fundamental are the truths in which the Protestant Churches agree, how minute and unsubstantial in many cases are those in which they differ. How this is further illustrated in connection with the British Pro- testant Churches we shall have hereafter to con- sider. It may be remarked meanwhile that both the great divisions of Protestantism which have now come under our view contributed their several influences to the moulding and guidance of religious faith in the Established and the Free Churches of 10 THE CHRISTIAN CREED I.ECT. our land. The Evangelical and the Reformed by turns appear in the religious life of Great Britain. In the second generation of Continental Pro- testantism the Reformed and Evangelical bodies severally issued statements of their belief, of a far more extended and elaborate character than the Confessions on which we have been engaged. The Second Helvetic Confession , to which refer- ence has already been made, was published in 1566, the work of Bullinger, two years after the death of Calvin : it is, in fact, a theological treatise rather than a Creed. In thirty chapters, it dis- cusses the main points of theology, with others relating to Christian practice and discipline ; sus- taining its positions throughout by copious Scrip- ture references, and forming the basis of every subsequent statement of Calvinistic doctrine. The corresponding document on the Lutheran side is entitled the Formula of Concord , fourteen years later, 1580, thirty-four years after Luther’s death and twenty after Melanchthon’s. The Lutheran communities had become rent by controversies ; as, often, when freedom has been achieved by mighty struggle, the combatants in the flush of hi VARIETY AND HARMONY OF CONFESSIONS hi victory arc too apt to turn their arms against one another. The purpose of this Formula , prepared chiefly by Martin Chemnitz, chief theologian of the Lutheran Church after Luther and Melanch- thon, was to reconcile the contending parties, and to affirm the Evangelical Theology on the basis of philosophy and Scripture. It is undoubtedly a masterpiece of controversy, containing, on each several point of the Twelve Articles into which it is divided, a statement of the question at stake, with affirmative and negative sides and carefully- guarded conclusions. It has been very generally, though not universally, adopted by the Lutheran Churches as a supplement and explanation of the Augsburg Confession . 1 The age of Protestant discussions and Con- 1 On the part of the Reformed or Swiss theologians a Confession was long afterwards prepared, as a final word on the controversies of the day, by Professors Heidegger of Zurich, Turretin of Geneva, and Pastor Gernler of Basle. This Formula Consensus Helvetica (1675) is chiefly noticeable for its uncompromising avowal of the doctrine of verbal and literal inspiration, extending to the Hebrew vowel-points, as against Louis Cappel, who had shown the late origin of the Mas- sorite vocalisation. ‘ In specie autem Hebraicus Veteris Testamenti codex, quern ex traditione Ecclesiae Judaicae, cui olim oracula Dei commissa sunt, accepimus hodieque retinemus, turn quoad consonas, turn quoad vocalia, sive puncta ipsa, sive punctorum saltern potestatcm, et turn quoad res, turn quoad verba, debicvevoTos.' I 12 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. fessions was naturally a time of special activity among the theologians of the Romish Church. At first, as we have seen, the hope was cherished that an agreement or compromise might be effected with Protestantism. Even after the Augsburg Diet, and its rival statements of doctrine, that hope was not entirely extinct. Luther’s Schmal- kald Articles were prepared with a view to dis- cussion in a General Council at Mantua, to which Protestant as well as Papal representatives were to be invited. But the logic of events was too powerful to permit, on either side, the continuance of the pleasing illusion ; and instead of the imagined eirenicon of Mantua came the uncom- promising affirmations and anathemas of Trent. The famous Romanist Council sat at intervals for eighteen years (1545-1563) considering questions of doctrine and discipline, effecting many useful reforms, but concentrating all its force on the declaration of a series of dogmas, a counter pro- test against Protestantism, summarised at the close of the Council in a Declaration of Twelve Articles, promulgated as the Creed of Pope Pius the Fourth } Of these Twelve Articles, the first 1 See Appendix, Note 9. Ill CREED OF PIUS IV. ii3 is a reaffirmation of the Nicene Creed. Those that follow declare full assent to Church Tradition and Authority ; to the interpretation of Scripture only according to the Church’s teaching and the unanimous consent of the Fathers ; to the Seven Sacraments; to the Mass as a Sacrifice, and Tran- substantiation ; to the doctrine of Purgatory and of deliverance therefrom by the suffrages of the faithful ; to the Invocation of Saints, the Adora- tion of Images, the efficacy of Indulgences ; to the supremacy of the Roman Church ; and to the canons and decrees of all the CEcumenical Coun- cils, especially of the Council of Trent. The prescribed form of assent was in the words, ‘ I do at this present freely profess and truly hold this true Catholic faith, without which no one can be saved ; and I promise most constantly to retain and confess the same entire and inviolate, with God’s assistance, to the end of my life.’ This Creed has ever since been the authori- tative standard of Romanist belief ; and, with the two dogmas added in our own time, that of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, de- clared by Papal authority in 1854, and that of the Infallibility of the Pope, decreed by the Vatican I 1 14 THE CHRISTIAN CREED i.ect. iii Council in 1870, must be studied by all who would ascertain in brief compass what Rome really teaches on the most important points of Christian Faith and practice. The comparison of dates is interesting and suggestive. When this Creed of Pius IV. was set forth in 1564, the Confession of Augsburg was thirty-four years old, the First Helvetic Confession twenty-eight, and the Heidelberg Catechism had only just been issued. Luther had been dead for eighteen years, Melanchthon for four, Calvin was dying ; and — to pass for a moment beyond the bounds of Theology and Creeds — in this same year Galileo was born in Italy and Shakspeare in England. So brief was the space within which the forces that were to shape the modern life of Christendom had their rise and development ; so wonderful the movements of thought that made the middle portion of the sixteenth century, next to the Christian era, the most fruitful and memor- able period in the history of mankind. LECTURE IV BRITISH CONFESSIONS OF FAITH The Reformation in Great Britain was specially marked by the paradoxical combination of a con- test for kingly supremacy and a struggle for spiritual freedom. To regard it in the former aspect alone is essentially superficial. Robert Southey sagaciously remarks in his Life of Wesley : 1 In England the best people, and the worst, com- bined in bringing about the Reformation ; and in its progress it bore evident marks of both.’ The revolt of England from the Papacy has often been represented as the result of Henry the Eighth’s defiance of the Pope in the matter of the divorce from Queen Katherine ; and this is no doubt part of the truth. But the high-handed proceedings of the King were but the culmination of a long series of characteristically English protests against n6 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. Papal and priestly domination, of which the Con- stitutions of Clarendon (i 164) were an early con- spicuous example, and of which Thomas a Becket was an illustrious victim. For three hundred and fifty years the rivalry between English king and Italian pope had continued, with many phases of alternate humiliation and success, until Henry’s masterful will brought on the long inevitable crisis. Yet behind all this there had been growing a silent force of religious conviction, preparing itself for utterance at the destined hour. Had it not been for such conviction, the effort to shake off the yoke of Rome would again have assuredly failed : as it was, the assertion of royal prerogative was supported on quite independent grounds by what was best and deepest in the heart of the people ; and the combination was irresistible. At first, it is true, it might seem that the political yoke had been shattered, only to rivet the spiritual yoke more firmly ; and the earliest doc- trinal declaration put forth after the royal su- premacy had been finally established gave but little hope as to what the new ecclesiastical departure might bring. This Declaration, known as the ‘ Ten Articles,’ purports to have been com- IV THE 'TEN ARTICLES ' 1 OF HENRY VIII. 117 posed by Henry himself ; the first draft having been presented to Convocation by Thomas Crum- well, Vicar-General, the King’s trusted adviser, and adopted by the bishops and clergy at the instance of Cranmer, then Archbishop of Canterbury. They were published under the title of Articles to stably she Christen Quietnes and Unitie (153b). The first Article runs thus : — We will that all bishops and preachers shall instruct and teach our people, by us committed to their spiritual charge, that they ought and must most constantly believe and defend all those things to be true which be comprehended in the whole body and canon of the Bible, and also in the Three Creeds or Symbols ; whereon one was made by the Apostles and is the common Creed which every man useth ; the second was made by the Holy Council of Nice, and is said daily in the Mass ; and the third was made by Athan- asius, and is comprehended in the Psalm Quicunque vult ; and that they ought and must take and interpret all the same things according to the selfsame sentence and inter- pretation, which the words of the said Creeds or Symbols do purport, and the holy approved doctors of the Church do entreat and defend the same. Item . — That they ought and must repute, hold, and take all the same things for the most holy, must sure, and most certain and infallible words of God, and such as neither ought or can be altered or cavilled by any contrary opinion or authority. Item . — That they ought and must believe, repute, and 1 1 8 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. take all the Articles of our Faith contained in the said Creeds to be so necessary to be believed for man’s salvation, that whosoever being taught will not believe them as is aforesaid, or will obstinately affirm the contrary of them, he or they cannot be the very members of Christ and His espoused the Church, but be very infidels or heretics, and members of the Uevil, with whom they shall perpetually be damned. There is undoubtedly a crudeness in all this that bespeaks the amateur— a king’s first essay to play the Pope ! The second, third, and fourth Articles set forth three Sacraments as generally necessary to salva- tion : Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist. On Baptism, it is said that infants and children dying in their infancy shall undoubtedly be saved thereby, or else not. On Penance, auricular con- fession is distinctly enjoined. ‘ The people,’ it is said, ‘ought and must give no less faith and credence to the words of absolution pronounced by the ministers of the Church than they would give unto the very words and voice of God Himself, if He should speak to us out of heaven.’ On the . Eucharist, it is affirmed that in ‘ the Sacrament of the Altar,’ under the form and figure of Bread and Wine, was ‘verily, substantially, and really con- • tained and comprehended the very selfsame Body iv THE ''TEN ARTICLES' OF HENRY VIII. 1 19 and Blood of our Saviour Christ, which was born * of the Virgin Mary and suffered upon the Cross s for man’s redemption.’ The fifth Article treats of Justification, which is declared to signify Remis- sion of Sin and acceptance into the favour of God : that is to say, man’s perfect renovation in Christ. ‘ Sinners,’ it is said, ‘obtain Justification by Contri- tion and Faith, joined with Charity ; not as though Contrition or Faith, or works proceeding there- from, could worthily merit the said justification ; for the only Mercy and Grace of the Father, promised freely unto us for the Son’s sake, and the merits of His Blood and Passion, are the only sufficient and worthy causes thereof : notwith- standing, God requireth to the attaining of the same justification, not only inward contrition, perfect faith and charity, certain hope and confi- dence, with all other spiritual graces and motions ; but also He requireth and commandeth us that after we be justified we must also have good works of charity and obedience towards God.’ The next four Articles deal approvingly with the adoration of Images, especially of Christ and our Lady, the honour to be paid to the Saints, the invocation of Saints ; rites and ceremonies, 120 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. enumerated as 1 things not to be contemned and cast away, but to be used and continued as good and laudable, to put men in remembrance of those spiritual things that they signify, not suffering them to be forgot or to be put in oblivion, but renewing them in our memories. But none of these ceremonies,’ it is added, ‘ have power to remit sin.’ The last Article is on Purgatory, affirming on the one hand that ‘ it is good to pray for souls departed,’ but on the other declaring that, ‘ as the nature of the unseen world is left uncertain by Scripture, all we can do is to commend them to the mercy of God, trusting that He will accept our prayers on their behalf.’ It is therefore ‘ much necessary that such abuses should be clearly put away which, under the name of purgatory, have been advanced as to make men believe that, through the Bishop of Rome’s pardons, men might be delivered out of purgatory and all the pains of it ; or that masses, said at any place or before any image, might deliver them from their pain and send them straight to heaven.’ Here are undoubtedly some gleams of light ; and a tractate, prepared by Cranmer, assisted by V COLLISION OF OLD AND NEW BELIEFS 21 a committee of prelates, that soon followed, under the title of The Institution of a Christian Man , popularly called ‘ The Bishops’ Book,’ shows yet more plainly how far the principles of the Reforma- tion were affecting the best and most religious minds in England. But the wave had its flux and reflux. As ever in the history of the world and of the Church, the old and the new came into fresh and often unforeseen collisions. The ‘ Old learning,’ as it was called, was represented by Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. Cranmer was the champion of the New, or, as we should say, of the ‘ modern thought ’ of the period ; and by his influence it came about that in 1538, two years after the publication of the ‘ Ten Articles,’ negotia- tions were opened between the English king and the Lutheran princes for further conference on theo- logical matters. Three envoys were accordingly sent from Germany to meet the Anglican repre- sentatives. One of these envoys was to have been Melanchthon himself, at the King’s express invita- tion. He was, however, detained at Wittenherg by affairs of State, as well as by the necessity of remaining at his post in the University. The Conferences were held at Lambeth, and issued in 22 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. the adoption of Thirteen Articles, largely taken from the Augsburg Confession, although with considerable expansion, particularly on the topics of Justification and the Church. The manuscript of these Articles was discovered early in the present century among Cranmer’s papers. They mark a very distinct advance in the direction of Protestantism, and, although never legalised, are of high interest as forming the basis of the Thirty- nine Articles of the Church of England. The reactionary party was probably alarmed by the progressive tendencies displayed in these Thirteen Articles, and almost immediately pro- cured the enactment, in spite of Cranmer’s most strenuous opposition, of the infamous ‘Six Articles’ ( 1 5 3 9)> afterwards known as ‘the Whip with Six Strings,’ which for a time reimposed the yoke of Romanism upon the English people in its most galling form ; death at the stake being denounced as the penalty for denying Transubstantiation. 1 The other Articles, to be accepted on pain of imprisonment, and death in case of persistent denial, were Communion by the laity in one kind 1 See the Act in full in Documents Illustrative of English Church History , edited by H. Gee and W. J. Hardy (1896), p. 303. IV THE ENGLISH BIBLE 123 only, Priestly Celibacy, Permanence of Monastic and other Vows, Private Masses and Auricular Confession. The ‘ Bishops’ Book ’ was now super- seded for popular use by a treatise called ‘ The King’s Book,’ entitled A Necessary Knowledge and Erudition for every Christian Man (1543), in which Romish tenets were uncompromisingly enforced. The reaction was tremendous. In fact, the King had been thoroughly alarmed by the conse- quences of his own procedure just before, in giving the English Bible to the people ; and terrified persons are often cruel. P'or in 1535, four years previously, the whole Bible had appeared in English, as translated by Myles Coverdale ; and in this very year of the Six Articles the edition called the Great Bible had been published, with that memorable frontispiece, designed, as some say, by Holbein — King Henry on the throne, handing copies of the Book on either side, to Cranmer and to Crumwell — representatives of the clergy and laity ; a great crowd of whom are shown below, receiving the royal gift with joyful acclamations. This Bible was ordered to be placed in the churches so as to be at all times accessible to the people ; and it is sadly curious 124 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. to read in the light of subsequent history that six copies were placed, in pursuance of this regulation, in St. Paul’s Cathedral, by the notorious Bishop Bonner. At once, however, it became plain that the King had not calculated the result of thus giving an open Bible to the English people. He complains that ‘ his intent and hope had been that the Scriptures would be read with meekness, with a will to accomplish the effect of them ; not for the purpose of finding arguments to maintain extravagant opinions, not that they should be spouted out and declaimed upon at undue times and places, and after such fashions as were not convenient to be suffered .’ 1 So, as an antidote to a free Bible, came the Six Articles. It was not the first time nor the last when those who claim to dictate opinion have said, ‘ Yes : you may read the Bible for yourselves, on condition of finding in it what we ordain ; or it will be the worse for you ! ’ It was in vain that Melanchthon wrote a long and elaborate letter to the King himself, earnestly protesting against the enactment. The persecu- tion was rigorously carried on ; many persons 1 Strype, Memorials , ii. 434. IV CRANMER'S IDEA OF EVANGELICAL UNITY 125 were imprisoned ; others fled the country and found shelter in the Protestant states of Europe ; and it was under this infamous Act that the heroic Ann Askew suffered in Smithfield in the last year of King Henry’s reign. Henry died in 1547, and was succeeded by his son Edward the Sixth, under whom Cranmer and the Reformation party once more gained ascendency. The first step towards religious freedom was to abolish the Six Articles, Gardiner being deposed and imprisoned. Then for a while the great Archbishop bent his endeavours to the accomplishment of a purpose magnificently con- ceived, but destined to remain unfulfilled. His dream was that all Protestant Confessions might be combined in one Declaration of the common Faith, in which the Evangelical and Reformed Churches on the Continent, as well as those of Great Britain, might agree. Probably, in view of the controversies still raging between Lutherans and Zwinglians, he thought that the Anglican Church might exert a moderating and harmonis- ing influence ; and that one evangelical Catholic Creed, maintained in common by all who held 126 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. fast to the authority of Scripture, would enable the Protestant world to present a firm, united front against the assumptions of the Papacy. The circumstances of the time seemed to call for such an endeavour. The Council of Trent continued its intermittent sessions. Rome was reasserting with new vigour of anathemas its spiritual sway. Jesuitism was arising, as a new and ominous power in the world. Could not Protestantism raise a clear, united, authoritative voice? Filled with such thoughts and ambitions, Cranmer entered into correspondence with the great Divines of the Continent. Luther was dead, but Melanchthon represented the Evangeli- cal cause, Calvin and Bullinger the Reformed. Cranmer’s letters to all three survive — urgent and often impassioned pleadings ; steps were actually taken for holding a Conference in London ; but after much debate as to conditions, and difficulties arising from the sacramentarian views of the Lutheran party, the project was abandoned. ‘ It , is,’ wrote Cranmer sadly, ‘ the sorest evil of the Church that the Sacrament of Unity should be the source of discord and division .’ 1 But even Cranmer 1 Letters of Cranmer, in Strype, 284. IV ENGLISH PROTESTANT CONFESSIONS 27 did not apprehend the whole case. Since his time, the history of the Churches must have shown all who have eyes to see, that however imposing the thought of one common Creed may be, the unity of the Faith is not thus to be realised. When Christians are living one life, their fellow- ship in belief also may in time result from that sacred accord ; else the proposal of a formula for verbal agreement to those who are discordant in heart and spirit will prove the most barren of hypocrisies. The larger scheme being thus frustrated, the Archbishop and his associates, with their young monarch’s active sympathy, set themselves to pre- pare an English Confession ; or, in the language of the King’s Council, ‘ A Book of Articles of Religion, for the preserving and maintaining peace and unity of doctrine in this Church, that being finished, they might be set forth by public autho- rity.’ A Liturgy had already been compiled, known as King Edward's First Prayer-Book , in- cluding a Catechism for children, existing to this day with but slight alteration as ‘ The Church Catechism.’ The outcome was in the Forty-two Articles of 1552. In forwarding the corrected 128 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. copy to the Council, Cranmer writes : ‘ I trust that such a concord and quietness in Religion shall shortly follow thereof as else is not to be looked for many years.’ 1 Vain anticipation! In the very year (1553) in which these Articles were published by royal proclamation, King Edward died. Mary became Queen ; the whole work was ruthlessly undone. Three years afterwards Cranmer died at the stake ; and all proceedings in regard to what we may term the first Protestant Confession of the Church of England were postponed until 1562, when Queen Elizabeth was fairly established upon the throne. Matthew Parker, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, had already, as a kind of provisional declaration of the Faith, introduced a scheme of Eleven Articles, which are chiefly remarkable as a yet more explicit avowal of that Protestantism which was henceforth to be the authorised religion of the realm. Of these Articles all clergy were required to make public profession, both on admission to their benefices and in the Communion Service twice every year. 2 But the Thirty-nine Articles, 1 Strype's Life of Cranmer, ii. Appendix lxiv. 2 These Eleven Articles remained for fifty years the authorised standard of doctrine in the Established Church of Ireland. IV THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES 29 as we still may read them in the English Prayer- Book, soon superseded all other declarations of faith in the Anglican Church. These are sub- stantially the same with the Forty-two Articles of Cranmer, with some omissions, and a few added particulars . 1 Six in all were omitted, two of the remainder were incorporated in one, and four were added, besides parts of others. The Articles were not numbered until 1591, when the English trans- lation was published. A very notable addition, generally attributed to Elizabeth herself, is that in the Twenty-first Article. Cranmer had been con- tent with the negative assertion : ‘ It is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s Word written.’ But now it is declared : ‘ The Church hath power to decree rites and cere- monies, and authority in controversies of faith. And yet it is not lawful,’ etc. But on the other hand, in the Thirty-seventh Article, the royal claim to headship of the Church is explicitly renounced. Cranmer had written : ‘ The King of England is supreme Head, in earth, under Christ, of the Church of England and Ireland.’ Elizabeth modi- 1 See Appendix, Note io : Articles of the Reformed Church of Eng- land. K 13 ° THE CHRISTIAN CREED I.F.CT. fied this to : ‘ The Queen’s Majesty hath the chief power in this realm of England and other her dominions, unto whom the chief government of all Estates of this realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, doth in all cases appertain.’ The omissions were chiefly of four Articles at the end. Strype tells us how Archbishop Parker struck them out ‘ with his red pencil,’ thus dis- allowing them, not probably because he disbelieved their teaching, but because he thought it unneces- sary to constitute them Articles of Faith. One of these affirmed that ‘ the Resurrection of the dead is not brought to pass ’ ; another denied the sleep of the soul between death and the judgment; and the two following I may quote : — ‘ XLI. They that go about to renew the fable of heretics called Millenarians, be repugnant to Holy Scripture, and cast themselves headlong into a Jewish dotage.’ And ‘XLI I. They also are worthy of condemna- tion who endeavour at this time to restore the dangerous opinion that all men, be they never so ungodly, shall at length be saved, when they have IV THE PROPOSED ‘ LAMBETH ARTICLES' 3 suffered pains for their sins a certain time appointed by God’s justice.’ The Thirty-nine Articles, having been finally settled, were enforced upon the Clergy by an Act entitled, characteristically enough, A Bill for the Ministers of the Church to be of Sound Religion. Subscription to the Articles was further required by an Act of i 5 7 1 and yet more rigorously in 1583. There was a significant attempt, in the year 1595, to add to the document what were known as the Lambeth Articles, strongly Calvinistic, composed by Dr. Whitaker, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and submitted through Whitgift, then Archbishop of Canterbury, with a synod of prelates convened by him, as a counter- action to the growing theological liberalism of the day. 2 These Articles, nine in number, affirm in the strongest terms the predestination of some to life, the reprobation of others to death, and the certainty of final perseverance wherever justifying grace is given ; adding that ‘ saving grace is not given, is not granted, is not communicated to 1 See the Act (13 Eliz. cap. 12) in Documents Illustrative of English Church History, p. 477. 2 See Appendix, Note 11 : The Lambeth Articles (original Latin). 132 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. all men, by which they may be saved if they will.’ Queen Elizabeth, however, would have none of them ; and nine years afterwards, when the Hampton Court Conference of Divines petitioned King James to allow their adoption, his Majesty absolutely refused. In fact, the British Solomon seems to have been afraid of anything that looked like extreme Calvinism, as is curiously illustrated by a letter of his to Archbishop Abbot, Whitgift’s successor, charging him to circulate a number of ‘ Directions to Preachers ’ among the clergy of his province. One of these Directions is : — ‘ That no preacher of what title soever, under the degree of a bishop, or dean at least, do from henceforth pre- sume to preach in any popular auditory the deep points of predestination, election, reprobation, or of the universality, efficacy, resistibility or irre- sistibility of God’s grace ; but leave those themes to be handled by learned men, and that moderately and modestly, by way of use and application rather than by way of positive doctrine ; as being fitter for the schools and universities than for simple auditories.’ 1 At the same time, the ruling powers 1 ‘ Directions concerning Preachers ' : in Documents before quoted, p. 516. IV DECLARATION PREFIXED TO ARTICLES 133 were sufficiently resolved that the older Articles should be upheld and believed, as appears in the Declaration of King Charles the First (1628) drawn up by Laud, then newly appointed Bishop of London, and still to be read in the English Prayer-Book at the beginning of the Articles ; although generally, I must say, in very small, shamefaced type : — The Articles of the Church of England (which have been allowed and authorised heretofore, and which Our Clergy generally have subscribed unto) do contain the true Doctrine of the Church of England agreeable to God’s Word ; which We do therefore ratify and confirm, requiring all Our loving subjects to continue in the uniform profession thereof, and prohibiting the least difference from the said Articles ; which to that end We command to be new printed, and this Our Declaration to be published therewith. There is much more to the same purpose, all equally instructive. No doubt it may be said — it has been said — that such injunctions could never have been literally meant. It is too absurd to ask all men to believe, in this implicit way, some hundreds of propositions, without ‘ the least difference’ therefrom. Yes ; it is no doubt absurd — the very crown and climax of all absurdities — but that alone is no reason why it should not have 134 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. been committed by such a monarch as Charles Stuart and such a prelate as William Laud. In the meantime the Scottish Church was putting forth its several Confessions, marked, I think, by a deeper insight into Divine Truth, and by the assertion of a broader religious freedom than their English brethren had yet attained. The first of these Confessions dates from 1560: 1 the banner,’ says Edward Irving, ‘ of the Church in all her wrestlings and conflicts.’ Well does the great preacher describe this manifesto of the faith, which at every point exhibits the intellectual insight, the commanding intellectual power, and the burning enthusiasm of John Knox. ‘The document,’ says Irving, ‘ consisteth of twenty-five articles, and is written in a most honest, straight- forward, manly style, without compliment or flattery, without affectation of logical precision and learned accuracy, as if it came fresh from the heart of laborious workmen, all the day long busy with the preaching of the Truth, and sitting down at night to embody the heads of what was con- tinually taught. There is a freshness of life about it which no frequency of reading wears off.’ IV SCOTTISH CONFESSION OF FAITH 135 It will suffice to notice here two striking points about this Confession. One is, that it disclaims Divine authority for any fixed form of Church Government or Worship. Practically, as we know, the Scottish Church was Presbyterian ; yet this did not lead to the unchurching of Christian societies of differently constituted form and pattern. We have been accustomed to think of our Scottish brethren as rigid and unbending in all ecclesiastical matters. Yet this is what they say in 1560 : — In the Church, as in the House of God, it becometh all things to be done decently and in order : not that we think that one policy and one order of ceremonies can be appointed for all ages, times, and places ; for, as ceremonies such as men have prescribed are but temporal, so may and ought they to be changed when they rather foster superstition than edify the Church using the same. The next point is more significant still ; and it will be remembered that the words I am now about to quote very nearly accord with the lan- guage of one of the Swiss Confessions. Whether thence derived, or whether original, it deserves to be specially noted : — ‘We protest,’ say these Scotchmen of 1560, ‘that if any one will note in this our Confession any Articles or sentence repugnant to God’s Holy Word, that it would please him THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. ’36 of his gentleness, and for Christian charity’s sake, to admonish us of the same in writing ; and we, upon our honour and fidelity, by God’s grace do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth of God (that is, from His Holy Scriptures), or else reformation of that which he shall prove to be amiss.’ A teachable spirit has not always thus accom- panied the formulation of Creeds. The more ordinary style has been, ‘ Such is the dogma given by Divine authority ; and we are its prophets. Anathema to those who dissent ! ’ Switzerland and Scotland showed a more excel- lent way ; and we shall soon have the happiness of pointing to others who have followed their bright example. The whole course of procedure in regard to national Articles of Religion had been based upon the assumption, which few in that age ventured to contradict, that the nation formed a religious unity, and must be governed by one Creed as surely as, in secular matters, it was bound to obey one Law. As Richard Hooker put the theory with marvellous clearness, near the close of the Elizabethan period, the National Church was simply the Nation from a religious point of view. IV PURITANISM A GROWING POWER i37 The same persons constituted Church and Com- monwealth, and the authorised rulers must legislate for them in both capacities. With our modern modes of thought we can hardly apprehend what in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a recognised first principle. Between our conception of the Church or Churches in a nation, and that of the Church of a nation, a whole world of difference lies. Collectivism in religious matters was the law ; individualism was contumacy and rebellion ; and diversity of opinion was no more to be tolerated than disloyalty and rebellion in the State. Yet meanwhile there were growing and not- able exceptions. Puritanism by degrees became a power in England, and could not but lead to separatism also. Not only was Presbyterianism a rapidly increasing influence even within the pale of the Establishment, but from time to time we have glimpses of little companies of Christian people who bravely detached themselves, regard- less of consequences, from the ecclesiastical system, uttering protests which often brought upon them bitter persecution, and in some cases the crown of martyrdom. To these Confessors of the faith, in Queen Elizabeth's time, belonged Barrow, Green- THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. 138 wood, and John Penry ; while the anonymous Martin Marprelate Tracts caustically maintained the same dissent. Robert Browne, a clergyman of some note, wrote and preached in the latter part of the reign, from a strongly Puritan stand- point, against the National Church, and was imprisoned, he tells us, thirty-two times, being also exiled, and finding a refuge in Holland, long the home of expatriated dissidents. From him the early Independents were for a time known as Brownists ; but as Browne in the end conformed to the Establishment, and lapsed into idle and dissolute ways, they afterwards disowned the name. Our concern with these personages and events is limited at present to the Confessions which at intervals emanated from the Puritan separatists; and in 1578 we find a somewhat elaborate statement of belief by the learned Henry Ainsworth, leader of a company exiled to Holland for their faith. The Confession is in forty-five Articles regarding doctrine and discipline ; and while emphatically Protestant and Evangelical, it contains a statement of Congregational principles, the clearness and precision of which could hardly be surpassed in our own day. IV BAPTIST CONFESSION OF FAITH 139 Another declaration, equally interesting, was made, also in Holland, by forty-two persons, men and women, exiled on the charge of Anabaptism. This document deserves our special notice as the earliest extant Baptist Confession of Faith in post-Reformation times. It is dated from Amster- dam, in 16 1 1, the year in which the Authorised Version of the English Bible was published, and contains twenty- eight Articles, at the close of which the forty-two signatures are followed by a sentence reminding us of what we have noted in the Scottish Confession of 1560: ‘We subscribe to the truth of these Articles, desiring further instruction.’ This Baptist Confession is additionally remark- able in its departure from Calvinistic dogmas. Up to this time the Puritans in Great Britain, following the Reformed Church in Germany and Switzerland, had adhered to the doctrines of Calvin and Bucer ; but Arminius (or Hermann) had been teaching in Amsterdam ; his followers, termed for a while Remonstrants, from the Re- monstrance delivered by them to the States of Holland, had become very numerous, and these exiled English Baptists had been largely influenced 140 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. by them, while holding fast by the essentials of Evangelical Christianity. They were, in fact, the forerunners of the General Baptists of modern times. The Article (11) concerning the Church is worth transcribing : — That though in respect of Christ the Church be one, yet it consisteth of divers particular Congregations, even so many as there shall be in the world ; every of which Con- gregations, though they be but two or three, have Christ given them, with all the means of their salvation ; are the body of Christ and a whole Church, and therefore may, and ought when they come together, to pray, prophesy, break bread, and administer in all the holy ordinances, although as yet they have no officers, or that their officers should be in prison, sick, or by any means hindered from the Church. The growth of Arminianism was, it need hardly be said, regarded with much uneasiness by the leaders of the Reformed Church. It was time — so it seemed to them — to reopen the discussion of those questions which have occupied metaphysical speculators ever since philosophy began, and which have derived their chief interest from re- ligious thought. A Synod of divines was there- fore convened at Dordrecht, or Dort, in Holland, in 1619 ; certain English theologians attending as IV THE SYNOD OF DORT 41 delegates . 1 At this memorable gathering, after long debates, conducted with forms of the driest logic, yet not without outbursts of passionate heat, on problems of Divine omniscience and human free-will — which, I suppose, will remain unsettled till the end of time— the Five Points, as they are called, of Calvinistic theology were affirmed by vote in opposition to the Remonstrants. These Points were Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Total Depravity, Irresistible Grace, and Final Perseverance. For several generations, both in Germany and Great Britain, the 1 Quin- quarticular Formula ’ was among the recognised standards of Puritanism . 1 Seven years after the Synod of Dort, and once more in Holland, we are called to listen to what must always remain among the most striking and characteristic declarations that have ever proceeded from nonconforming English Puritanism. I refer to words of John Robinson, the Pastor of the Independent Congregation at Leyden, in bidding farewell to members of his flock about to depart for America. True, it is not, strictly speaking, a 1 See Appendix, Note 12 : Articles of the Dutch Remonstrants. 2 The Canons of Dort, Latin and English, are given in full in Schaff, pp. 550-597. 142 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. Confession of Faith, but simply a valedictory address. Yet a passage may be quoted here, as worthily following the declaration of those Baptist exiles who, as we have seen, so frankly expressed their readiness to welcome further light. Mr. Robinson says : — If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry ; for I am verily persuaded the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His Holy Word. For my part, I cannot sufficiently bewail the condi- tion of the Reformed Churches, who are come to a period in religion, and will go at present no further than the instruments of their reformation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw ; whatever part of His will our God has revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it ; and the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things. This is a misery much to be lamented, for though they were burning and shining lights in their lives, yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God ; but, were they now living, would be as willing to embrace further as that which they first received. I beseech you remember it is an article of your church covenant that you be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from the written Word of God . 1 Such were the Independents and Baptists of 1 Hanbury’s Historical Memorials relating to the Independents, 1839, vol. i. p. 393, note. IV THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY 143 those early days. Such is the spirit by which in our own time the true life of the Church must be maintained. By men who trust themselves, not to the letter of human interpretations, but to the living Word of God and to the teaching of the Holy Ghost, and who believe, as shown in the next Lecture, in a progressive theology, will the vic- tories of the faith be won. But great events now followed in the British realms. Charles I. had begun his ill-starred reign. Attempts were renewed to impose the ecclesias- tical yoke more rigidly upon the people both of England and in Scotland ; and this, together with the absolutism of King and Court in civil matters, aroused the spirit of fierce and determined resist- ance. In 1640 the Long Parliament began its sittings. Two years later the Civil War broke out; and in 1643 the Westminster Assembly of Divines was convened ‘ for further settlement of religious doctrine and discipline in the Kingdom by authority of Parliament.’ The sessions of this great Assembly continued from 1 644 to 1 649. It was intended to consist of Episcopalians and Presbyterians, with representatives from the In- 144 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. dependents, now a growing community. The Episcopalians, however, in deference to the King’s command, soon ceased to attend ; the Independ- ents were comparatively few ; and the Assembly soon became dominated by Presbyterianism. The Confession and two Catechisms put forth by the Assembly certainly rank among the ablest and most comprehensive statements of theo- logical truth ever made. At first the plan was simply a revision of the Thirty-nine Articles ; but, through the influence of the Scottish members of the Assembly, the Confession was made an independent document, taking two years to com- plete, and afterwards discussed by Parliament, chapter by chapter, ‘ on successive Wednesdays .’ 1 By the Scottish Parliament it was adopted in the following year, superseding the Confessions of the preceding century, and accompanied by two Cate- chisms, the Larger, for public exposition, and the Shorter, for the instruction of the young. The Confession, as we all know, has always had a firmer hold in Scotland than in England. But at first it was intended to embrace the three king- doms. In the language of the Solemn League 1 Finished 22nd March 1648. IV WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY'S CONFESSION 145 and Covenant by which it was heralded : ‘We shall endeavour to bring the Churches of God in the Three Kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in Religion, Confession of Faith, form of Church Government, directions for Worship and Catechising, that we and our posterity after us may as brethren live in Faith and Love, and the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us.’ The whole realm was thus to be brought religiously under one law. Not yet made wise by events, the Fathers of this great Council, like those of so many Councils of the Church in olden time, be- lieved that with them was the secret of a Catholic Christianity, and that it was their duty to secure its enforcement on the whole nation. In fact, as Dean Stanley has observed, the Westminster Con- fession is the only Confession of Faith that was ever imposed on the whole of the United Kingdom. ‘ The Thirty-nine Articles never extended beyond the limits of Berwick-upon-Tweed, but the Con- fession of Faith reigned with undisputed authority for ten years, under the authority of Parliament, from Cape Wrath to Land’s End .’ 1 The contents of this great declaration of faith 1 Macmillan' s Magazine, August 1881. L 146 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. cannot here be summarised even in the briefest manner. Suffice it to say, that it contains a lucid, comprehensive, and well-ordered statement, in thirty-three chapters, of the Evangelical Faith, from the standpoint of an uncompromising Cal- vinism. Its keynote is Sovereignty, recognised all the more implicitly in the spiritual realm because repudiated in the earthly sphere. ‘ The Decrees of God are His Eternal Purpose, according to the Counsel of His Will, whereby, for His own Glory, He hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.’ And man’s part is to accept the decrees with en- tire submission. At the beginning of the Shorter Catechism stands the question and answer, bor- rowed indeed mainly from Calvin, ‘ What is the chief end of man ? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.’ First ‘ to glorify God,’ a sterner lesson than that of love ; standing like a proclamation, announcing the supreme prin- ciple of life. Thomas Carlyle, in speaking against modern materialism, said in 1876, the last year of his life : ‘ The older I grow, and I now stand upon the brink of Eternity, the more comes back to me the first sentence in the Catechism which I learned when a child, and the fuller and deeper its mean- IV WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY’S CONFESSION 147 ing becomes : “ What is the chief end of man ? To glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.” ’ 1 The Confession, adopted and enforced by Par- liament, was thus a great Act of Uniformity. Its framers repudiated with abhorrence the idea of toleration. Was it not the duty of all men to receive and obey the truth ? Only let the rulers of the nation discover the truth, and its enforce- ment must follow as a matter of course. To Richard Baxter, who, though not a member of the Assembly, well understood its spirit, the thought of religious toleration was the great ecclesiastical heresy of the day. Of certain persons in the Assembly and other Sectaries, as he terms them, outside, his bitter complaint is 2 that ‘ their most frequent and vehement disputes were for liberty of conscience, as they called it — that is, that the civil magistrate had nothing to do to determine anything in matters of religion, by constraint or restraint, but every man might not only hold, but preach and do, in matters of religion, what he pleased ; that the civil magistrate had nothing to do but with civil things, to keep the peace, and 1 Schaff, History of the Creeds, p. 787. 2 Baxter’s Life and Tunes, ed. Sylvester. 148 THE CHRISTIAN CREED I.ECT. protect the Church’s liberties.’ But already the spirit of repression was being worsted in its contest with the spirit of freedom. Mr. J. R. Green, the historian, quotes ‘ a horror-stricken pamphleteer ’ who numbered sixteen religious sects that existed in defiance of the law ; while, on the other hand, the rigour of Puritan rule did much to provoke that reaction in the popular mind which rendered possible the Act of Uniformity that followed the Restoration of Charles the Second. And yet the Presbyterian Churches in our own day are living witnesses to all that was permanent and mighty, as well as true, in this memorable Confession of West- minster ; while a people trained in the Shorter Catechism have maintained high qualities of faith, courage, and vigour which for many generations have ennobled their religious life, when only com- bined with brotherly kindness and charity. The Independents in the Assembly, outvoted at every point, and ceasing to attend when the Presbyterian form of Church government was formally adopted, nevertheless exerted all through the protectorate of Cromwell a great and growing influence in England. So far indeed did that influence extend, that Cromwell was at length IV INDEPENDENT CONFESSION OF FAITH 149 induced to authorise the preparation of a new Con- fession of Faith for the whole Commonwealth- yet, as it is now for the first time stated, ‘ without compelling the people thereto by penalties, and to extend liberty to all Christian professions, except popery or prelacy.’ This last exception is curious. The Conference for this purpose was summoned to meet at the Savoy in London ; but Cromwell’s death intervened (1658), and the meeting, which was attended by about two hundred delegates from one hundred and twenty congregations, under the presidency of Philip Nye, was but brief, last- ing only a fortnight, as well as anxious and troubled, in the uncertainty of what might befall. The Confession was unanimously voted, and was issued with an expression of thankfulness that the Churches ‘ launched singly and sailing apart and alone in the vast ocean of these tumultuary times, and exposed to every wind of doctrine, under no other conduct than that of the Word and Spirit, had nevertheless steered their course by the same chart, and been bound for one and the same port, without associating among ourselves, or so much as holding out common lights to others whereby to know where we were.’ THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. ISO Thus the great lesson, of trust in the Spirit of God to guide His people, was being gradually learned — although it was still thought necessary to formulate a Creed of thirty-two Chapters, with a Statement of Church Order and Discipline in thirty subsequent clauses. This Savoy Con- fession was long accepted as the chief manifesto of Independent faith and doctrine. Its theology throughout is that of the Westminster Confession, while it lucidly states and maintains the Congre- gational order of the Churches. 1 Nor were the Baptists remiss in asserting their special beliefs. Denied a place in the West- minster Assembly, and whilst it was yet sitting, in 1644, the Baptist Congregations meeting in London found it necessary to issue a more elaborate declaration of their principles, entitled A Confession of Faith of Seven Congregations or Churches in London , which are commonly but un- justly called Anabaptists , published for the Vindica- tion of the Truth and Information of the Ignorant: likewise for the taking off of those aspersions which 1 See the Confession in detail, Hanbury's Historical Memorials , vol. iii. p. 577 sq. IV BAPTIST CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 151 are frequently both in Pulpit and Print unjustly cast upon them. The doctrinal statements in this Confession are decidedly Calvinistic, Scripture references being copiously interspersed. In a great measure, the Westminster Confession is anticipated, but with more rhetorical expansion, and greater tenderness of tone. There are in all fifty -two Articles ; and in conclusion the repre- sentatives of these Seven Churches declare : — We confess that we know but in part, and that we are ignorant of many things which we desire and seek to know : and if any shall do us that friendly part to show us from the Word of God that we see not, we shall have cause to be thankful to God and them. But, if any man shall impose upon us anything that we see not to be commanded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, we should in His strength rather em- brace all reproaching and tortures of men, to be stripped of all outward comforts, and if it were possible, to die a thou- sand deaths, rather than do anything against the least tittle of the Truth of God, or against the light of our own con- sciences. And if any shall call what we have said heresy, then do we with the Apostle acknowledge, that after the way they call heresy, worship we the God of our fathers ; disclaiming all heresies (rightly so called) because they are against Christ, and to be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in obedience to Christ, as knowing our labour shall not be in vain in the Lord. Of the Baptist Confessions which followed, 1 52 THE CHRISTIAN CREED lect. including a statement issued by the Arminian, or General, Baptists, presented in 1 660 to King Charles the Second, by far the most important is the Calvinistic Confession of 1677, ratified by an assembly of ministers and messengers of Baptist Churches met in London in 1689 as soon as toleration was secured, with an argumentative Appendix on the subject of Baptism, and accom- panied by a Catechism for the instruction of the young. These documents, closely following the Westminster lines of Theology, while explicit on the subject of Believers’ Baptism, are for us the best and most authentic guide to the principles and practices of our forefathers. They will be found, with the other Baptist documents to which I have referred, in Dr. Underhill’s valuable collec- tion of Baptist Confessions of Faith , published by the Hanserd Knollys Society. To the same period belong John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding , Pilgrim's Progress , and Holy War ; and perhaps, after the long review of Creeds and Confessions in which we have been engaged, we shall be inclined to agree with the late Dr. R. W. Dale when he says that as an expres- sion and guide of faith, ‘Bunyan’s Grace Abound- IV THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 53 ing is of more authority than the Institutes of Calvin .’ But one further Confession of this period re- mains to be mentioned, which, in its real though for the most part silent influence, has exerted as true a power over many of the best and devoutest Christian minds as any other of the series. The Apology of Robert Barclay for the Society of Friends , published in 1675, was addressed ‘to the Doctors, Professors, and Students of Divinity in the Universities and Schools of Great Britain, and to any other ’ — to whom Barclay declares that ‘ man in his wisdom hath rendered the truth so obscure and mysterious that the Word is even burdened with the great and voluminous tractates which are made about it, and by their vain jang- ling and commentaries, by which it is rendered a hundredfold more dark and intricate than of itself it is : which great learning, so accounted of — to wit, your school divinity, which taketh up at most a man’s lifetime to learn — brings not a whit nearer to God, neither makes any man less wicked or more righteous than he was.’ From this promis- ing commencement Barclay proceeds, in fifteen 154 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. propositions, to declare what the Friends hold to be the truth concerning Revelation and Scripture, the Fall and Redemption, the Inward Light and direct communication of the Holy Spirit with the souls of men, the ministry, worship, and ordinances of the Church, with the freedom of conscience from all secular control. All who would understand the influence which this comparatively small community has exercised over the religious thought and life even of those who have not accepted its special doctrines, may well study them in the pages of Robert Barclay. The Creed of the Moravian Church is rather a Liturgy than a Confession — very beautiful, but scarcely to be included under the head of Creeds ; and the Wesleyan Methodist Churches of Great Britain and America for the most part abide by the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of Eng- land, interpreted in an Arminian sense, with the Scripture Notes and the Sermons of Mr. Wesley. Strictly speaking, they have no special Creed. We come now to our own times, and shall have hereafter to speak of the modifications that have been made in the Anglican, Presbyterian, as well IV RECENT CONFESSIONS OF FAITH 155 as in other Churches respecting the law of Sub- scription to Creeds. It is only important now to note that the Congregational Union of England and Wales in the year 1833 adopted a Declara- tion or Confession of Faith , Church Order , and Dis- cipline, prepared, I believe, by the late Dr. Redford of Worcester, in all thirty -three Articles, still annually printed at the end of the Year-Book of the Denomination, with certain preliminary notes, that we shall also have to consider. 1 There is no Baptist Confession of the same kind. Only in the covenants of particular Churches, in the rules of some local Associations, and in the trust-deeds of property, many various Confessional forms have been introduced, with more or less binding autho- rity. Some among us have desired a more stringent and uniform Creed ; but the history of the past hardly encourages any such attempt. I conclude with a grateful mention of the fact that, in our own body, one line of demarcation has disappeared, less from any formal action of the Churches than from the irresistible tendency of liberal Christian thought. For many years, 1 See Appendix, Note 14. 156 THE CHRISTIAN CREED lect. iv at least from 1691, the Particular or Calvinistic Baptist Churches, and the General or Arminian, formed two separate denominations ; but it had long been found in practice that opinions upon the Five Points were no hindrance to a true Christian fellowship ; and this separateness of organisation has now come to an end. It is undoubtedly still open to individual Churches to adopt a distinctive Creed ; but for general denominational action, as in Home and Foreign Missions, the Colleges, and Societies for general Christian purposes, the two are henceforth one, and — may we not say with thankfulness ? — there is one sect the less in Christendom. Happy is the omen ! In the progress of the age may it be more and more fulfilled ! LECTURE V VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF CREEDS The long series of Creeds and Confessions now passed under review may well have awakened many thoughts on the varieties of human opinion, and on the difficulties of the independent thinker who would win his way to Truth. Here are hundreds of propositions — some coincident, many more or less divergent, not a few absolutely con- tradictory ; yet all professedly drawn from the same Divine Revelation, and in various tones of dogmatism demanding our belief. It is true that on the deeper matters of Faith there is substantial accord, at least in the great Protestant Confessions ; and the Harmonies of these Confessions that have been laboriously constructed and republished in various forms, from the year 1589 onwards, abun- dantly illustrate the unity which underlies much 158 THE CHRISTIAN CREED EECT. of the diversity, and perhaps indicate a ground- work for the Catholic Church of the future . 1 Still the question occurs, Why have recourse to these human statements of the Divine, when the Divine Oracles themselves are at hand ? It is harder work to examine, to discriminate, and to decide between these various Creeds, than it is to study and apply the Word of God Himself as contained in Holy Scripture. The explanations are more difficult than the text. Yet there is much value of an indirect kind in all these declarations. i. This value is partly historical. The Creeds are an index to men’s thoughts about God and His Truth in successive ages : they show the controversies in which the Church became en- tangled ; they illustrate at many points the rela- tion between the world’s philosophy and the Christian religion ; and, above all, they reveal the modes of thought from which faith and enthusiasm sprang in ages unlike our own. It is good to be 1 See The Confessions of Christendom , by Dr. G. Benedict Winer, especially the introduction by Prof. W. B. Pope, in Clarks’ ed. 1873. The Comparative Tables at the end of that volume will be found sug- gestive and useful. On the whole subject see Appendix, Note 13 : Com- parative Symbolics and the Harmony of Confessions. V VALUE OF CREEDS '59 able thus to read the secret of the changeful and progressive life of the Church, to apprehend those conceptions of the Divine that once minis- tered to devoutness and sanctity ; and it is sadly interesting to note, among the paradoxes of the past, what views and convictions were once so intensely held that sincere and earnest men were in their day not only ready to burn other men for contradicting them, but, if the need should arise, as ready to be burned themselves in their defence. 2. Another incidental advantage of Creeds is that which attaches to every careful exposition of the Truth. Perhaps we are sometimes too indis- criminating in our use of the phrases ‘ The Bible and the Bible alone ’ : ‘ The Bible without note or comment.’ As a matter of fact, notes and com- ments are often most serviceable, whether uttered from the pulpit by a competent preacher, or embodied by a theologian in his arguments, or expressed by a religious community in its Con- fessions. Such helps we cannot afford to cast away ; only let us use them rightly. It may be quite true that there is in the whole world no such accumulation of superfluities, or monuments of i6o THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. wasted thought, as may be found on the undis- turbed and dusty shelves of a great theological library ; and yet there are select souls that have from time to time taken in hand the task of illuminating for us and interpreting the deep things of God ; and for their labours, whether expressed in commentary or Creed, we may be duly though never slavishly grateful. 3. Then, further, the Creed will contribute to the clearness and consistency of our own thoughts. It will say for us what we could not so well have said for ourselves, and the distinct utterance will give distinctness to our conceptions. Hence the value of certain technicalities. They gather to an illuminated point that which existed in some con- fused, half-nebulous form in our own minds. In this lies the vindication of many terms not used in Scripture, yet found in the Creeds. There was an ancient orthodox sect which rejected the word o/zooucrto? because non-Biblical ; and such words and phrases as Trinity , Hypostatical Union, Sacra- ment, Original Sin , Effectual Calling, and many more, have been exposed to a similar objection. Now it is an undoubted evil when such phrases become in any way substituted for thought, or VALUE OF CREEDS 161 when they are regarded as carrying authority with them, as though a dubious doctrine were confirmed by the magic of a formula ; and yet when the thing signified has become to us a personal con- viction, our intellectual apprehension of it attains a greater definiteness from the ability to express it in some succinct and lucid form of speech. Sir W. Hamilton of Edinburgh likened such terms in philosophy to fortresses built by an army at the limit of a territory through which they have advanced, so as to secure it as their own . 1 In theology also the illustration holds good. The phrases contain no new truth, but conveniently and helpfully register the truth attained. In a similar manner, the propositions of a Creed will influence our thoughts. To take an instance from the Westminster Confession. Who that would express the deepest grounds of his convictions respecting the worth of the Bible could find a more appropriate form of words than in the following paragraph ? — We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to a high and reverend esteem of the Holy Scrip- 1 Lectures on Logic, vol. i. Lect. VIII. p. 138 : ‘Words are the fortresses of thought.’ M THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. 162 tare. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God ; yet, not- withstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the in- fallible truth and Divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts. Weighty words like these sum up the result of much thinking ; they give clearness and fixedness to our own conceptions, and become authoritative from our inward response to their truth. But when we pass from such considerations to estimate the claim of the Creed or Confession to be an absolute and final standard of our belief, some serious questions arise. 1. The Creed is, at the best, man’s version of God’s Word. And it is obvious to remark that this word has already been set before us in God’s own way. The Bible is history, biography, poetry, reasoning ; — ethics and theology in unelaborated form and with unnumbered applications to the circumstances of the hour — anything, in short, but LIMITATIONS OF CREEDS 163 a Creed. May we not, in our studies, first and chiefly delight to pursue the course which God Himself has marked out for us ? Are not our renderings of His truth likely to be inadequate, to miss something? For in Revelation infinite meanings lie. Creeds are necessarily limited ; Scripture is inexhaustible. Creeds enclose a space ; fenced in, it may be, with anathemas : and in order to fill it, they parcel out the Truth into formal propositions. Within the enclosure each dogma has its appointed place ; but there are horizons beyond, to which these dogmas never reach. To whom, we may ask, has the right been given to select from the illimitable revelation these certain portions, to clothe them with the authority of Creed, and to leave the remainder outside ? Beyond the charmed enclosure there may be truths as vital, as worthy to be formulated into dogma, as those appropriated by theologians. As a matter of fact, the omissions from many a Creed are fully as noteworthy as its contents. And when from the systematised arrangement of such formal documents we turn to the sayings of the Master, and to the words of His Apostles, we feel the difference at once. Illustrations may be given 6 4 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. from some cardinal articles of the Creed. Would we enter into the secret of the Most High, and apprehend the glory of the Eternal ? First, the ‘ Apostles’ Creed ’ shall help us : — ‘ I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.’ Then the Nicene Creed : — ‘ I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.’ Or again, the ‘ Athanasian Creed ’ : — ‘ The Catholic faith is this : that we worship One God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither con- founding the Persons nor dividing the Substance.’ Or the Augsburg Confession and the Thirty- nine Articles : — ‘ There is but One living and true God, ever- lasting, without body, parts or passions ; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness ; the Maker and Preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’ Or the Westminster Confession : — ‘ There is but one only, living, and true God ; VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF CREEDS 165 v who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure Spirit, invisible, without body, parts or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incompre- hensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory ; most loving, gracious, merciful, longsuffering, abundant in good- ness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin ; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him ; and withal most just and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.’ Now in all these several statements there is truth and value. Perhaps they may even help one’s thoughts, as already noted. Follow them out to their results : interpret them in the light of Scripture, as for instance Bishop Pearson did long ago, with regard to the several clauses of the ‘ Apostles’ Creed,’ and they lead to great and glorious conceptions of the Divine. Yet in them- selves do they admit the student of Scripture any the nearer to the mystery of the Eternal Godhead? You turn to the Bible; and as you read the words of Psalmist and of Prophet, or 1 66 THE CHRISTIAN CREED lect. listen to Jesus of Nazareth as He speaks of the Father in Heaven, you feel that you want no formulated Creed to tell you how to think of Him. The conception of God forms itself gradually, silently, ineffaceably within your mind ; in truth and beauty, and in symmetry too ; as when of old in Jerusalem the Temple arose in silent stateliness, while neither hammer nor axe was heard upon its walls. You need no definitions ; or if you turn to analyse the definitions given, you are conscious of a want. The one phrase ‘ God is Love ’ is more than all the studied phrases of the Westminster Assembly ; and the votary of Creed is only too apt to miss the crowning truth of the Divine Revelation, the universal Fatherhood of God. And again : of Christ Himself we read in the Nicene formula, as ‘the Only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, of one substance with the Father.’ Majestic words ! Yet how much more nearly does the Evangelist reach our soul ! ‘ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the begin- ning with God. All things were made by Him ; LIMITATIONS OF CREEDS 167 v and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life ; and the life was the light of men.’ The Creed ties us down to phrases ; the Gospel lifts us to the Infinite, and brings as it were truth from heaven in its application to the needs and longings of the human heart. It may be good for us to be taught by the Creeds what we are to find in Scripture ; but it is better to search that we may find it for ourselves. Shall we then adopt the expedient, much in favour with some who, while maintaining the sole authority of Scripture, desiderate a Creed, of classifying Bible Texts under different headings, so as to present the whole as a syllabus of doctrine ? There is much to commend the plan. The advantage of methodical arrangement seems to be thus happily combined with the recognition of the Divine Oracles as the supreme rule. Un- doubtedly the words of Scripture, taken in their true meaning and legitimate application, are of highest value in the statement and confirmation of Truth. Yet there are some considerations which tend to invalidate the process. For one thing, the selection cannot be in any wise complete. The text-creed 1 68 THE CHRISTIAN CREED lect. must be contained within comparatively narrow limits : where is the rest of the Bible ? Every theologian will choose what appear to him the most significant passages ; and it will be hard to escape the temptation to select those which appear to make for his own views, omitting those which would modify or correct them. For, a contro- versialist on almost any side may establish his case, if only allowed the choice and arrangement of his own texts. The truly significant thing is the interpretation which lies behind the mere words of the passage — an interpretation that may be subtly suggested by the heading under which the text is placed, or by the connection into which it is brought with other passages. Give me permission to make my own choice and collocation of texts ; and without a word of comment I will undertake to prove the essential equality of the Son with the Father, and His essential inferiority ; General or Particular Redemption, Resistible or Irresistible Grace ; and so with every great theo- logical question. Such misapplications are familiar to every Bible student. Volumes have been written on texts misquoted, misunderstood, and misapplied ; and there is room for volumes to V CREEDS AND PROOF-TEXTS 169 come. ‘ This is My Body ’ ; ‘ On this Rock I will build My Church ’ ; ‘ He found no place for re- pentance ’ ; ‘Touch not, taste not, handle not.’ Such misapplications are the source of all heresies, theological and ethical. Hardly too strong are the words of Shakespeare 1 : — In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament ? Almost the same may be said with regard to the ‘ proof texts ’ as used in Catechisms. I know that Catechisms so constructed are not in such repute as once they were. Perhaps the reason may be that the uncritical application of many passages has weakened confidence in the method. It is remarkable that of the early Socinian Cate- chisms written in Poland one constructs its answers entirely of Scripture passages, without note or comment. The comment, of course, is in the questions to which these answers are adjusted. Take, again, as a different kind of illustration, the ‘ proofs ’ in the Westminster Assembly’s Con- fession and Catechisms on the doctrine of the 1 Merchant of Venice, act iii. sc. 2, 11 . 77-80. 170 THE CHRISTIAN CREED i.ect. Holy Trinity, and on the Deity of Christ. On the Trinity, the first text adduced is i John v. 7, ‘ For there are Three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost ; and these Three are One.’ This passage, which retains its place without any hint of its disputed genuine- ness, is now surrendered by scholars of every creed, and has disappeared from the Revised Version without even a line to show that it once occupied a place in the Received Text. Four passages, again, are quoted to prove the Deity and Incarnation of the Son. One is Rom. ix. 5, ‘ Of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever.’ Here the trans- lation is at least doubtful. The Revised Version cautiously and accurately states : ‘ Some modern interpreters place a full stop after flesh, and trans- late “ He who is over all be (is) blessed for ever,” or “ He who is over all is God blessed for ever.” Others punctuate, “ concerning the flesh, who is over all. God be (is) blessed for ever.” ’ Now it is plain that a passage which thus admits of six different translations can have, to say the least, but little polemical value. The second text is 1 Tim. iii. 16, ‘God was manifest V CREEDS AND PROOF-TEXTS 171 in the flesh/ a reading now generally given up, although the critically-accredited phrase does, with proper explanation, support the doctrine in another way. It may be said, perhaps, that when the Con- fession was prepared, these facts of criticism were unknown. Precisely so ; and this only proves that the science of Bible exegesis and interpreta- tion, like all that appertains to Theology, is progressive ; the conclusions of the past having to be revised with every increase of knowledge. The instances given do but illustrate a method of quoting Scripture once very prevalent, still surviving in certain directions, but absolutely fatal to the true understanding either of the Bible or of Theology. Faithful criticism, sound exegesis, and honest interpretation would make havoc, not only of these ‘ Catechisms with proofs,’ but of much religious literature besides — even occasionally of our sermons. So much the better for the cause of Truth. The Bible, in whole or in part, Old Testament and New, can bear to be rightly under- stood. It still possesses unexhausted, unsuspected wealth for those who will search aright. But every faculty must be summoned to the task, and help from every quarter be welcomed. What is 172 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. true ? must be the incessant inquiry ; not, What is traditional ? or What seems to be edifying ? Even the Higher Criticism, as it has been unfor- tunately called, which has been subjected, partly on account of that appellation, to so much undis- cerning attack, must be pressed into service. We have to deal not only with isolated texts, but with books ; we must, in order to understand them, inquire into their literary history, their connection with other books, their authorship and structure, their general purpose and meaning. Some among us are still apprehensive of such inquiries ; and there can be no doubt that the method has often been recklessly applied. It is a great mistake to suppose that whatever is traditional must be true ; but it is a mistake yet greater to assume that whatever is traditional is likely to be false. Such postulates on both sides must be renounced by the honest inquirer, who will proceed, not by denouncing the method, but by rigorously and fearlessly applying its canons. The arbitrary, conjectural, extravagant conclusions, such as characterise every unformed and progressive science, will be corrected ; and the inspired volume, more profoundly understood, will become L1M1TA TIONS OF CREEDS 173 v to us and to our successors a brighter and more glorious book than to our fathers it had ever been. 1 Once more : the Scriptures speak to all genera- tions, the Creed is the voice of a single age. Every Creed or Confession reveals a crisis in the thoughts of men, when it was judged of supreme importance to affirm some one truth, or series of truths, singled out from the rest because comparatively forgotten or else specially assailed. The perspective of Truth continually changes. Now one doctrine, now another, will be in the foreground, according to the predominant tend- encies of Christian thought. Many a doctrine becomes erroneous or misleading through being placed in a wrong connection with other doctrines. Then the controversies of an age account for the form of many of the Church’s Creeds. They belong to periods of conflict, and the stamp of the time is upon them. Intended, it may be, in all good faith, for the culture of the spiritual life, their ploughshares, if I may adopt the prophet’s image, were beaten out of swords, and their prun- ing-hooks out of spears ; and in their structure 1 See Appendix, Note 14 : The Inexhaustibility of Scripture. 174 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. may be discerned, only too clearly, the gleam of the metal and the keenness of the blade. Thus, the very ‘ Apostles’ Creed ’ was fashioned in part out of protests against Gnosticism ; the Nicene Creed was mainly conditioned by the Arian heresy ; the Quicunque , as we have seen, was directed, clause after clause, against differing forms of theo- sophical speculation ; and the Creeds of the Re- formation show that the different phases of the contest against Romanism were always in their framers’ minds. Words and phrases in these docu- ments often contain an implicit repudiation of error ; thus in the Anglican Catechism : ‘ How many Sacraments hath Christ ordained in His Church?’ ‘Two only’ is the answer, the ‘ only ’ being an incidental protest against the seven sacra- ments of Romanism. The Article, again, on the Lord’s Supper (xxviii.) is half of it controversial ; while the reference to the Pelagians in the Ninth Article, ‘ Original Sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk) ’ ; the mention of ‘ the School-authors ’ in the Thirteenth, in repudiating the merit of Good Works ; and that ‘ of certain Anabaptists ’ in the Thirty-eighth, on the Community of Goods, — are more direct dis- V LIMITATIONS OF CREEDS 175 avowals of doctrines held to be mistaken. Some- times a Confession will even appear to go out of its way to negative a presumed heresy ; as when we read in the Westminster Confession of Faith (ch. x. par. 4) that ‘ Men not professing the Chris- tian religion cannot be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, and the law of that religion they do profess ; and to attest and maintain that they may, is very pernicious and to be detested.’ This vehemence of expres- sion seems to be directed against the opinion of Zwingli, which however was not embodied in any actual Creed, that even heathen, living uprightly and according to the law of nature and conscience, might obtain salvation. Thus, as every age has its own special con- troversies and forms of unbelief, the protest on behalf of orthodoxy has inevitably taken different forms. Some of the declarations in ancient Creeds are now anachronisms ; and any framer of present- day Confessions would have to direct his denials against altogether different antagonists. But it is evident that all this is of temporary service. A perfect Creed would hold itself independent of 76 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. changing moods of thought, and lay hold upon the eternal verity. While we are anathematising the Apollinarian heresy, or asserting the Double Procession of the Holy Ghost, men are asking whether Love and Law can be harmonised in the Divine administration, or whether the secret of a holy life is to be found in the Gospel of a free redemption, or whether the maintenance of Chris- tian Theology leads to a true humanitarianism ; with many another question prompted by the science and philosophy of our age. The dogmas of the ancient Creeds will hardly help us here ; they keep us entangled amid questions and specu- lations which no longer engross the thoughts of men. The only solution of our present inquiries must be sought in the Living Word, open from age to age, with applications ever new and in- finitely various to human needs ; for God, who ‘ reveals Himself in many ways,’ has a new and larger message for every generation to those who have eyes to discern and a heart to understand. We, therefore, on the borders of the Twentieth Century, in very homage to the progressiveness of the Divine Self-revelation, decline to limit our- V PROGRESSIVENESS OF THEOLOGY 177 selves by the formulas of the Fourth Century, or of the Eighth, or of the Seventeenth ; assured that we too shall hear the voice that spoke to our fathers, and that the Spirit of Truth is ready as of old to lead His people into all the Truth. For Theology, like every other Science, is pro- gressive, and will sooner or later break its way through all formulas by the irresistible tendency of human thought. Only let us carefully bear in mind what we mean by progressiveness, and how far Theology differs in this respect from all other sciences. In general, science is progressive in two main respects — first, by the discovery of new material — new facts or phenomena, in the regions with which it has to do ; and secondly, by more accurate methods of classifying and dealing with the material obtained. These two processes in- deed, run up into each other ; for, the wider the range of the phenomena observed, the larger will be the generalisations and the more complete the induction. But when we come to Theology, we have all the facts with which we have to deal already contained in the Scriptures of Truth. To these nothing can be added ; we may indeed understand these materials better, arrange them N 1 78 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. more symmetrically, argue from them more cor- rectly ; but the materials themselves are all given. Theological science, then, is progressive only in the second sense above indicated. Some would deny even this. Has not, they say, the Faith been once for all delivered to the saints ? Is not Truth eternally the same? How can we advance beyond the thoughts of God as expressed to us in His own Word? We may answer — as it seems to me conclusively — that the question is not con- cerning the thoughts of God themselves, but con- cerning the thoughts of men in regard to them. Truth is essentially the same ; but our apprehen- sion of the truth admits of development and enlargement, as our point of view is changed and the proportion of things better discerned. The Faith once for all delivered to the saints was not delivered in a series of propositions ranged in scientific array, but successively, from age to age ; by the disclosure of facts, the enunciation of prin- ciples, revelations concerning human life and the Divine dealings with mankind, in which we who study them may find ever new and deeper mean- ings, as we compare them one with another and place them under the cross-lights of human V PROGRESSIVENESS OF THEOLOGY 179 experience, of science and philosophy. Every advance of thought brings some new help to their comprehension ; and Theology becomes enriched with the spoils of the whole world of thought. But the best proof that Theology is progressive is, that it has actually progressed. There never has been a halting-place at which the Church could rightly affirm : ‘ Hitherto we have attained — no further attainment is possible.’ I know that the Churches have been saying this from time immemorial ; but in spite of their protests ‘ the thoughts of men have widened with the process of the suns.’ The mystery of Atonement was not the same to Calvin as it had been to the Gregories : why should we say that Calvin has settled it for ourselves and for all time ? So with the great themes of Christian Apologetics. What was vindicated in the days of our forefathers was the Divine Government by Rewards and Punishments to be awarded in the Future Life. And this no doubt is still part of our conception ; but I think that the greater stress is now laid upon the reality of Divine Sympathy with man. A ‘ State of Probation ’ was the old phrase, and this also con- tains a deep meaning ; but deeper still is the view i8o THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. of life as a Divine Education by the infinite forces of love. In everything, indeed, which concerns men’s thoughts of God, there is room for that larger knowledge which ever goes in hand with deeper reverence. The very first word of the Bible means more to us than it could have meant to our fore- fathers by whom the Wonders of Creation were so largely unexplored ; and our ever-growing know- ledge of human history and experience gives new emphasis of application to Christ’s own phrase, ‘ your Father which is in Heaven.’ And if I might venture to specify one direction in which the Christian thought of our day seems to be advancing to a new and higher truth than is expressed in any of the Creeds, I would instance the doctrine of the Incarnate and Risen Christ. The ancient Churches, in their developed ‘ Apostles’ Creed,’ laid the great stress upon His Manifestation to mankind ; the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Fathers, in language coloured by Alexandrian philosophy, strove to set forth His Eternal Being, and His relation to the Father. In both, the central truth of Theology was recognised and dis- V THE RETURN TO CHRIST 1 8 1 played ; and their utterances have thus become a guide and help to the Churches through all time. In a measure we are coming back to these olden forms of truth, and are learning to understand, as perhaps our modern Churches have never yet understood, that it was by a true Divine instinct that the early theologians made Christ Himself, in His Divine- Human Personality, the centre of their Creeds. We are following in the same track, or at least beginning there. The Return to Christ, as Dr. Fairbairn has said, is the great characteristic of modern Theology. But not altogether in the ancient metaphysical style. We are not content to think of Him simply as Only Begotten, homooiisios, God of God, incarnate, crucified, risen, ascended to the Heavens. There is a tendency to linger on His Human Life, and to learn the secret of His teach- ings and His power there. Undoubtedly this is sometimes done after too narrow and exclusive a method. Some recent representatives of Theology would bid us back to the Life and Words of Jesus upon earth, as though these contained the sum of all Theology. The Gospels, it is said, and not the Epistles, embody 1 82 THE CHRISTIAN CREED lect. the religion of Christ. Or, to borrow a succinct phrase from Jeremy Bentham — ‘ Not Paul but Jesus.’ The next step is easy. The Ethical, it is said, and not the Doctrinal, is all in all. ‘ The Sermon on the Mount is our Creed,’ and ‘ in the Sermon on the Mount there is no Theology.’ Now this latter assertion may be seriously ques- tioned. Instead of there being no Theology in this discourse of Jesus, it is in reality marked by its theological fulness. For what is Theo- logy but the Science of God ? And the very aim and purpose of that Sermon was the Revela- tion of God. It was an announcement to the world of the Divine Fatherhood, surely the greatest of theological truths. Its ethical maxims were lifted into the higher sphere by being associated with this central verity : ‘ Be ye there- fore perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.’ Compare the words of our Lord with those of the best and greatest teachers of morality, and you feel that you are in another region, in contact with an altogether different order of thought. The secret of the difference is that His doctrine is penetrated through and through with Theology: God Him- self is in it all. And so with His whole teaching. CHRIST THE CENTRE 83 v It would indeed be correct to say that there are doctrines which were not as yet explicitly pro- pounded. Did not the Master Himself declare at the close : ‘ I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now ?’ 1 Salvation, with Him, was a work to be wrought rather than a message to be given ; and the message was entrusted to His disciples. They were to interpret His deepest Will, and to proclaim the Gospel of the Resurrection. This Gospel is far-reaching, and the Creeds all fall short of declaring it in its adaptation to modern thought. They tell us of the Son of God who was before all worlds, of His Incarnation and earthly life, His death, His rising from the dead, His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and His promise to return hereafter ; but we do not discern in all this the truth of truths, that Christ is living now, not only on His distant throne in Heaven, but as the very Life of the world. This is the great truth which the Apostles were set to enforce, to carry on the thoughts of the faithful from those sublime and tender memories John xvi. 12. 184 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. which associated themselves with Olivet and Galilee, with the Mount of Beatitudes and the Mount of Transfiguration, to another and yet higher fellowship with Him who from His very absence was nearer to their souls than in His earthly life He had ever been. This was the reason of the continued insistence, in Paul’s later Epistles, upon the Resurrection. ‘ It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead ’ — the supreme fact, the fact that gave meaning and power to all besides. True, the fact was many-sided. It was evidence, clear, irresist- ible, of His mission and claims ; it was confirma- tion of His sacrifice accepted for the sins of men ; but beyond all this, in the Apostle’s meaning, it was restoration, the great gift to the Church of a living Redeemer. This is hardly hinted in the Creeds, even in those which are most occupied with details and analysis of His saving work ; it is too much absent, also, from popular preaching. We think of Christ as far away, on His distant throne, to come one day in visible majesty to the Church that mourns His absence and to the world which sighs to be renewed : we scarcely apprehend the fact that He is verily in the midst of us ; that V CHRIST THE CENTRE 1S5 already the throne is set above all earthly thrones ; that He guides, invisibly but surely, the whole course of the world’s history ; that He lives and reigns, and that — to use the magnificent imagery of the Apocalypse — His faithful disciples and the martyrs for His cause are living and reigning with Him as the ‘thousand years’ roll on . 1 This is Christ’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven : Christ in the world as well as Christ for the world — the Church’s joy and hope. And here, let me say, we may understand some of the strangest superstitions that have ever drawn devout souls astray. Every error that has cast its shadow over Christendom is the distorted image of a truth ; and the dim conviction of Christ’s presence in His Church, apprehended by minds only half emancipated from carnal associations and conceptions, led by degrees to the figment of a bodily presence, localised in the Eucharistic emblems, wheresoever two or three were gathered together to remember Him. It was, and is, a strange perversion of the truth ; but it is a per- version only. The mediaeval philosophy invoked in support of the theory is but an afterthought ; 1 See Rev. xx. 4, 5. 1 86 THE CHRISTIAN CREED lect. the theory did not spring from it, nor was it based upon a childish misunderstanding of our Lord’s words, ‘This is My Body.’ Not thus could it have taken possession of so many of the keenest, strongest minds in successive generations. No ; there was a conviction, as true as it was deep, that Christ was with His Church in His glorified Humanity ; and from that profound conviction it was but a single step to the dream of a Presence localised under visible and palpable forms. In our emphatic repudiation of the doctrine, we do well to remember that the Real Presence, rightly apprehended, is one of the sublimest doctrines of the Christian Creed — a Presence all the more real because spiritual, the more intensely true because discerned by Faith alone. So do we reconcile the thought of an ever-present with that of an absent Saviour. The poet is sometimes wiser, sees more into the heart of things, than the theologian ; and I know not where to find a more impressive con- trast between the spirit of modern scepticism and the spirit of modern faith than in some verses which I will read to you — first from Matthew Arnold, who thus pathetically mourns the vanish- V THE LIVING CHRIST 87 ing of the living Christ from his soul’s horizon. He is speaking of the ‘ Ages of Faith ’ : — Oh, had I lived in that great day, How had its glory new Filled earth and heaven, and caught away My ravished spirit too ! No thoughts that to the world belong Had stood against the wave Of love which set so deep and strong From Christ’s then open grave ! No lonely life had passed too slow, When I could hourly scan Upon His Cross, with head sunk low That nailed, thorn-crowned Man ! — Could see the Mother with her Child Whose tender winning arts Have to His little arms beguiled So many wounded hearts ! And centuries came and ran their course, And — unspent all that time — Still, still went forth that Child’s dear force, And still was at its prime. Ay, ages long endured His span Of life — ’tis true received — That Gracious Child, that thorn-crowned Man ! — He lived while we believed. While we believed, on earth He went, And open stood His grave. Men called from chamber, church, and tent, And Christ was by to save. THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. Now He is dead ! Far hence He lies In the lorn Syrian town ; And on His grave, with shining eyes, The Syrian stars look down. In vain men still, with hoping new Regard His death-place dumb, And say the stone is not yet to, And wait for words to come. But the words are unspoken. The Christ comes not. The Child, the Sufferer, has vanished. And, in the deep words of the Apostle, to ‘ know Christ after the flesh ’ has proved insufficient to meet the wants of the world. Listen now to another poet — the American Whittier : — Nor Holy Bread, nor blood of grape, The lineaments restore Of Him we know in outward shape, And in the flesh no more ! He cometh not a King to reign ; The world’s long hope is dim ; The weary centuries watch in vain The clouds of Heaven for Him. But warm, sweet, tender, even yet A present help is He : And faith has still its Olivet, And love its Galilee. Our Lord, and Master of us all ! Whate’er our name or sign, V THE LIVING CHRIST 189 We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, We test our lives by Thine. To Thee our full humanity, Its joys and pains, belong : The wrong of man to man on Thee Inflicts a deeper wrong. Who hates, hates Thee ; who loves becomes Therein to Thee allied : All sweet accord of hearts and homes In Thee are multiplied. Deep strike Thy roots, O Heavenly Vine, Within our earthly sod : Most Human and yet most Divine, The flower of man and God ! Now it can hardly fail to have struck you that in the former of those two poems the vision of Christ had been simply of the outward — very beautiful and pathetic, but still not passing beyond the region of sentiment. ‘ That Gracious Child, that thorn-crowned Man,’ has afforded no hint of any deeper revelation. The sympathies are aroused, the sense of beauty is awakened ; but, like many a peasant who crosses himself by the wayside Madonna or crucifix, the traveller goes his way ; and in earth’s common paths the vision by and by is lost. The Christ who is to win all human spirits and to transform the world is to 190 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. be apprehended and known after another fashion than this. ‘ God in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself,’ is the very life of the Christian Creed. And, although indeed it would be hazardous to prophesy concerning the progress of human thought, either in the world or in the Church, there are signs, too clear to be overlooked, that the Incarnation is growingly viewed as a fact that is grounded in the very nature of God and man, independently of human sin. The question was of old debated in the Schools, among other topics of speculative curiosity, Whether the Son of God would have become man, if man had not trans- gressed. Nothing came of the discussion, carried on as it was in the hard scholastic way ; but the question is now revived under other conditions. Among modern divines who regard the Incarnation as manifesting an eternal purpose apart from human sinfulness, may be mentioned Dr. Dorner, the author of the History of the Doctrine regardmg the Person of Christ , as well as the learned and pro- found Bishop Martensen ; while, of living British theologians who take the same view, it will suffice INCARNATION AN ETERNAL PURPOSE 9i v to mention the names of Bishop Westcott and Dr. Faii-bairn. The question must largely affect the Christology of the future, touching as it does the entire relation between God and man, who was created in His image, and whose highest affinity is therefore with the Divine. In any case, it is believed, humanity awaited its true crown in the Revelation of God in man, inseparably joined. The Advent, therefore, was no afterthought in the counsels of God, as perhaps we have been in the habit of assuming. I have already quoted from two poets of the day, and may be allowed to refer to one of the past, who in this respect seems to have missed the mark, while his representation has unconsciously influenced many minds. It is Milton, who has interpreted for us so many of the great thoughts of Puritanism, and who has in so many instances imposed his own theology upon the Churches. In one of his most daring imagina- tive flights, he carries us up to the courts of Heaven, and to a Council held there over the sin and fall of man. The lines that follow were a favourite quotation in the pulpit a generation ago : — * Die he or Justice must ; unless for him Some other, able, and as willing, pay 192 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. The rigid satisfaction, death for death. Say, Heavenly Powers, where shall we find such love ? Which of ye will be mortal, to redeem Man’s mortal crime, and just, the unjust to save ? Dwells in all Heaven charity so dear ? ’ He asked, but all the Heavenly Choir stood mute, And silence was in Heaven ! Then, after that awful pause, the Son of God undertook the mission of Salvation, ‘ offered Him- self to die for Man’s offence,’ and all Heaven burst forth in song 1 : — O unexampled love ! Love nowhere to be found less than Divine ! No wonder that a great Father of the Church, holding a similar view centuries before, should have exclaimed, even in view of the Fall, ‘ O felix culpa ! ’ O happy transgression, which led to such a crowning wonder as the Incarnation of the Eternal Word ! But I think the wonder is even greater, and the love is not the less, when we look upon the ‘ taking of the Manhood into God ’ as the purpose of the Creation from the beginning. In the words of Bishop Westcott : ‘ The Fall — and here lies the greatest mystery of Divine Love — did not frustrate this end, which it might seem to 1 Paradise Lost, iii. 210-218; 410, 411. V CHRIST THE CENTRE 193 have made unattainable consistently with truth and justice. The circumstances of the Incarnation were due to Sin, while the idea of the Incarnation was due to the primal and absolute purpose of love foreshadowed in Creation.’ Such thoughts, it may be anticipated, will occupy the theologians of the future, not as barren speculations or curious fancies, but as opening up a way to the deeper understanding both of God and man. One thing is certain. The Christ of God is the centre of the Christian Creed, as of the renewed life. It is good for us to be conversant with great ideals : they uplift us in thought and aspiration even when we cannot wholly realise them ; and surely the great ideal of Humanity created in the image of God is to be found in Christ, Himself described, in the self-same words, as ‘the image of the invisible God’ — the only perfect revelation of what man was intended to be, what the Great Salvation sets him free to become, and what he shall be in Christ for ever- more. O LECTURE VI ON SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH The history of Subscription to Articles of Faith begins, naturally enough, with the mandate of an Emperor. It was the expedient of Constantine, who required from every member of the Nicene Council an attestation under his own hand to the decrees of that assembly. The rough, imperious soldier did but act according to his light. He had proved that in the State the essentials of peace were order and submission ; why should it not be so in the Church ? Thought as well as conduct was to be put under control, and beliefs were to be regulated by the word of command. Here, however, at the same time, we note the beginnings of evasion in creed-signature. When banishment, or worse, was the penalty for with- holding one’s name, there were only too likely to lect.vi SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 195 be some dissemblers. Three of the bishops, it is said by the historian Philostorgius, who complied with the injunction of Constantine against their convictions, attempted to satisfy their consciences by dexterously inserting an iota in the copies that they signed, so turning homoousion to homoiousion } In fact, the requirement of signature was but the beginning of difficulties, and an evil precedent for days to come. Yet it must be noted that, both in the Nicene and subsequent Councils, Subscription appears to have been limited to the actual members of the assembly. The mandate was not extended to the teachers and rulers of the Church in general, these being simply required to conform. Obedience, not assent, was the demand laid upon them. The distinction is important. The decrees of the Council went forth as the infallible word of the Holy Ghost, and demanded implicit obedience. So, as Dean Stanley has shown, in mediaeval times, 1 Epitome, by Photius, bk. i. c. 9. The bishops mentioned are Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis of Nicaea, and Maris of Chalcedon. See also Socrates, Eccl. Hist. bk. i. c. 8. Two others (Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais) rejected the homoousion. Sozomen, lib. ii. c. 21, does not mention the iota , but says that Eusebius and Theognis bribed the notary to efface their signatures. The whole account is confused and suspicious. 196 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. as a general rule, ‘ the unity of the Church was preserved, like the unity of the State, not by pre- liminary promises or oaths, but by the general laws of discipline and order, and by the general public sentiment of the whole community.’ In like manner the Church of Rome and the different Protestant communions take entirely different positions with regard to Subscription. The one demand of Rome is the acceptance of the Church’s authority. Then whatever the Church enjoins is to be believed and taught. The pre- liminary act of assent involves the whole. There is no question of this or that particular article of belief ; the submission may, in fact, be made without knowing what these articles are. We have seen in our own time how the dogma, for instance, of Papal Infallibility, strongly opposed by many eminent Romanists until decreed by the Vatican Council, was then at once accepted and maintained by the same persons — not because their arguments had been refuted or their reason convinced, but because Rome had spoken. They henceforth believed, as one may believe in some article of unexpected information. It had seemed unlikely up to the point of confirmation, but when VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 197 stated as authentic it was received without any further question. Now Protestantism cannot understand this method of dealing with beliefs. It cannot accept its convictions on authority and in the mass, nor can it yield implicit assent to unexpressed dogmas. The Protestant must know what he believes, and must subscribe the dogmas, if he subscribes at all, on their own several merits. In such a spirit the early Protestant Churches proceeded ; and the Reformation age, as we have seen, became fertile in Confessions, the very differences in which became evidences of independent judgment. No doubt the requirement of Subscription as sometimes en- forced led to even greater difficulties than the Roman method had done. It had been a com- paratively simple thing to accept the Church with all its dogmas as a whole, but now, when assent was demanded to a large number of propositions — and some of these Confessions were very long ! — on their own separate evidence and authority, the intellectual process was not so easy. The Rulers, who took the matter in hand, and enforced the Confession as a State religion, did not always understand this, and led their subjects into some THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. 198 strange absurdities. Thus Duke Julius of Bruns- wick (1568-89), in his zeal for the Evangelical Faith, ‘ required from all clergy, from all professors, from all magistrates, a Subscription to all and everything contained in the Confession of Augs- burg, in the Apology for the Confession, in the Schmalkaldic Articles, in all the works of Luther, in all the works of Melanchthon, and in all the works of Chemnitz.’ 1 Such, however, were but the eccentricities of Erastianism. More to our purpose is it to note the law of Subscription as enacted at different times in Great Britain. 2 It underwent many fluctuations : the conviction of rulers in Church and State appearing ineradicable, that the way to ecclesiastical union was by the demand of signa- ture. Make men but say, I believe, and set their hands to it, and all would go well ! The first proposal of Subscription in the English Protestant Church seems to have been due to Cranmer, who was greatly influenced in this by the Swiss reformers. The Archbishop in 1552 wrote a letter to the Council of King Edward VI., 1 Letter to Bishop Tait ' On Subscription ’ : Stanley, Essays on Church and State, p. 128. 2 See Edinburgh Review, April 1862. VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAIT 11 199 referring to the Forty-two Articles then newly drawn up, and ‘ beseeching their Lordships to be meanes unto the King’s Majestie that all the Bishops may have authority from hym to cause all their preachers, archdeacons, deanes, preben- daries, parsons, vicars, curates, with all their clergy to subscribe to the said Articles.’ 1 Accordingly, in June 1553, a royal letter was addressed to the bishops, enjoining, as had been requested, the en- forcement of Subscription upon the clergy. It was no doubt felt to be necessary in some decisive way to mark the separation between the Romanists and the adherents of the Reformation. The proposal was, that all clergy refusing to sign were to be deprived of their preferments ; but that before proceeding to this extremity the Bishop was to use every means of persuasion ; first, as the King’s letter enjoins, conferring with the candidate for ordination or any ecclesiastical appointment on every one of the Articles. ‘And yet,’ it is added, ‘ if any party refuse to subscribe any of these Articles for lack of learning, or of know- ledge of the truth thereof, ye shall in anywise by teaching, conference, and proof of the same by the 1 Strype, Life of Cranmer, Appendix lxiv. 200 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. Scriptures, reasonably and discreetly move and persuade him thereto, before ye shall peremptorily judge him as unable and a recusant. And for the trial of his conformity ye shall, according to your discretions, prefix him a time and space convenient to deliberate and give his consent ; so it be betwixt three weeks and six weeks from the time of his first access unto you. And if after six weeks he will not consent and agree willingly to subscribe, then ye may and lawfully shall in any wise refuse to admit or enable him .’ 1 The King, however, died before this mandate could be enforced ; and the whole matter remained in suspense until Elizabeth was firmly established upon the throne. We have already noted the revision of the Articles in her reign, and their re- duction to Thirty-nine — the form in which we have them now. It was in 1571 that the ‘Act for the Ministers of the Church to be of sound Religion ’ for the first time enforced Subscription ; 2 and the requirement has ever since been part of the law of the Church of England. This was, however, made much more stringent by the Acts 1 Strype, Eccl. Mem. Edward VI. bk. xi. c. 22. 2 See Lecture IV. p. 131. The Act is printed in Gee and Hardy's Documents, pp. 477-480. VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 201 of Uniformity in 1662, the words of declaration being : — ‘ I, A. B., do declare my unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and pre- scribed in and by the book entitled, “ The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, according to the Use of the Church of England.” ’ To the Articles, the form of subscription ran thus : — ‘ I do willingly and from my heart (ex animo ) subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion of the United Church of England and Ireland, and to the Three Articles of the Thirty-sixth Canon, and to all things contained in them.’ The Second Article of the Thirty-sixth Canon asserts that the Book of Common Prayer ‘ containeth in it nothing contrary to the Word of God.’ When the Toleration Act was passed (1689), and Dissenters were allowed, under certain restric- tions, to exercise their ministry, one of these re- strictions was the requirement of subscription to all the Church Articles excepting the Thirty-fourth, on Church Tradition, the Thirty-fifth, on the Book 202 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. of Homilies, the Thirty-sixth, on the Consecration of Bishops and Ministers ; with the words in the Twentieth, ‘the Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith ’ ; also, in the case of the Baptists, that part of the Twenty-seventh which relates to Infant Baptism. But ninety years afterwards, in 1779, the requirement of signature to the Articles by Nonconformists was entirely swept away. Meanwhile the unlimited assent required from the clergy was increasingly felt as a burden upon Conscience. So long since as 1708 Bishop Burnet wrote, in concluding the History of his Own Times : — The requiring subscriptions to the Thirty-nine Articles is a great imposition. I believe them all myself ; but as those about Original Sin and Predestination might be expressed more unexceptionally, so I think it is a better way to let such matters continue to be still the standard of doctrine, and to censure those who teach any contrary tenets than to oblige all who serve in the Church to subscribe them. The greater part subscribe without ever examining them, and others do it because they must do it, though they can hardly satisfy their consciences about some things in them. Churches and Societies are much better secured by laws than by subscriptions : it is a more reasonable as well as a more easy method of government. VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 203 Such convictions from time to time gathered strength in the Church of England. But eccles- iastical bodies move slowly, and when at last they do move, they are apt to rest in compromise. So it was not until 1865 that, after long and bitter discussion, the subscription of the clergy was re- duced to the more simple yet sufficiently stringent formula : — ‘ I, A. B., do solemnly make the following declaration : — ‘ I assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and to the Book of Common Prayer, and of the Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. I believe the Doctrine of the United Church of England and Ireland, as therein set forth, to be agreeable to the Word of God ; and in public prayer and administration of the Sacraments I will use the form in the said book prescribed and none other, except so far as shall be ordered by lawful authority.’ This, it will be seen, is a general assent, and leaves the way open for a certain latitude of opinion within the limits of a substantial agree- ment. So with other Christian bodies. The Presby- 204 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. terian subscription is indeed in form more rigid. ‘ I, subscribing this with my own hand, do hereby declare that I do sincerely own and believe the whole doctrine contained in the Westminster Con- fession of Faith, as approved by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in the year 1647, to be the truths of God ; and I do own the same as the Confession of my Faith. As likewise I do own the purity of worship presently authorised and practised in this Church, and also the Presby- terian government and discipline thereof ; which doctrine, worship, and Church government I am persuaded are founded upon the Word of God and agreeable thereto.’ In addition to this avowal of belief, the United Presbyterian ministers on their ordination declare that they ‘ express no approbation of anything in the Confession and Catechisms which teaches, or may be supposed to teach, compulsory or per- secuting or intolerant principles in religion.’ The English Presbyterian Church, in the year 1890, adopted a series of Articles, twenty-four in number, a modernised, abbreviated, and mitigated form of the Westminster Confession, well meriting study, as the most unexceptionable form in which mod- VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 205 erate Calvinism has as yet been embodied within the same compass. 1 The Wesleyan Connexion, or Church as it is now generally termed, takes as its standard the doctrinal Articles of the Church of England, with a general assent to the teachings of Mr. Wesley’s Sermons and his Notes on the Scriptures. The Congregational Union, in presenting a lucid and compendious statement of principles, very much on the lines of the old Protestant Con- fessions, 2 not only refrains from imposing any Subscription, but expressly adds : — It is not intended that the following statement should be put forth with any authority, or as a standard to which assent should be required. Disallowing the authority of Creeds and Articles of Religion as a bond of union, and protesting against sub- scription to any human formularies as a term of Communion, Congregationalists are yet willing to declare, for general in- formation, what is commonly believed among them, reserving to every one the most perfect liberty of conscience. So lately, however, as the year 1878, it was thought necessary, in view of certain theological 1 See Appendix, Note 15 : Articles of the Presbyteriati Church of England , 1890. 2 See Appendix, Note 16: Declaration of Faith of the Congregational or Independent Dissenters, 1833. 206 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. discussions in the body, to pass an additional re- solution, very carefully prepared, chiefly historical, and somewhat vague, as will be seen : — That in view of the uneasiness produced in the Churches of the Congregational order by the proceedings of a recent Conference (at Leicester) on the terms of religious Com- munion, the Assembly feels called upon to reaffirm that the primary object of the Congregational Union is, according to the terms of its own constitution, to uphold and extend Evangelical Religion. That the Assembly appeals to the history of the Congregational Churches generally, as evi- dence that the Congregationalists have always regarded the acceptance of the facts and doctrines of the Evangelical Faith revealed in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as an essential condition of Religious Com- munion in Congregational Churches ; and that among these have always been included the Incarnation, the Atoning Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, His Resurrection, His Ascension and Mediatorial Reign, and the Work of the Holy Spirit in the renewal of Man. That the Congrega- tional Union was established on the basis of these facts and doctrines is, in the judgment of this Assembly, made evident by the Declarations of Faith and Order adopted at the Annual Meeting in 1S33; and the Assembly believes that the Churches represented in this Union hold these facts and doctrines in their integrity to this day. The Baptist Union prints no Confession of Faith, simply declaring among the Articles of its Constitution : ‘ In this Union it is fully recognised VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 207 that every separate Church is at liberty to inter- pret and administer the laws of Christ, and that the immersion of believers is the only Christian Baptism.’ In the year 1888, however, the denomination was agitated by a controversy as to the imposition of more stringent terms of fellowship. The out- come was a declaration that the ultimate basis of union was not a common creed but a renewed life. The preamble to this Declaration is especially to be noted : — Whilst expressly disavowing and disallowing any power to control belief or to restrict inquiry, yet, in view of the uneasiness produced in the Churches by recent discussions, and to show our agreement with one another and with our fellow-Christians on the great truths of the Gospel, the Council deem it right to say that : — Baptized into the Name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, we have avowed Repentance towards God and Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ — the very elements of a new life ; as in the Supper we avow our union with one another, while partaking of the symbol of the Body of our Lord broken for us, and of the Blood shed for the remission of sins. The Union, therefore, is an Association of Churches and Ministers professing not only to believe the facts and doctrines of the Gospel, but to have undergone the spiritual change expressed or implied in them. This change is the fundamental principle of our Church life. 208 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. Then follows a statement of certain facts and doctrines as ‘ commonly believed ’ in the Churches of the Union. 1. The Divine Inspiration and Authority of the Holy Scripture as the supreme and sufficient rule of our faith and practice, and the right and duty of individual judgment in the interpretation of it. 2. The fallen and sinful state of man. 3. The Deity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His Sacrificial and Mediatorial Work. 4. Justification by Faith — a faith that works by love and produces holiness. 5. The work of the Holy Spirit in the Conversion of Sinners, and in the Sanctification of all who believe. 6. The Resurrection ; the Judgment of the last day, according to the words of our Lord in Matthew xxv. 46. To this last Article a note is appended to the following effect : — It should be stated as an historical fact that there have been brethren in the Union working cordially with it, who, while reverently bowing to the authority of Holy Scripture, and rejecting the dogmas of Purgatory and Universalism, have not held the common interpretation of the words of our Lord. I confess to a strong wish that the whole state- ment had ended with the first paragraph. To take a simple and decided stand on our Church VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 209 life and ordinances as meaning nothing less than conversion to God, witli mutual fellowship as the result and expression of this spiritual change, would have clearly indicated our position, and would have needed no reinforcement of Articles to follow — which, after all, are not Articles but only heads of doctrine, put, as in those of the Congregational Assembly, in an historical way, and susceptible of boundless variety of interpretation. Then, you have no doubt observed that in the manifestoes of both denominations the reason for issuing them has been based upon a certain pre- valent 1 uneasiness.’ I do not know that this uneasiness has been removed or prevented by these documents. In fact, it strikes me that such uneasiness will always exist as long as there are the old and the young. While the world lasts, I suppose, those who seem to be going too fast and too far in their inquiries will be a burden to those who would stand on the old ways : elders are too apt to forget that they once were young, nor do the young always bear in mind that they will some day be old themselves. So the heterodoxies of one generation often become the orthodoxies of the next, and meanwhile, in every changing P 210 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. form and mode of expression, the Eternal Truth endures. But the main lesson of the incidents recounted, so far as concerns our present subject, is that both Baptist and Congregational Unions have shown themselves firm in rejecting all propositions for requiring subscription to a creed. The historical statements as to points or heads of belief generally accepted may go for what they are worth ; the main point, I repeat, is in the Baptist declaration of the Church idea — as that of a company of renewed persons, and therefore under the guid- ance of the Holy Ghost. In effect, the declara- tion means : We can trust the Spirit of God. To this point I shall return ; but meanwhile pass on to notice one other attempt to supply the place of a credal test, in a Society formed a little more than half a century since, professing the high and even sublime purpose of manifesting the unity of Christian believers. It might indeed be asked whether this is not the function of the Church itself, and whether the institution of a separate Society to undertake the task is not one of the most humiliating confessions of failure ever made through the long ages of ecclesiastical history. But let VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH i this pass. The Society — ‘ Evangelical Alliance ’ as it is called — at its inception propounded Eight Articles, which, as they are fairly brief, may be given here. They are : — 1. The Divine Inspiration, Authority, and Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures. 2. The right and duty of Private Judgment in the inter- pretation of the Holy Scriptures. 3. The Unity of the Godhead and the Trinity of Persons therein. 4. The utter depravity of human nature in consequence of the Fall. 5. The Incarnation of the Son of God, His work of Atonement for sinners of mankind, and His Mediatorial intercession and reign. 6. The Justification of the sinner by Faith alone. 7. The work of the Holy Spirit in the Conversion and Sanctification of the sinner. 8. The Divine institution of the Christian Ministry, and the obligation and perpetuity of the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. To these Eight Articles was afterwards added a ninth : — The Immortality of the Soul, the Resurrection of the Body, the Judgment of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, with the Eternal Blessedness of the righteous and the Eternal Punishment of the wicked. It will be seen at once that, as in the case 212 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. already cited, these are not dogmas, so much as titles or headings of dogmas ; also susceptible of very various interpretation. But the most signi- ficant thing in the proposal of these Articles was the manner in which they were set forth : — ‘ The parties composing this Alliance,’ say the promoters, ‘ shall be such persons only as hold and maintain what are usually understood to be evangelical views in regard to the matters of doctrine understated.’ And again at the close : — ‘ This brief Summary is not to be regarded in any formal or ecclesiastical sense as a Creed or Confession, nor the adoption of it as involving an assumption of the right authoritatively to define the limits of Christian brotherhood, but simply as an indication of the class of persons whom it is desirable to embrace within the Alliance.’ ‘ The class of persons whom it is desirable ’ to include ! Then the Alliance at its outset re- nounces the idea of manifesting the unity of all believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Some, no doubt, it has been found very ‘ desirable to include’; and they have undeniably worked together well, and for many admirable purposes. Only this VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 213 thing they have not done — they have not mani- fested the unity of all believers ; those, for instance, in the Society of Friends. And further, what is the test applied ? That they hold certain well- defined doctrines? No; but ‘what are usually understood to be evangelical views in regard to them.’ Usual understanding is very indefinite, may change from age to age, and can scarcely be a guide or help to religious thought ! Now these facts are instanced simply as illus- trations of the difficulties which beset every human endeavour to frame a lasting intellectual ground- work for Christian orthodoxy. To love God, to repent of sin, to trust the Divine Redeemer, and to live in charity with all men, one would think, were a sufficient basis for any true Evangelical Alliance. Only it might be hard to formulate these things in a creed. And so we must fall back upon ‘ the persons whom it is desirable to include ’ within a narrower circle than that of the great and holy fellowship, the universal Church of the redeemed. The bearing of these considerations upon Church life and order, both in the present and in 214 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. the future, must be reserved for the next Lecture. One practical question, however, presses. What- ever may be the requirement in regard to simple Church membership, it is held by many that a subscription to a Creed or Confession may at any rate be required from the officers, and especially from the teachers, of the Christian community. So in the State enactments that we have been noticing, the obligation is imposed, principally, almost entirely, upon the clergy. Now there is undoubtedly a certain convenience in having a standard to which their instructions may readily be brought, so that those who are entrusted with their appointment may know how they interpret the Divine oracles, and what they hold as the chief doctrines of the Faith. Congregations have their rights as well as Ministers, and will be wise in desiring to know what will be the essentials of pastoral teaching. That the Ministers, therefore, should be prepared to say beforehand : ‘ These Thirty-nine Articles,’ or ‘ This Westminster Con- fession,’ or ‘ This Doctrinal Trust-Deed, contains the lines of truth on which I intend to proceed,’ is an advantage to which we cannot be blind. Is not such definite pledge, it is often asked, better V SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 215 than the profession of a vague, undogmatic theo- logy, which may leave the Christian teacher to wander at large and unchecked into any fields of thought, without any documentary provision for testing his orthodoxy ? The proposal to leave him free to ascertain and declare the truth for himself, without the imposition of a human creed, is often represented as a plea for indefiniteness in belief, a religiousness without systematic form ; as though the only alternative lay between this and recognised authoritative formula. Hence the charge continually levelled against those who object to creed-subscription, of superficiality and indifference to clear, well-defined, religious truth. It may be replied, in the first place, that the real alternative is not as alleged. The renunciation of human creeds does not imply indifference to religious truth ; only a conviction as to the source where that truth must be sought and learned. As was maintained in the First Lecture of this course, it is of supreme importance to the intel- lectual and spiritual life that the Divine testimony should be received in its fulness, diligently pon- dered, distinctly understood. The age more than ever needs that the teachers of the Church should 216 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. be theologians, — well - informed, clear - minded, strong in the faith. The very life of the Church is bound up with such thoughts as are expressed by the terms Incarnation, Atonement, Resurrec- tion. We only say that for their adequate appre- hension there is a more excellent way than the way of authoritative imposition of human Creeds. For, secondly. Every true teacher must form his own creed. The responsibility is his, and cannot be either evaded or shared. ‘ Why,’ it may be asked, ‘ may I not be content to accept the interpretations which wise and good men have put upon the Divine Oracles, and thus submit to the authority of the Church ? ’ It might be re- joined, ‘To which of the Churches? Let me clearly understand what I am about. Am I accepting this as a condition of membership in the Church Universal, or only in some special Christian community? If the latter, I must first at any rate exercise choice as to the master to be followed.’ But, again, the submission is forbidden by the free spirit of Christianity. I repeat — we as Protestants cannot first accept a Church and then its teachings. The Articles of our belief must be received on their own several authority. VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 217 Merely to say of one or another point, ‘ I can accept it because I find it in the Creed,’ is to do violence to the imperative claims of truth. The language of the faithful heart will be, not, * I can accept,’ but, ‘I believe’— the noblest utterance that the enlightened intellect can make. ‘ I believe, not with otiose assent, nor in the spirit of mere compliance, but because I have found it so, and it is true.’ Now to attain such assured, triumphant belief, the thoughts of other men will be very serviceable, especially such thoughts as have been incorporated, with much care and studious inquiry into the will of God, in the Creeds and Confessions of the Church. These therefore should be dili- gently studied, but independently. A man’s true and guiding light will come from what God has taught in the volume of inspiration and in His own voice within the soul. Thirdly. While it is fully admitted that a Christian congregation has a right to know what are the beliefs of its teacher, it may be added that this information can be given in far more effective ways than by the imposition of a formula. The man is more to be trusted who independently declares the truth that is in him through the many THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. channels open to him for communication with his people, than the man who is expected to shape his teaching by the preliminary Creed. In this matter we need self-respecting congregations and self-respecting ministers : — ‘ I believe and there- fore speak ’ : ‘ I speak as unto wise men, judge ye what I say.’ Happy the congregation whose minister sometimes sets them thinking by the presentation of unfamiliar forms of truth ! Happy the minister whose word is not always taken on trust by a too-confiding people ! It is thus that spiritual education will be advanced, and true progress made in the acquisition of a liberal and truly orthodox theology. At the same time there are undoubted limits to divergence. A certain harmony in the great essentials of the Faith is presupposed in the rela- tions between pastor and people. No hard and fast rule can here, I apprehend, be laid down. A mutual understanding from the first will in general prevent all difficulty ; and the practice among us —in our services of ‘ ordination,’ ‘designation,’ or ‘ recognition,’ whatever they may be called — of receiving from the minister a statement of his main beliefs, is both useful and instructive, provided VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 219 only that such statement be made on the ground of personal conviction, and of unfeigned readiness to welcome all further light from the Spirit and Word of God. Fourthly. The ambiguities of language make subscription unsatisfactory, especially when the Creed to be signed descends from another age or a different epoch in the history of thought. The Bible is for all time, not so the Confession. In subscribing the latter, I am binding myself to accept the exposition of men who in many respects did not think as I do, whose outlook upon the world was different, whose psychology and meta- physics belonged to their own age. So the very terms in which they generalised the teaching of Scripture have insensibly changed their signifi- cance. ‘ Such terms ’ — and here I am quoting from Max Muller — ■ as Nature, Law, Freedom, Necessity, Body, Substance, Matter, Church, State, Revelation, Inspiration, Knowledge, Belief, are tossed about in the war of words as if everybody knew what they meant, and as if everybody used them exactly in the same sense. Words without definite meaning are at the bottom of nearly all our philosophical and religious contro- 220 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. versies. But as such words stand in the old formulas, a certain halo of sanctity environs them ; we adopt them as a matter of course, and some- times, when pressed for explanation, are startled to find how little we know of their significance.’ John Foster, writing on the Aversion of Alen of Taste to Evangelical Religion — a truly noble Essay, which I fear the present generation hardly finds time to read — contends very strongly against many of our current theological technicalities, and urges the importance of setting forth religious truths, so far as may be, in ordinary language. Fully admit- ting the value of technical terms when rightly and carefully defined, he points out that in the lapse of time and changes of thought they ‘ may cease to mean what they were once defined to mean. The peculiarwords may remain,’ he adds, ‘when the ideas which they were intended to perpetuate are gone. Thus instead of being the signs of those ideas, they become their monuments, and monuments profaned into abodes for the living enemies of the departed.’ Fifthly. The system of Subscription is beset with temptations to evasion and insincerity. The pitfalls lie at every step. It is so easy for a man to say more than he means, or what he does not VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 221 quite mean, or what he has not yet thoroughly weighed ! He may, in a manner, anticipate his own mental growth, and give his attestation in the hope that increase of knowledge will deepen his present faint convictions. In other sciences foregone conclusions are of little worth ; in Theo- logy only they are demanded as a condition of advance. There have been few more lamentable absurdities, from the Protestant point of view, than the old requirement from all Oxford under- graduates at their matriculation to sign the Thirty - nine Articles. It was absolutely and evidently impossible that these candidates for an academical education could have accepted or even understood the document presented for their adhesion, yet the requirement was long stoutly defended, as essential to the wellbeing of the Church and to the Christian training of its alumni. In fact, it was not abolished until the year 1854 ; and though probably no one would now be found to vindicate such an enactment, the fact that it was once zealously upheld only too plainly shows how far removed the signature to theological Articles was held to be from a sincere, intelligent, and personal acceptance of their contents. 222 THE CHE 1ST I AN CREED LECT. But the main question is not respecting under- graduates, or their now exploded obligations. The difficulty remains, in the case of those who are still required to subscribe as a condition of office in the Church ; and, in the progress of theological science and the changed forms of human thought, it is an ever-recurring problem how far Subscrip- tion to a Creed, a Confession, a series of Articles —whatever it may be — shall be taken to imply the ex aniino acceptance of its several particulars. The Ethics of Subscription, indeed, have been a branch of casuistical science. In the Church of England, when the Subscription remained in the old form, the strain upon intellect and conscience was often very painful. Yet at a very early period we find that the meaning of signature was minimised. Thus, so long ago as 1638, William Chillingworth wrote in his Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation : — For the Church of England, I am persuaded that the constant doctrine of it is so pure and orthodox that whoso- ever believes it and lives according to it, undoubtedly he shall be saved ; and that there is no error in it which may necessitate or warrant any man to disturb the peace or renounce the communion of it. This in my opinion is all (that is) intended by subscription. VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 223 In more explicit terms, and with great force, Archdeacon Paley afterwards put the difficulty of the case ; and his words are just as applicable to the Westminster Confession or any other detailed statement of belief : — - Those who contend (he says) that nothing less can justify subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles than the actual belief of each and every separate proposition con- tained in them, must suppose that the Legislature expected the consent of ten thousand men, and that in perpetual succession, not to one controverted proposition, but to many hundreds. It is difficult to conceive how this could be expected by any who observed the incurable diversity of human opinion upon all subjects short of demonstration . 1 It might perhaps be remarked, by the way, that this is exactly what the Legislature did expect. But let this pass. After Paley’s time we find continued recognition from some of the best and greatest men in the Church of England of the impossibility of literal adherence by any one to the whole scheme of Articles. Thus it was maintained by Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and by the late Dean Vaughan, that what was intended was simply a general assent, with express approval Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy , bk, iii. c. 22, p. 1. 224 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. of the most characteristic points, amounting, in fact, just to this, that to the candidate for the ministry who signs the Articles, ‘ the Church of England is the Church of his choice and affections, that he is able with confidence and comfort to worship in its words, to minister in its offices, and to teach in its spirit.’ By others, again, it has been urged that the signature in a sense merges the individuality of the candidate in what is called the ‘ multitudinism ’ of the Society. Thus a dis- tinguished Scottish Professor, Dr. W. A. Knight of St. Andrews , 1 writes : ‘ It is the expression of the common faith, the belief of the collective Church,’ the manifesto of that Church, in signing which ‘ we proclaim our unity and deep religious affinity with our brethren,’ while we ‘ sign documents which we would fain see altered both for our own and for our brethren’s sake.’ That is, we can conscientiously subscribe to what we may not individually believe, because our brethren believe it, and we wish to associate with them in worship and Church work. It would appear that such association would be more satis- 1 Contemporarv Review , August 1876, Art. ‘ Ethics of Subscription.' See also Appendix, Note 17: Professor Henry Sidgwick on the Ethics of Subscription. VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 225 factory, to say the least, if it could be attained without this preliminary violence done to our con- victions. But all this casuistry is as nothing compared to the plea that was set up in the year 1841 for the interpretation of the Church of England Articles, in what was called a non-natural sense —that is, the very opposite of the sense which its framers intended. The controversies of that time are so interwoven with the history of religious thought, that it is hardly out of place to refer to them now. In the celebrated Oxford Tract No. 90, Dr. Newman, afterwards Cardinal, but then a clergyman of the Church of England, attempted to show how the most Protestant of the Thirty-nine Articles were susceptible of an anti-Protestant interpretation. Thus where it is affirmed in the Eleventh Article, ‘ That we are justified by Faith only is a most wholesome doc- trine,’ ‘ P'aith only’ does not exclude either Baptism or Good Works as a means of justification. So the Article on Purgatory condemns the Romish doctrine of Purgatory, leaving it open to suppose other doctrines of Purgatory which the Article does not condemn ; and in like manner of other Q 226 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. doctrines, the whole being clenched by a really ingenious illustration : — A French Minister, desirous of war, nevertheless as a matter of policy draws up his State papers in such moderate language that his successor, who is for peace, can act up to them without compromising his own principles. The world, observing this, has considered it a circumstance for congratulation ; as if the former Minister, who acted a double part, had been caught in his own snare. It is neither decorous nor necessary, nor altogether fair, to urge the parallel rigidly, but it will explain what it is here meant to convey. The Protestant Confession was drawn up with the purpose of excluding Catholics ; and Catholics now will not be excluded. What was economy in the Reformers is a protection to us. What would have been a perplexity to us then is a perplexity to Protestants now. We could not then have found fault with their words ; they cannot now repudiate our meaning. Such were the last words of the Oxford Tracts . 1 The attempt to extort a Romish meaning from a document avowedly Protestant was a piece of casuistry which carried the doctrine of non-natural interpretation beyond the breaking strain ; and it was no wonder that the author of the Tract soon afterwards found a refuge in the Roman Church. 1 But the Quarterly Review, April 1898, declares that Dr. New- man's main position ‘remains untouched to this day.’ Art. ' Pusey and Wiseman,’ p. 318, VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 227 But, it may be said, if the meaning of the Creed is often doubtful, is it not so with Scripture itself? If we repudiate the Creed because its language is susceptible of diverse interpretation, what are we to do with the Bible ? I answer, that there is just this difference. The words of Scripture have a definite meaning which we are set to discover ; and if our interpretations differ, it is because some of us at least have failed to apprehend what that meaning is. The ambiguity is in our own minds and not in the Oracle. But Creeds and Confessions are often ambiguous in themselves — sometimes unconsciously so, but sometimes of set purpose. It is a convenient device, not unknown to theologians, to agree upon a phrase, avowedly to be understood in different senses by those who adopt it. The word is common to us ; but, as to its meaning, our views may be allowably different. Definition would at once divide us, but meantime the word has an orthodox sound. The evil is, that we cannot rest in words, and that the compromise is bound to end in misunderstanding and confusion. A somewhat different case is that in which a word or phrase is used comprehensively, giving to 228 THE CHRISTIAN CREED I.ECT. those who would unite in it an honest alternative of meaning. The method is not an unfair one, frankly recognising differences of opinion, and so stating the truth which underlies these differences that they shall be no bar to fellowship. That this desirable end cannot be effected without some degree of vagueness, is but an incident of the position. There was a curious instance of such a mode of statement in the Creed of 1843, already quoted as the basis of the Evangelical Alliance. It was at a time when the controversy as to General or Particular Redemption was very keen ; and the object was to include both Calvinists and Arminians within the fold. It was obviously impracticable therefore, in referring to the Death of Christ, to say that it was for all men, or only for the elect ; and the difficulty was ingeniously met by the declaration that the Atonement was ‘ for sinners of mankind.’ Whether for some sinners or for all sinners, the Article left open to question ; and the rival theologians could shake hands over this con- venient ambiguity. The Article is now generally altered into ‘ for the sins of mankind ’ ; but the fact sheds instructive light on the purpose which VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF FAITH 229 double meanings are often made to serve in Theology. Sixthly. The remark has to be made, and I think there will be none to question it, that Sub- scription has not, as a matter of fact, been a safeguard of orthodox belief. To illustrate this remark in detail would be invidious, and I am not here to criticise individual opinions. Only it must be obvious to all that in every section of the pro- fessed Church of Christ there is in these days much warring of opinions on theological subjects, and that these discussions are as rife within the Churches that are governed by Creeds as in those which claim a more unrestricted liberty. Every theologian has his opinion as to what are to be accounted the heresies of the time, and every theologian has to admit that these heresies are to be found within the limits of his own Church. The books, for instance, of boldest divergence from received beliefs, that have from time to time startled the religious world in the present and the past generations, have proceeded from subscribers to the Three Christian Creeds and, in many cases, to the Thirty-nine Articles. We have all heard, again, how an eminent Oxford Professor, the late • 230 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. Dr. Jovvett, being on his appointment charged with heterodoxy, was required to clear himself, not by any statements or disavowals on his own part, but simply by signing the Thirty-nine Articles. Here is the extract from his Biography 1 : — In 1855 Jowett had been appointed Professor of Greek. Two members of Convocation denounced him to the Vice- Chancellor as having denied the Catholic Faith. Accord- ingly, the Professor was summoned to appear before the Vice-Chancellor and to sign the Articles anew. He appeared in answer to the summons, and the Vice-Chancellor Cotton began to address him solemnly on the awfulness of his situation. Jowett cut him short with the words: ‘Mr. Vice-Chancellor, I have come to sign the Articles.’ Dr. Cotton recommenced his harangue. In reply, as tradition has it, Jowett simply asked for a new pen, and wrote his signature without another word. The incident was characteristic all round ; but assuredly no one who had thought the Professor heterodox before would acquit him now for his com- pliance ! Such incidents illustrate the effect of the system in burdening tender consciences. Every thinker, asserting independence, yet conscious of re- striction, could not take the matter so coolly as Dr. Jowett. The comprehensiveness which, according to modern theories, is the note of the Churches, is 1 Life , vol. i. p. 235. VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OP FAITH 231 found difficult to reconcile with the strictness of the demand. It is useless to argue down the sensitiveness of the hesitating by the allegation that the words are obsolete, or may be read in a non-natural sense, and that nobody now takes them literally. The unsophisticated reason, the conscience only desiring to do right in the sight of God, is still perplexed, and the conflict is very real. The sensitive and conscientious are dis- tressed ; it is the easy-going, indifferent Conformist who is undisturbed. Is this, I may ask, a result to be approved ? I am not speaking of one Church alone. I think that there have been anxious moments in the life of more than one Baptist minister, required to accept the provisions of some old chapel Trust-deed ! Our protest does not lead to license. Theoreti- cally, perhaps, this might be apprehended ; but when we come to facts, if any one thing is estab- lished in connection with the present subject, it is that the Evangelical Faith stands firmest and thrives most vigorously in the atmosphere of freedom. There are some very significant words in the Declaration of the Congregational Union : 232 THE CHRIS TIA . V CREED LECT. ‘ They wish it to be observed that, notwithstanding their jealousy of subscription to Creeds and Articles, and their disapproval of the imposition of any human standard, whether of faith or discipline, they are far more agreed in their doctrines and practices than any Church which enjoins subscrip- tion, and enforces a human standard of orthodoxy.’ This is no unwarrantable boast, and the secret of its truth lies here, that, as already noted in the Baptist Declaration, the basis of Church fellowship is in the renewal of the life. This applies to the ministry as well as to those whom men call the laity. Give us godly pastors and teachers, men in living communion with the Source of light, and from all their ministrations true light will shine. Sometimes it appears to be presumed that the ministers of the Church are a headstrong, self- sufficient race, needing to be held in by the bit and bridle of a Creed, or they would break out on the right hand or the left, to the dire confusion of the people of God. The picture is fantastically unreal. I do not say that we or any of the Churches have as yet an ideal ministry ; but I do believe that in every denomination men are ad- vancing towards a larger appreciation of the truth VI SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OR FAITII 233 of God, that their deliverance from human formu- laries is leading them to cast themselves with a profounder trust upon the teaching and help of the Eternal Spirit, that the Bible is becoming a new and grander book, as the exploration of its deepest meanings is unfettered by the traditions of the past, and that the renunciation of human authority brings the spirit ever more and more under the yoke of the Divine. I may be allowed to borrow a noble comparison from the late Dean Stanley : — It was observed of the Oracle of Delphi that during all the ages when the oracle commanded the real reverence of Greece, the place in which it was enshrined needed no walls for its defence. The awful grandeur of its natural situation, the majesty of its Temple, were sufficient. Its fortifications, as useless as they were unseemly, were built only in that disastrous time when the ancient feeling of faith had decayed, and the oracle was forced to rely on the arm of flesh, on its bulwarks of brick and stone, not on its own intrinsic sanctity. May God avert this omen from us ! It is only in these later ages of the Church, and chiefly in the Protestant portions of Christendom, that subscriptions have been piled up to circumscribe our oracle and our sanctuary ! Let us show that we, in these later days, are willing to free ourselves from these unsightly barriers which encumber without defending the Truth which they enclose and hide. 1 1 Letter to tiishop Tait ‘On Subscription,’ 1863. 234 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. VI Yes ; we too often mistake encumbrances for bulwarks still. We do so when our guarantees for orthodoxy are supposed to be these frameworks and structures of men’s device. It is too easy for us to forget — ministers and people alike — that all faithful souls are in contact with the Living Word. And as we turn from the inadequacy of human Creeds to the Master Himself, we hear Him say : ‘ If ye abide in My word, then are ye truly My disciples ; and ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.’ ‘ If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed .’ 1 John viii. 31, 36. LECTURE VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITH : THE CATHOLIC CHURCH OF THE FUTURE The importance of fixed and definite convictions of religious truth, without the imposition of authori- tative dogma, has already been largely considered in these Lectures. Should the positions taken be accepted, some important questions emerge in regard to our fellow-Christians, who like ourselves may be earnest and strong believers, but whose conclusions on many points may differ from our own. How shall we think of them ? And how are such varieties in opinion to affect our Christian fellowship ? In endeavouring to meet these questions, let us first of all note two points : — i. The substitution of agreement in opinion for the bond of charity is a reversal of New Testa- 236 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. ment Church conditions. ‘ By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples,’ said the Master, ‘ if ye have love one to another .’ 1 Against this great declaration, there is absolutely nothing to be set, affirming doctrinal agreement to be the basis of Church life. ‘ Whereunto we have already attained, by that same rule let us walk .’ 2 There is then a unity in which persons of very different degrees in Christian attainment, and so, I may add, of diverse judgment in many things, may still be joined together. No doubt it is a good and pleasant thing that brethren should be one in their thoughts and judgments concerning things divine. But perhaps it is better still, when those who differ can nevertheless walk together in unity of heart, each appreciating the other’s position, and able to understand how opposing views may con- sist with sincerity of purpose, honesty of thought, and holiness of life. Brethren who thus think one of another are more likely in the end to be led to agreement in belief also, than those who begin by mutual excommunication. God’s way for His people to unity of thought is through union of heart. They, however, have too often chosen the 1 John xiii. 35. 2 Phil. iii. 16. VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITH 237 reverse method, and have found it very futile. It is always a mournful thing to find ourselves compelled by force of logic to cast out of our communion those whom we must nevertheless acknowledge, in the essentials of the Christlike character, as even better than ourselves. Yet this is what a rigid adherence to Creed as the basis of fellowship has more than once necessitated, in the annals of the modern Church. It is where Charity thus predominates that the earnest attachment to our own views of truth will be found compatible with the toleration of different views in others. For then, however ardent and assured our beliefs, Charity must be still the stronger. Nay, if supreme among the forces of our spiritual nature, it will render this word toleration inadequate to express our attitude towards the beliefs of our brethren. For toleration implies some kind of superiority. We tolerate in pity ; we tolerate inferiors. Acts of Toleration belong to the time when civil rulers claimed authority over faith : only in their clemency they permitted opposing opinions. ‘ The claim to tolerate,’ it has been said, ‘ implies the right to persecute.’ And as in the State the very word is now surrendered 238 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. through the acknowledgment of religious equality, so in the Church it may well be replaced by the recognition of Christian brotherhood. 2. Again, there are many subjects on which the Christian thinker, and especially the Christian teacher, will have definitely made up his mind, yet on which he dares not predicate an absolute cer- tainty, and therefore may not require assent from others as a condition of fellowship. His assurance is subjective. ‘ I believe,’ he will say, with the fervour of full conviction, ‘ that I am right ; but if my brother has come to a different conclusion, much as I may be surprised at the fact, greatly as I may deplore it, I still give him credit for intelligence and honesty equal to my own, and hold communion with him as a brother in Christ.’ Thus, it may be, I am a Calvinist, a Congrega- tionalist, a Baptist ; and while I am convinced that these beliefs are sound, I fully acknowledge the right of my brother to differ, and can fully respect those who are as positive in contradicting as I am in maintaining them. Such attitude of mind may sometimes, no doubt, arise from religious indifference, when men do not care enough about their convictions to VII CERTAINTIES OE FAITH 239 make them a reason for separating from those who hold opposing views. It is maintained by some that all tolerance is of this kind. ‘ If I believe strongly,’ it is said, ‘ if I am assured that I am in the right, I must be equally assured that the opposite opinion must be wrong : how then can I consort on equal terms with those who, in my sincere judgment, are in error? Is it not my duty to set the Truth before them, and to stand aloof from them ecclesiastically, until they have received it ? ’ So some excellent people argue ; and in fact their very excellence seems to render them the more intolerant, infusing into their character an element of earnestness which makes contradiction of their views to appear a sin against the God of truth, and which, when power and opportunity are given, renders them perse- cutors. The fallacy is, that such persons mistake their certainty of conviction for infallibility . Probably they would in words disclaim this ; and yet it is impossible to read the arguments of many theo- logians, or to note the procedure of some Christian societies, without concluding that those who thus write and act do implicitly assume themselves to 240 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. be infallible . 1 The very tone in which they use the phrase ‘ the Truth ’ of their own religious views, and attribute ‘ soundness ’ or the reverse to their brethren accordingly, implies this assump- tion. In fact, it requires at once a large intelli- gence and a comprehensive charity to be able to say with entire honesty and at one and the same time : ‘ I firmly believe that I am in the right,’ and ‘ I fully admit that I may be in the wrong.’ ‘Cannot a man,’ says Archbishop Bramhall, ‘be- lieve or hold his own religion to be true, but he must necessarily say, or censure another man’s (which he conceiveth to be opposite) to be false ? Truth and Falsehood are contradictory, or of eternal disjunction ; but there is a medium be- 1 Bishop Marsh, in his Lectures on Criticism and Interpretation, has some acute remarks on the difference between does not err and cannot err. ‘ These terms, insignificant as they may appear, denote nothing less than two distinct principles of action ; and principles so distinct, that the one leads to charity and toleration, the other to in- tolerance and persecution. On the former principle, which is main- tained by the Church of England, though we believe we are right, we admit that we are possibly wrong ; though we believe that others are wrong, we admit that they are possibly right ; and hence we are dis- posed to tolerate their opinions. But on the latter principle, which is maintained by the Church of Rome, the very possibility of being right is denied to those who dissent from its doctrines. Now, as soon as men have persuaded themselves that in points of doctrine they cannot err, they will think it an imperious duty to prevent the growth of all other opinions on a subject so important as religion.' — P. 319 (ed. 1828). VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITH 24 tween believing or holding my own religion to be true, and saying or censuring another man’s (which perhaps is opposite) to be false — both more pru- dential and more charitable — that is, silence ; to work circumspectly myself, and have other men to stand or fall to their own Master .’ 1 That was sound advice which Oliver Cromwell addressed to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland : ‘ I am persuaded that divers of you, who lead the people, have laboured to build yourselves in these things, wherein you have censured others and established yourselves (as you profess) “ upon the Word of God.” Is it therefore infallibly agree- able to the Word of God, all that you say? I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken .’ 2 The assumption of infallibility is more insidious than we may think. We protest against it from Rome ; we need to be on our guard in other directions. Beware of the controversialist who is in the habit of saying, ‘ I wonder how any one can honestly read his Bible and not believe— as I do. At the same time, remembering that there may 1 Schism Guarded , p. 397. See further in Hampden’s Hampton Lectures, introd. p. lxxxvii. (ed. 1848). 2 Letter, 3rd August 1650, as given by Carlyle. R 242 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. be decided conviction without any such claim, beware with equal sensitiveness of the man who would persuade you that what you firmly believe cannot be of much consequence, because others as wise as yourself believe the opposite. It is always of consequence to be in the right, in the smaller as well as in the greater matters of faith ; and eventual unity will be attained, not by the com- promises of the half- informed or the half- con- vinced, but by the gradual accord of minds so much in earnest that their passion for truth has led them to review their most pronounced diver- sities of opinion in the very light of God. Bearing in mind, then, these two considera- tions, the supreme law of charity and our own liability to error, we may proceed to estimate the grounds of Christian certainty. And we note three main points : 1. There are some things in the Christian Creed which are absolutely sure to the believer. That is, if Christianity is to be accepted at all as a revelation from God, these things must be true. 2. There are other beliefs on which most Christian thinkers will have made up their minds VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITH 243 one way or the other, with varying degrees of definiteness and decision, often differing among themselves. 3. There are still other subjects, on which thought and speculation may be exercised, but on which it would be rash to express a decided opinion, because they lie outside the boundary both of human knowledge and Divine revelation. With regard to the first-mentioned range of topics, we may ask, What are the certainties of faith ? This question, to answer it with any fulness, would demand a theological treatise to itself. We are concerned only now to mark that to all of us who accept Christianity there are such certainties, assured by repeated and definite declarations of Holy Scripture, accepted by the general Christian consciousness, and attested by their influence upon our own souls. These connect themselves with the great threefold revelation, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is to say, the Christian is one who owns the Fatherhood of God, the Redemption which is by Christ Jesus, and the communication of light and life by the Eternal Spirit. How these 244 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. thoughts are to be translated into dogma is not now the question. They are the powers of the new life ; without them there is no Christianity. And the believer is one who has found them to be true. He receives them on the warrant of faith ; but they have also passed into his consciousness and experience. He is sure of them ; he has a right to be sure. No doubt, the testimony of con- sciousness and experience will be variously read by different minds. The certainty belongs not to the mode of apprehension, but to the fact itself ; and the glad utterance of the soul will be, I know. Read some of the early testimonies with which all this accords. Such is the keynote of the General Epistle of the beloved John: ‘We know,’ ‘ye know.’ The very phrase occurs sixteen times in that short Letter, and expresses in every variety of form the disciple’s assurance with regard to the central verity. We know the Father, the Son, the Spirit. This knowledge is our life : ‘We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ.’ Or look again at the description of the Christian certainty in the grand words of Paul : VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITH 245 ‘ All riches of the full assurance of the under- standing to the perfect knowledge {hrvjvvxni) of the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.’ So — triumphant in assurance to the end — we hear the Apostle say, ‘ I know Him whom I have believed .’ 1 There are, as most of you know, three main words by which knowledge is described in the New Testament — the knowledge which comes from without, knowledge as insight, knowledge comprehensive and complete — and in the passages quoted all three of these words are found ; so full, intense, profound, is the certainty of Faith ! We may note two main criteria by which this certainty is confirmed. One is personal, and may be applied by every one who is conscious of reconciliation with God. The truth, whatever it is, must be in accord with that which is deepest in the spiritual life — with true repentance, with faith that leads to holy living, with love to God and to mankind. These things are great experiences, Divine certainties ; and the presumption is that the beliefs which are in har- mony with them, which minister to them, apart 1 1 John v. 20 ; Col. ii. 3 ; 2 Tim. i. 12. 246 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. from which they could not exist, are certainties too. Apply this test in the reverse way (if the supposition be not too violent) to the special doc- trines of the faith. Conceive it possible for some devout and earnest soul to say, ‘ It is when most consciously in communion with God that I think least of what Christians call the Triune mystery ; and when I most ardently aspire after the Divine life, that my thoughts of Christ are lowest. In the hours when the burden of sin presses most heavily on my spirit, and I most keenly feel the need of an Omnipotent Deliverer, I am most tempted to deny the necessity of a Divine Sac- rifice ; and in proportion to the earnestness with which I strive after a pure and unselfish life, is my impulse to call in question the doctrines of regeneration and sanctifying grace. In a word, my better moments, my moments of purest emo- tion and loftiest aspiration, lead me to rationalism ; and the approach of narrowing sympathies and hardening secularity is the signal of my return to an Evangelical belief.’ Supposing, I say, a con- fession like this to be made by a good and honest man, we might be tempted to reconsider the grounds of our faith. But the very supposition VI CERTAINTIES OE FAITH 247 is wildly impossible ; and the doctrines which, on the contrary, show themselves connected with the profoundest realities of the spiritual life, have upon them the authentic and ineffaceable stamp of the Divine. The second point is, that in the Truth, wher- ever it may lie, there must be a Gospel to mankind. That men need a Gospel of some kind may be taken for granted, not merely as a religious commonplace, but as the inevitable conviction of every student of humanity. For the conscience- stricken, the depraved, the miserable, the labour- ing and heavy-laden all the world over, is there deliverance, enlightenment, and rest ? If so, where is the teaching, what the message, that shall convey the priceless blessing? You know how such questions have again and again been asked ; and how the answer is but one — that answer every- where ; or else silence and despair ! The revela- tion of God in Christ, which is the centre of the Christian Creed, is also the world’s only hope : and this also enstamps upon that Creed the char- acter of Truth. The certainties, then, are in those truths that prove themselves inseparable from the culture of 248 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. the personal religious life, and from the uplifting and regeneration of mankind at large. The acceptance of these truths, and a life in accord with them, is the mark of the Universal Church. Those further convictions and beliefs to which I referred in the second place, include all those varieties of religious opinion which are held in connection with these central truths, as their development, interpretation, application. Here Christian thinkers often gravely differ. Such beliefs are sometimes termed the ‘ nonessentials ’ of the Faith — a term, however, which it seems on many accounts undesirable to employ. There is a certain faithlessness to Truth in the very thought of such a distinction. The great questions of faith cannot bear to be put in duplicate form : What must I believe ? and What may I believe ? A man who desires to learn the whole counsel of God must be prepared to stand faithfully by all his convictions, on matters great and small, although indeed he may hold them with different degrees of assurance. To discriminate these several convictions, to ask which of them are fundamental, not to be denied without renouncing VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITII 249 the Christian faith altogether and so rendering Christian fellowship impossible, is no doubt a delicate and difficult task — the more so, as we remember that the essentials of that fellowship are laid down in the New Testament as rather of the heart than of the head. Where there is true repentance, self-renunciation, trust in Christ as Saviour, love to God and man, there is essential Christianity. Let it be remembered, too, that these may be expressed in different ways and forms of speech. A man’s professions do not always convey his real faith. Bacon, in his Essay of Unity in Religion , has put this thought very strikingly. ‘ A man,’ he says, 1 that is of judgment and under- standing, shall sometimes hear ignorant men differ, and know well within himself that those which so differ mean one thing, and yet they themselves could never agree : and if it so come to pass in that distance of judgment that is between man and man, shall we not think that God above, that knows the heart, doth not discern that frail men, in some of their contradictions, intend the same thing, and accepteth of both ? ’ 1 1 Essay III. 250 THE CHRISTIAN CREED I.ECT. Very pleasant is it to think of this true har- mony of souls underlying all such contradictions of speech, and to recognise the essentials of faith and love where the apprehension of vital truth seems most imperfect. Sometimes, at least, you find the Christian life, in the apparent absence or even denial of the Christian doctrine. The traveller in tropical deserts will here and there come upon a palm-tree, in its verdure and beauty, rooted as it seems upon the arid sand. Strange phenomenon ! But he knows the secret. Beneath the sands the roots are fed by a living stream of water that never rises into light, but spends itself upon the life and beauty of that solitary tree. Just so will the Spirit of God, always wonderful in working, silently communicate His own life and power to souls that to us seem rooted in a barren theology, quite outside the fair enclosed gardens of our most orthodox creeds. Certain truths there are, whether explicitly professed or implicitly received, both certain and fundamental. Perhaps the time has not yet come, in the history of the Church, for defining these truths, or for apprehending to its full extent the distinction between the Divine facts and the forms VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITH 251 of thought under which these facts are appre- hended. For the distinction undoubtedly exists. Take, by way of illustration, such cardinal truths of the Gospel as are expressed by the words Incarnatio7i, Redemption, Revelation , Immortality. Now Incarnation is a fact : the union of the human with the divine. Apart from this there is no Christianity. ‘ God is in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself.’ But when we would analyse and understand this truth, making it an object, not of blind but of intelligent belief, we are led to form theories regarding it, theories of the method of that mysterious union, theories of kenosis, and what not, which more or less approximate to the sublime and mysterious reality, but which belong to our metaphysics rather than to our faith, and which perhaps will never be fully apprehended until we can begin by understanding the mystery of the union of body, soul, and spirit in ourselves. I speak, it will be observed, of Theory and Fact as separate and distinct. But the truth which undoubtedly exists in such a distinction may be pressed too far. How common is it, for instance, for a liberal thinker to say, ‘ I accept the fact without the theory : my religion is a religion 252 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. of facts, let theologians reason and speculate about them as they will. I believe in the Deity and the Humanity of Christ ; but how the two are united I do not seek to know ; — I believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures ; but as to the method of it, I have no explanation to give.’ And so of many other great subjects. Now this view is plausible : it expresses at least a half-truth, im- portant to remember. But before accepting it wholly, let us define what we mean by a fact. It is not simply an historical occurre?icc. That Jesus of Nazareth ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried ’ are such facts, attested by historical methods and so believed. But go a step further. ‘ He ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God.’ Here also, in a sense, are historical occurrences ; our warrant for them, however, is no longer the ordinary his- torical evidence, but the declarations of inspired men. These we accept and still believe. But further still, ‘ He maketh intercession for us ’ ; * He shall come again to judge the living and the dead.’ Facts once more, but now belonging to the spiritual realm, and involving truths , which are nothing to us unless we go beyond their bare VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITH 253 announcement, and apprehend in some measure what they mean. Now, taking fact in the larger significance, not only of occurrences cognisable by the senses, but of spiritual realities, it will appear that in the very fact there is an element of doctrine. You cannot even state it without implying some kind of theory, however partial. Thus, that Christ ‘ died to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself,’ is a spiritual fact ; but that this may be intelligible to yourself, or that you may make it intelligible to others, the phrases 1 putting away sin,’ and ‘ sacrifice ’ must convey some sort of meaning to the mind. To say therefore, ‘ I believe in the Atonement as a fact, but have no theory respecting it,’ is a somewhat illusive assertion. It must mean more than the belief that Jesus Christ was put to death on a cross at the place called Calvary ; but when once you go beyond this and inquire into the reason of that death, some kind of theory will inevitably come in. The proper distinction, then, is not between fact and theory in themselves, but between a general conception and a full analysis, between the revealed explanation and the human development. Enough is known for trust and salvation, ‘ the rest 254 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. remaineth unrevealed.’ Bishop Butler wisely says, in a familiar passage : ‘ How and in what par- ticular way the sacrifice of Christ had its efficacy, there are not wanting persons who have endeav- oured to explain ; but I do not find that the Scripture has explained it. We seem to be very much in the dark concerning the manner in which the ancients understood atonement to be made, i.c. pardon to be obtained by sacrificing. And if the Scripture, as surely it has, left this matter of the sacrifice of Christ, left somewhat in it unrevealed, all conjec- tures about it must be, if not evidently absurd, yet at least uncertain .’ 1 True ; yet, as we have seen, we can hardly fix our thought upon this great act of love without forming some kind of theory, consciously or implicitly, respecting it. That theory in a manner will condition our trust, although the trust itself may exist independently of it. Thus, the Fathers trusted in Christ, while they taught with Gregory of Nyssa, and many more, that He paid upon the Cross a ransom-price to Satan to rescue them from his power. So did Anselm, who swept that theory away, maintaining that the ransom was paid to God in satisfaction 1 Analogy, part ii. ch. v. (§ 18, Gladstone’s Ed.). VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITH 255 of His righteous claim upon mankind. So did the Reformers, with their notion of substitutionary punishment for the sins of the elect. So do the moderns, like M‘Leod Campbell and Dr. Dale, with their various theories of moral equivalent and vicarious self-offering to God. So did the Romanist Faber, who gives a voice to the simplicity of trust : — I cannot understand the woe, Which Thou wast pleased to bear, O Lamb of God ! I only know That all my hopes are there. Take again the question of Revelation. What God Himself has made known in the teachings of Scripture is a fact ; but when we endeavour to reduce it within the forms of the understanding, theory begins. Shall we say that the Scriptures are themselves the Word of God, or, as some prefer to put it, the Words of God, or that they contain His Word? Shall we profess our belief in the direct communication to inspired men of language as well as of thought, and even maintain with some of the Reformation divines , 1 that as the Massoretic vowel - points in the Old Testament 1 As in the Helvetic Formula of Consent (1675). See above, Lect. III. p. hi, note. 256 THE CHRISTIAN CREED I.ECT. often determine the sense, these also were com- municated from heaven ? Or shall we be content with the declaration of the Augsburg Confession and the Sixth Article of the Church of England, that ‘ Holy Scripture containeth all things neces- sary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an Article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation?’ And again of Immor- tality. This also is an unquestioned part of the Christian Creed, a certainty to every one who holds the Christian Faith. But is immortality natural and universal, the heritage of all mankind, or the gift of Christ to those only who are in Him ? Is there a separate state — body and soul being severed by death until the end of the world ? or is the earthly house of this tabernacle, so soon as it is dissolved, clothed at once with the spiritual body ? Then, again, do the benefits of Christ’s redemption extend in any way to the world beyond the grave, so that there may be possible forgive- ness after death ? All these are questions which Christian thinkers are asking in our time ; and the answers to them are theories, opinions, beliefs, VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITH 257 more or less uncertain, grafted upon the great certainty of the Immortal Life. A similar train of remark might be pursued with regard to many other points of Christian doctrine. But three general remarks may here suffice in relation to all such questions of theology — to the interpretations, applications, develop- ments, of the great central truths. The first is, that it is important to seek distinct convictions respecting them. They belong to the revelation of God, and are not to be treated as indifferent. The fact that men have differently conceived of these truths does not invalidate them in themselves. Our own Christian life will be largely affected by our conceptions of them, and, as we have seen, we may be firmly convinced respecting them without being either dogmatic or exclusive. But to be thus firmly convinced, to know what we believe and why, is needful for the perfect man in Christ Jesus. A second point is, that such beliefs will be held with very varying strength of conviction and sense of their relative value to the religious life. Certain of these beliefs will appear of more import- ance than others ; and this comparative estimate, S 258 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. again, will vary in different minds. Thus it was said by Professor Duncan of Edinburgh (called Rabbi Duncan for his Hebrew lore), ‘ I am first a Christian, next a Catholic, then a Calvinist, fourth a Pasdobaptist, and fifth a Presbyterian. I cannot reverse this order .’ 1 It would be interesting in like manner to have a similar testimony from other theologians, of different schools of thought, as to the order of their convictions. Such a state- ment would perhaps be of as much value as their declarations of the beliefs themselves. It is not only what we hold, but how we hold it, and in what relation to other opinions, that indicates and determines our theology. The third remark is, that upon some of these questions Christian people are manifestly coming nearer to one another. It would be but a poor prospect for the Church if these secondary doctrines of the Faith were to continue to the end the subject of endless debate and division. So long, however, as men are simply controversialists, it will probably remain so. They feel called to be champions of their respective creeds ; there is the ever-present temptation to fight for victory rather 1 Colloquia Pcripatctica, p. 8. VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITH 2 59 than for truth ; and even the vanquished in the wordy strife often love their cause all the more for the defeat — Victrix causa Diis placuit sed victa Catoni. But let the respective parties exchange their belli- cose attitude for that of fellow - students of the Word and will of God, and approximation becomes possible. I think that there are already subjects on which controversy has almost ceased in mutual reconciliation. The universal Fatherhood of God is no longer hotly opposed as in days that some of us have known. The largest and freest offer of the Gospel is not now among us regarded as disloyal to the Divine Sovereignty. So with many another once disputed topic. But the most significant fact of all, perhaps, is that the olden style of controversy has altogether changed. It is within my own memory that scarcely any one was supposed to do justice to his cause who did not charge his opponents with either ignorance or wickedness. They were ‘ wilfully blind,’ ‘ despisers of the testimony of God.’ Now, they are but brethren mistaken, and future agreement becomes at least a possibility. 26 o THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. But now we have, in the third place, to take into account many other religious opinions and speculations, in which devout and inquiring minds will indulge, but on which full satisfaction is im- possible. Such questions, which have greatly troubled the Churches in the past, are happily almost by common consent now laid aside. Or if any of us have attempted to solve them, we, like other men, have found them fathomless. Coleridge has somewhere said that the mind rests as calmly before a difficulty once seen to be insoluble as before the most certain of admitted truths. In mediaeval times Christian students were much exer- cised on the subject of Angelology. It seemed as if the secrets of the spiritual world could be better understood if it could only be decided what angels were like, what were their special endowments and character, their employments and their powers. Then, the doctrine of evil angels was so closely connected with the subject of witchcraft, which for centuries exerted such real and terrible influence over the minds of men, that the man was reckoned a benefactor to theology who could best expound the laws supposed to govern these superior, or in- ferior, intelligences. All this has vanished now ; we VII CERTAINTIES OF FAITH 261 can hardly imagine how such questions could ever have been a topic of serious thought. Yet there are other matters of opinion, hardly yet remitted to the region of the unknowable, the discussion of which appears almost as hopeless. Some of these belong also to the invisible world ; others again to the metaphysics of practical theology ; as if there could be no satisfactory acceptance of the Gospel message, or proclamation of it to others, until we could decide how the infinite and finite will can co-exist, how faith can be man’s duty while it is God’s gift, whether inability is natural or moral or both, and how far responsibility exists in spite of it. Such problems agitated many very devout minds in the past generation : perhaps they have now gone the way of that which once troubled the inquirer who came to Christ with the question, ‘ Lord, are there few that be saved ? ’ and to whom the Master simply answered, in a way which may be the model for our own dealing with many a speculative difficulty — ‘ Strive ye to enter by the narrow door .’ 1 True philosophy and sincere devoutness alike turn from the unknowable to that which may be known. 1 Luke xiii. 24. 262 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. There is such a thing, then, as a wise Christian agnosticism. Humility will confess, ‘ I do not know ’ ; it may seem presumption to add, ‘ And no man can know.’ Yet this must sometimes be asserted by all who understand the limitations of human powers. Be sure that not a few questions which perplex us now will one day be acknow- ledged to belong to the realm of darkness. For around the central convictions which are a man’s deepest Faith, and the further beliefs that consti- tute his cherished Opinions, there extends on every side a nebulous region, so to speak — a sphere of mystery, bounded over its whole circum- ference by the clouds and darkness that are round about the Throne of God. By thought and study we may gradually extend the boundaries of clear conviction and settled faith, winning new conquests from the realm of uncertainty, and turning cloud- land into light. But there is a limit in every direction to the possibilities of our acquirement ; and to our present faculties much will remain dimly mysterious or altogether dark. Only at the centre let there be light ! ‘ God is in Christ recon- ciling the world unto Himself.’ There, I repeat, is the central verity, which with its kindred truths VII CATHOLIC CHURCII OF THE FUTURE 263 and far-reaching consequences — as yet by us how dimly seen !— will one day fill the whole sphere with its glory. * First a Christian,’ said Rabbi Duncan, ‘ then a Catholic.’ So far this is unquestionably the Divine order — a universal truth, therefore a uni- versal fellowship. For every ground of separation becomes as nothing in comparison with this great uniting reality. Yet it is to be feared that we have somewhat lost the idea of the Catholic Church, in fact that we are content to let it go. We are so justly impatient of the spiritual arrogance that limits the fellowship of Christians to a single com- munity, separated from the rest of mankind by a visible line of demarcation, a boundary which includes multitudes of the unspiritual and equally excludes a multitude of the spiritual, that we have been ready to ask whether Universality be a note of the Church on earth at all. There is, we know, a Church invisible, the company of all the people of God on earth and in heaven ; but is it possible, in the present state of things, to make this sublime unity manifest? Surely it ought to be possible. ‘ That they all may be one,’ the Master prayed, 264 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. ‘ that the world may believe.’ A spiritual, invisible unity is no complete answer to this prayer. For the world cannot be convinced by what it does not see. Nay, according to its own judgment, it sees very much the contrary. Thus, I open a work on the Thirty-nine Articles by the late Dr. Jelf, and read this sentence : ‘ The Quakers, never having been baptized, and denying the very notion of baptism, are not Christians at all, and in fact are gross Socinians .’ 1 Now, I ask, what must the ordinary unbiassed reader, conversant with the history of the Society of Friends, think of a state- ment like this ? Their piety, zeal, self-denial, charity, their devotion to God, and their labours for mankind, are all to go for nothing ! They are ‘ not Christians at all ’ because they have not been baptized ! One is almost tempted to say, that if this were the spirit of Christianity, no external evidence could ever prove it to be from God. Yet similar dicta are not infrequent in controversial works. Sometimes, again, the assertion is made, not of individuals but of Churches. The persons themselves, it is conceded, may be Christians, but their association is not a Christian Church. I 1 On the Thirty-nine Articles, p. 236. VI CATHOLIC CHURCH OF THE FUTURE 265 have noticed on more than one recent occasion when Churchmen have fraternised with Noncon- formists in a most cordial and delightful way, with mutual interchange of Christian greetings and good wishes, all evidently sincere, how carefully the word Church is avoided by the former in all references to our fellowship. We have Societies and Communities ; we are Denominations and Bodies, but never Churches. In some way or other we are given to understand that we are still without the pale ; and all discussions respecting ultimate unity hinge upon this — how are the wanderers (not to use the offensive terms heretics and schismatics) to be gathered into our system ? ‘ There is one Body,’ said an Apostle, ‘ and one Spirit.’ The one Spirit may be conceded, though doubtfully ; one Body there certainly is not, if the Body means that which is apparent ; and the Christian thinker is fain to be content with the thought that, although Sectarianism is unavoidable on earth, there will be no sect in heaven . 1 This state of things cannot last for ever. But how is it to be remedied ? Not, I would venture 1 See Appendix, Note 18 : Discussion on the Catholicity of Orthodox Nonconformists. 266 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LF.CT. to reply, by attempts at reorganisation. No new framework will restore the broken unity ; the im- pulse to the larger and deeper fellowship must come from within. Many well-meaning endeavours have been witnessed in our time to break loose from denominationalism, and societies have been gathered of believers who profess to renounce all sect and system in the hope of securing a purer communion ; but such endeavours seem always to end in one way — in a more rigid and hopeless exclusiveness than that of the denominations themselves. Yet the ideal remains, although its realisation must be sought in another way. Not by separation for the sake of union, not by new efforts at constitution-making, but by cultivating a true spirit of union within our several Churches, will the consummation for which we long be gradually but surely attained. To break up our Church-systems, imperfect though they all may be, would result not in union but in chaos. ‘ It is good for the present distress ’ — and here I apply an apostolic principle, although in a different way — ‘ to abide in that wherein we were called .’ 1 But meanwhile, so far as in us lies, let us endeavour 1 See i Cor. vii. 20, 26. VII CATHOLIC CHURCH OF THE FUTURE 267 to assimilate our own little communities to the great ideal. We arc often told, quite correctly, that the Church, in New Testament language, and a Church, or Churches denote two different conceptions. The Church is universal, invisible ; a Church is the individual society. Most true ; but is it im- possible to go one step farther, and to hold that a Church faithful to its highest calling, should correspond, so far as earthly imperfection will permit, with the idea of the Church universal ? It should be a microcosm, a model on minute scale of the great reality. In its scattered units it should fulfil the old physiological dream that in every separate atom of the plant there lay the archetype of the perfect flower. Not yet can this be brought to pass. For one thing, the different forms of Church organisation and government would stand in the way of Catholic fellowship. The doctrinal Trust-deeds, prepared in all simplicity by our fathers, would be a very practical difficulty. Richard Baxter ex- pressed a natural longing when he said of the Westminster Assembly : ‘ I wish that they had hit upon the right way, either to unite with the 268 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. Episcopalians and Independents, or at least had pitched on the terms that are fit for universal concord, and leave all to come in upon those terms that would .’ 1 But the opportunity was lost, never to recur from that time to this. Yet there may at least be a beginning. Let each individual Christian Society, whatever its denom- inational connection, adopt as the principle of its membership the rule, ‘ Christians all, Christians only,’ knowingly accepting none whom Christ ex- cludes, and knowingly excluding none whom Christ receives, exacting no subscription to human creeds, and, in the phrase of Robert Hall, making no terms of Communion which are not terms of Salvation ; and already there will be individual, faint, but true reflections of that sublime reality, the Communion of Saints. I should be false to my own convictions if I did not add that this result seems to me likely to be best attained on the Congregational model, according to what such writers as Bishop Lightfoot and Dr. Edwin Hatch have shown to be the Church constitution of the New Testament. And as to our own — the Baptist branch of Congregationalism — I will only 1 Baxter's Life and Times (Sylvester, 1696), p. 73. VII CATHOLIC CHURCH OF THE FUTURE 269 say that we seem to have this advantage, that our ecclesiastical system is conditioned from the first by a personal act. There is thus a distinct recog- nition of individual responsibility, the logical out- come of which is, as it appears to me, that we are bound so to respect individual conviction as to be ready to welcome all who make credible confession of their faith in Christ, and of their honest desire to obey His will. Into these points I enter, simply because we may hence gather some hint or suggestion of what the Church of the future may be. Christian congregations gathered according to such a model — and really I care but little what the outward organisation may be, so that this essential were secured — might at first be weak, small, far- scattered ; but the mutual recognition would be sure to come. Each Bethel of ours would in its free communion image the Church universal, and Churches, of whatever different denomination, would be so like one another in this main feature of their constitution, that the inward attraction would become mightier than any external bonds of union. The scattered points of light would grow into one glorious splendour : the Churches, first 270 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. owning in their deepest consciousness, would then make manifest to the world, that they together formed the One Church of the living Christ. The little Bethels would expand into the New Jerusa- lem, the Holy City coming down from heaven to earth. We live by ideals. In our personal character and work, it is not what we are or can do at present which determines our true character, so much as the aspiration and resolution that are within us — the discernment of distant possibilities, the striving after an unattained result. So is it with the Church of Christ. Only let us lay hold upon the conviction, unquestioning and profound, that the manifestation of the Unity of all believers is part of the Church’s high vocation ; and, far enough as we are from this ideal at present, we shall be striving towards it with a constancy of earnestness and aim, which, if only shared by all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, will make all ecclesiastical systems and separations of Creed give way before the mighty impulse. This Church in its ideal is set before us by the seer of Patmos : 4 having the glory of God, and VII CATHOLIC CHURCH OF THE FUTURE 271 the Lamb in the midst thereof.’ Do not, I beseech you, banish the sphere of that glorious prophecy to the world beyond the stars, as mourn- ful, mediaeval hymnists have done. The City of God is already among us, though invisibly, in the accord of all faithful souls. Ages may roll on, for aught I know, before its true proportions shall be seen, and the nations walk in the light of it. That light will be revealed, and the world will know that God hath sent His Son, when His Church shall be able to show itself as it is — standing foursquare, in symmetry and strength ; while its ever-open gates, fronting all directions, offer an equal welcome to travellers from every field of thought. The inhabitants of the City, grown wiser then, will have ceased to bar any of those open gates by human Creeds ; and the consummated unity of the Church will be the salvation of the world. What shall we say to these things ? ‘ I awoke and, lo, it was a dream’? No, for the vision is divine ; showing us, as we gaze on it with strain- ing eyes and strive to understand all the glory that it means, what we in this our generation may 272 THE CHRISTIAN CREED LECT. VII attempt. Let us but stand fast by the conviction that Christ’s Church is One ; let us individ- ually repudiate all systems and schemes that would conceal or impair that unity, assured that they cannot be according to the mind of Christ ; and we shall have contributed something towards the manifestation of the One Catholic Church. Every true disciple carries the secret of Catholicity within himself. To believe strongly, to hope exultingly, are the gifts of heaven ; but there is a gift beyond in which the promise of perfection lies : ‘ For now abideth Faith, Hope, Charity ; but the greatest of these is Charity.’ APPENDIX Note I. (Lecture I. p. 3) The Influence of Words on our Conceptions of Faith Archdeacon Julius Hare, in his Victory of Faith , has some valuable remarks on the influence of words over our conceptions of Faith. ‘The poverty,’ he says, ‘and want of formative power in our language, in which there is no verb manifestly belonging to the same family with Faith , by leading us to have recourse to the verb believe , which, in its ordinary acceptation, expresses an act almost purely intellectual, has helped to foster the erroneous notion that in Faith also the intellectual act is all in all. The verb believe , being far more widely spread and connected in our language, has drawn away its corresponding substantive Faith from its more appropriate meaning. So likewise in the Latin verb credo , which tended much to determine the signification of fides , the notion of the intellectual act is more prominent than in the Greek 7ricrTeiiaj. Hence it was with the fullest right that Luther and Melanchthon, when the true idea of Faith and of its power was reasserted at the Reformation, were anxious to urge again and again that faith is trust, that faith signifies trust : “fides est fiducia ” ; “fides significat fiduciam.” ’ — Sermon i. pp. 20, 21, T 274 THE CHRISTIAN CREED NOTE Note II. (Lecture II. p. 44) Latin Text of the Apostle s’ Creed The authentic text of the Creed is as follows : — Credo in Deum Patrem Omnipotentem ; Creatorem coeli et terras. Et in Jesum Christum, Filium ejus unicum, Dominum nostrum ; qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria virgine ; passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus ; descendit ad inferna ; tertia die resurrexit a mortuis ; ascendit ad ccelos ; sedit ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis ; inde venturus (est) judicare vivos et mortuos. Credo in Spiritual Sanctum ; sanctam ecclesiam catho- licam ; sanctorum communionem ; remissionem peccatorum ; carnis resurrectionem ; vitam aeternam. Amen. Note III. (Lecture II. p. 46) Tradition of the foint Authorship of the Creed The tradition was thrown into a form to aid the memory in some rude hexameter verses, dating probably from the twelfth century : — Articula fidei sunt bis sex corde tenendi, Quos Christi socii docuerunt pneumate pleni : Credo Deum Patrem, Petrus inquit, cuncta creantem ; Andraas dixit, Ego credo Jesum fore Christum ; Conceptum, natum , Jacobus ; passumque, Joannes ; Inferna, Philipus, fugit ; Tho masque, revixit ; Scandit, Bartholomoeus ; veniet censere, Matthaus ; I’neuma, Minor Jacobus ; Simon, peccata remittit ; Restituit, Judas, camera ; vitamque, Matthias .' 1 From a Latin poem, Floretus, printed in the Works of St. Bernard. See Migne, Dictionnaire des Apocryphes, ii. 113, 114. IV APPENDIX 275 Note IV. (Lecture II. p. 55) Discussion of the Creed in the Reformed Church of Geneva A significant correspondence between certain congrega- tions in the Reformed Church of Geneva and the Consistory, 1869, expresses in a succinct form the objections which have in modern times been entertained by many to the liturgical use of that document, with the reply to those objections by those who nevertheless do not require sub- scription to it as a condition of entering the ministry : — I. Letter from the Congregations Geneva, May 1869. To the President and Members of the Consistory — We approach you with the request to remove from our Liturgy the so-called Apostles’ Creed. This formulary, as historical investigation has abundantly demonstrated, docs not go back to the primitive age ; it is simply the Confession of Faith of ancient Catholicism. It is therefore not Protestant, and consequently many Reformed Churches have rejected it from their Liturgy. In a Church like ours, therefore, which is not only Pro- testant, but liberated in addition from every Confession of Faith, the reading of the Creed is a two-fold inconsistency. The Creed does not represent either the faith of our own pastors, or that of the Protestant people of Geneva. No one of us could sign it, accepting it in its literal and historical meaning. The descent of Jesus into hell, the resurrection of the flesh, and the communion of saints, are dogmas absolutely foreign to our sentiments and beliefs. Every one of us is compelled more or less to translate these articles into a different sense ; and plainly so, when we intend to 276 THE CHRISTIAN CREED NOTE avow belief in an impalpable Universal Church , where the Creed has always designated the Church as Catholic in the unique and traditional significance of the word. This method of translation, written or mental, which wholly changes the character of a historic document, does not appear to us worthy of a Protestant people. To ask of God to be enabled always publicly to make confession of articles which no one would be able to admit in their true sense is a thing at variance with the seriousness of Christian worship. The accusations directed against our pastors on the sub- ject of the reading of the Creed are evidently unjust and intemperate. They are not in any way bound in conscience by a Liturgy which an elective and changeable body could at any time alter at its pleasure. The Consistory alone must bear the responsibility of all that the clergy read by its order from our pulpits. It is not therefore for our pastors, it is on our own behalf, it is on behalf of the dignity and sincerity of our worship, that we ask you to remove from our Liturgy this legacy of Catholicism and grievous trace of the regime of Confessions of Faith. (Signatures.) II. Reply Geneva, 25 th lune 1869. Gentlemen — The Consistory has very seriously and thoroughly discussed the memorial which you have addressed to it, requesting the discontinuance of the reading of the Apostles’ Creed from our pulpits. A preliminary consideration presents itself to the Con- sistory, in the danger which there would be in modifying at this moment our Liturgies in any way whatsoever. Undoubtedly they are not unchangeable ; undoubtedly also they will always present defects in detail which might be IV APPENDIX 277 advantageously modified ; but they were revised less than ten years since, as the result of long and conscientious labour. Should we now already be called upon to retouch them ? We cannot conceal from ourselves that one change would bring on others : the objections and scruples urged against the Creed would apply, under a different form, but with quite as much force, to a great number of our liturgical forms ; and the existing Consistory cannot consent to embark upon this course, believing that as a whole our liturgies do represent and accurately sum up the sentiments and belief of our Church. The Creed, it is true, is not the work of the Apostles, and has not therefore in our eyes the authority of a Biblical document ; but it is a document which has for itself the consecration of ages, which was preserved by the Reformers, and of which the constant use has established among us its true meaning. And if its use is objected to as an incon- sistency in a Church without Confessions of Faith, we are justified in replying that, without being a Confession of Faith, it has the advantage of offering a summary of the facts contained in the Gospel and placed by our ecclesiastical constitution at the foundation of Christianity. Another class of considerations favours the maintenance of the Creed. It is the only expression of the Christian Faith common to all the great Christian congregations ; it is a point of contact and communion between a large number of communities which range themselves under the banner of the Gospel ; and in presence of the divisions which separate not only the Reformed Church from Catholicism, but the Protestant Churches one from another, this is a fact of great and pious interest which gives to the Apostles’ Creed an unquestionable value. Finally, the Consistory, bound to be guided by the convictions and desires of the electoral body from which it 278 THE CHRISTIAN CREED NOTE springs, is absolutely certain that among the persons who habitually frequent the worship of the Church, and take an active share in its life, a considerable majority would have their feelings deeply wounded if by virtue of a measure emanating from ecclesiastical authority the reading of the Creed should be discontinued in our services. (Signed by the President.) Note V. (Lecture II. p. 57) The Nicceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in its final form as received by the Eastern Church • IltcrTevopev eh eva 0eov Uarepa, iravTOKpaTopa, ttoi^t^v ovpavov Kal yi/S, opaTtov re irdvrwv Kal doparw v. Kai eis eva Kvpiov ’Iiytrovv Xptarov, tov vtov tov Qeov tov poi 'oyevij, t ov Ik tov IlaTpos yevvr/OevTa 7 rpo 7ravTtov Tur attovtov, ws Ik fha/Tos, 0ebv dXifiivbv Ik 0eov aXifiivov, yevi'rjdevTa ov iroirjdevTa, opoovarov to IlaTpr St’ ov to. Travra eyeveTO" tov St ?)pus tovs dvOpd j7tovs Kal Sta n)v ijpeTepav crioTijpiav KareXddvTa h< twv ovpavwv, /cat c rapKio- 6e VTa Ik IIvevpaTos 'Ay tov Kat Maptas tt)s irapdevov Kal evav- 0 pitiirijcravTa' (TTavpoidevTa T£ v~tp 'i)pwv eirl IPovtiov IltAd- rov, Kal Tradovra /cat racf>evT a, /cat avaaravra rp Tplri] r/pepo. Kara ras ypac^ds - /cat aveA0ovTa eh tov s ovpavovs, /cat Kade^o- pevov Ik Se^ttuv tov IlaTpos, /cat 7raAtv ep^opevov peTa 8d£ij<; Kplvai fi>VTa s /cat ve/epovs ‘ ov Tps jSacriAeias ovk ecTat TeAos. Kat et’s to Ilvevpa to "Ay tov, to Kvpiov (/cat) to fu/07rotov, to e/c tov IlaTpos 1 eKiropevdpevov , to avv IlaTpi Kat Ytw crvvirpoa-Kvvovpevov Kal crvvSo£a£opevov, to XaXijaav Sta tojv 7 rpocfsijTwv eh ptav, aytav, Kaf?oAtK;jv, Kat a7rocrToAiK?yv eKKAijctav opoAoyovpev ev paiTTicrpa eis dcjjeeriv upapTtwv ‘ TrpoaSoKidpev dvdvTao'tv veKpa jv Kat £to?;v tov peAAovTOS at’wvos. ’Ap-pv. 1 The Latin Church adds Jilioque, as if e/c rov viou. VII APPENDIX 279 Note VI. (Lecture II. p. 62) Epiphanian Additions to the Nicene Creed The addition found in Epiphanius to his version of the Nicene formula runs thus : — rows Se keyovras, ijv tyot\ ore ovk ijr, Kai 7 rplv yevvr]OljvaL ovk ?]i>, 1} on (£ ovk dvr wv eyevero, i) e£ erepas viroardaews l] ova ui<; daKovra