"Christendom's Divisions," part ii.) more than insinuates that what we call the "Athanasian Creed" was one of the numerous forgeries of that unscrupulous age. Charles, and not the Bishop of Rome, was then the real head of the Western Church. A document which expressed his opinions, and was taken under his patronage, would rapidly spread throughout the West, and be with little hesitation received into the service-books of the Church. As the dispute on the Procession was then at its height, the name of Athanasius would naturally be selected, as equally reverenced both in the East and the West, and it is certainly a corroboration of Mr. Ffoulkes's theory that the earliest manuscript and the earliest testimony, whose dates we can fix with any precision, ascribe the Creed to that Father. The occurrence of the Creed in a manuscript which dates from so early a period of Charles's reign,1 the many variations in the titles assigned to it in the older copies, versions, and comments, and the apparent absence during the first few centuries after its supposed fabrication of any Greek version, seem to us to be undoubted difficulties in the way of this hypothesis; but, these notwithstanding, we may at least allow Mr. Ffoulkes's conjecture to be equally probable with the theories of Waterland and Mr. Harvey. As for the internal

1 It should, however, be noticed that the reference of this manuscript to the commencement of Adrian's pontificate depends only on a conjecture, though not an improbable one, of Lambecius. Prefixed to the manuscript is an Epistle Dedicatory, in Latin verse, from Charles to Adrian. From certain expressions in this epistle, as well as from the fact that an embassy was sent from the King to the Pope at the commencement of his pontificate, Lambecius infers that that event was the occasion of the gift. See Kollar, Analecta Vindobonensia, tom. i. p. 402. Adrian did not die till 795. The presentation of this particular manuscript to the Pope is disputed altogether by Michael Denis ("Codices Manuscripti Theologici Bibl. Palat. Vindobonensis Latini," tom. i. p. 55) who thinks that the dedicatory verses may have been prefixed, by order of Charles, to several copies of the Psalter made in bis reign, and believes that this copy was really the property of Queen Hildegard, as is at

evidence to be derived from the tone of the damnatory clauses, Mr. Ffoulkes shall speak for himself. "There can be "no doubt but that one of the principal occupations of the men of letters in "the West, contemporary with Charle66 magne, must have been to fabricate "documents under fictitious names, and "multiply pseudonymous compositions on every subject of public interest at "that date. .. There was an air of positiveness, assurance, and menace "about them highly characteristic of "the autocrat, and powerfully minis"tering to the naturally domineering "propensities of the Latin mind, that "stood out in marked contrast to the "genuine freedom and philanthropy of "the Gospel, and to the hitherto large "and free spirit of the Church. To in"stance the most perfect specimen of "the kind in all other respects, the "Athanasian Creed, claiming at least

"the Athanasian Creed itself set the "fashion, or was drawn up to suit a "fashion already set, the resemblance "between it and the known formularies "of the age of Charlemagne is, to say "the least, very striking. 'This is the "Catholic faith,' says Charlemagne of "the creed paraphrased by himself, "which every one keeping whole and "undefiled will have everlasting life.' "And Leo III. in the profession attri"buted to him, but in any case sub"mitted to Charlemagne before it was "published: "He that believes not ac"cording to this right faith is damned.

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by the Catholic and Apostolic "Church.'"

Believing, as they undoubtedly did, that this Creed was the work of Athanasius himself, that it was contemporary, or nearly so, with the venerable confession of the Council of Nice, and that it had ever since been received by the Catholic Church without question, our Reformers acted naturally enough in retaining it in the Liturgy, and referring to it, as a standard of faith, in the Articles.

Had the same facts been known to them which are now patent to us, had they been aware that the origin and authorship of the Creed were involved in the utmost uncertainty, that it was certainly not a document of the first four centuries, that it might be a forgery of the eighth: we entertain no doubt but that, actuated as they were by a spirit of candour, inquiry, and toleration which finds no parallel at any other period in the ecclesiastical history of this country, they would without hesitation have omitted all mention of it in their Articles, and erased it from the service-books of the Church. But, after having been, for nearly three hundred years, the cause of reproach, controversy, and dissension immeasurable, we are at length permitted to hope that its days are numbered. Our present prelates, or at least a majority of them, have expressed their desire to return to the faith and discipline of the undivided Church. Now it is extremely difficult to say when the history of the "undivided Church" terminated, and

menced; but of this we may be quite certain, that what is called "the Athanasian Creed" was never received throughout the undivided Church. If we date the division between East and West so late as the close of the ninth century, this Creed was not received in the East, and apparently not universally in the public services even of the West. If we date the division from the time when the words " Filioque" were inserted in the Nicene Creed at the Third Council of Toledo (A.D. 589), we have not any certain proof that the Creed was so much as in existence, we have not even any pretended proof that it was yet received in the public services of any Church in Christendom. But if we are allowed to interpret one part of a document from another, the Lambeth resolutions identify the "faith of the undivided Church with the "faith as defined by the four first General Councils." Now the Fourth General Council (the Council of Chalcedon) was held in the year 451, one hundred and twenty years, even according to the very doubtful reasoning of Waterland, upwards of three hundred years according to Gieseler, before either history or literature supplies us with any mention of this Creed. On the grounds, therefore, of the uncertainty of its date and authorship,1 of its non-reception in the undivided Church, and of the share, not inconsiderable, which it had in producing that division of East and West which is now so generally lamented, we think we may fairly appeal, especially at so favourable a juncture as the present, for a re-consideration of its position in our Liturgy and Articles.

II. But we can conceive the intrinsic merits of the Creed, as a confession of faith, being so great as to atone for its want of external authority. We will

1 It has been attributed to no less than eleven different authors, possibly more viz. Athanasius of Alexandria, Athanasius of Spire, Hilary of Arles, Hilary of Poitiers, Pope Anastasius I, Anastasius Sinaita (we are not told which), Eusebius Vercellensis, Vigilius Tap

sesnis, Vincentius Lirinensis, Venantius Fortunatus, and Victricius of Rouen. Many writers have of course not attempted to name

briefly consider whether this is the case. But, first, we may anticipate an objection which will possibly occur to some devout readers, that we are about to criticise a mystery revealed by God. Whatever force there may be in such an objection, it obviously does not apply to the criticism of expressions appropriated by men, equally fallible with ourselves, to the purpose of expressing that mystery. Now it will be observed that throughout the earlier portion of the document, which refers to the doctrine of the Trinity, the right faith is made to depend on a distinction between the words Substance and Person. If, therefore, the Creed is intended to be understood, it postulates a clear conception of the meaning of these two terms. We shall not linger to inquire how many of those who repeat it, or even how many of those who have preached or written in its defence, attach any definite meaning to them. To most men they are undoubtedly mere symbols, without any corresponding ideas. If an ordinary If an ordinary Englishman does attempt to fathom their meaning, he probably understands "substance" in the sense of matter, and "person " in the sense of individual, and thus is led by the very Creed, which is to preserve him from error, into the two gravest of all heresies with respect to the Godhead, that the Divine Nature is corporeal (which opinion, by the way, was actually embraced by Tertullian), and that there are three Gods. But it is more pertinent to inquire whether any intelligible explanation can be given of these terms, and whether we can discover in what precise sense the author employed them. It is perhaps too much to require that the words of a Creed should be entirely free from ambiguity, but it is at least essential that they should admit of some precise and definite signification which is incompatible with any known form of heresy. Now how does it stand with the words in question? The word "substance is,

or has been, used in four distinct significations (1) as matter (An), which is perhaps now its most ordinary sense;

of metaphysicians, the unknown substratum (or support) of known attributes (perhaps the ordinary meaning of VTÓσTaσis); (3) as an individual object (the porn ovoía of Aristotle); (4) as the "essence," or less properly, "nature," which is supposed to be common to a number of individuals of the same kind (the deurepa ovoia of Aristotle). To affirm the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost to be "of one substance "in the first sense would be the blasphemy of supposing the Godhead to be a material body; to affirm them to be "of one substance" in the second sense would either be meaningless, or, if it had any meaning, would imply that the Godhead was one individual object of which the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were mere attributes; the third, like the second, would be precisely the error of Sabellius; the fourth would naturally, though not necessarily, imply that, as three different men are said to be of the same "substance," "essence," or "species," so, when we speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as "of one substance," we regard them as three distinct Gods, participating in a common nature. So liable was the expression to this misinterpretation, that we find the Fathers constantly defending themselves against it, and they were ultimately obliged to supplement the phrase by the introduction of the word περιχώρησις, or its barbarous Latin equivalent circumincessio. That an expression so ambiguous and so liable to be perverted to an heretical meaning as the word ouoouotos should have been received by the Council of Nice may have been a misfortune (its reception seems to have been the result of an accident, and it had actually been condemned, or, if not condemned, at least rejected, by the Council of Antioch, held against Paul of Samosata, A.d. 265);1 but it is one thing to abandon, on account of infelicity of language, a document drawn up by so venerable an authority

1 Athanasii de Symbolis, cap. 43, Hilarii Pictavensis de Symbolis, cap. 86. Neither of these passages is decisive as to the actual condemnation of the word, though most modern

as the Nicene Council, and another to abandon, for the same reason, a document composed by some private doctor, we know not when or where. Moreover, though the word "substance," in such expressions as "of the same substance," "not dividing the substance," does not satisfy the requirement of having at least one precise and definite signification incompatible with any known form of doctrine which the Church has stamped as heresy, it does admit of one meaning which is not necessarily heretical. But even this is not the case with the word "person." The word "persona" (signifying originally "a mask," but borrowed by theology from Roman Jurisprudence, as the other word "substance" (= ovoia) was borrowed from Greek Metaphysics), admits, in reference to such subjects as those of which we are now treating, of two, and only two, significations. In classical Latin, and frequently in patristic Latin, it means the part or character which a man sustains, or the relation in which he stands to other men, so that in this sense the same individual may be said to "sustain " several "persons or characters. To speak of the Three Persons of the Godhead in this signification of the word "person" is mere Sabellianism. Or again, “persona" sometimes means in Latin, and

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person" almost always means in English, a distinct individual. To speak of the Three Persons of the Godhead, in this signification of the word "person, is mere Tritheism. Now we are not contending that the Creed is either Tritheistic or Sabellian. There are qualifying phrases in other parts of it which save it, as a whole, from either of these imputations. But what we do contend is that it uses, as touch-stones of doctrine, two phrases, which either have no precise and definite meaning at all (and this we take to be the case), or else are one of them suggestive of, and the other incompatible with anything else but, an heretical signification. The fact is that, in this mysterious doctrine of the Trinity, we no sooner quit Scripture

ourselves to mere negations of the errors of others, or ourselves incur the risk of a charge of heresy. We do not scruple to affirm that it is impossible to frame any positive assertion on this subject, not derived immediately from the words of Scripture, which might not fairly be represented by antagonists as heretical, and which might not moreover be calculated to lead the most honest inquirer, providing he attempted to attach any signification at all to the words he uttered, into an erroneous view of the nature of the Godhead. It is the received mode of expression to speak of one Substance and three Persons, but some of the most approved Greek Fathers speak of three Substances (ουσίαι), and others of one Person (ὑπόσ Taois). Nay, so variable is language, and so utterly inadequate to express these high mysteries of the Divine Nature, that these very words, ovcía and ὑπόστασις, on the distinction between which the whole doctrine of the Trinity was in after ages made to turn, are by the Nicene Council treated as synonymous: τοὺς δὲ . . . ἐξ ἑτέρας ὑποστάσεως ἢ οὐσίας φάσκοντας εἶναι . . . τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ· τούτους ἀναθεματίζει ἡ κατ θολικὴ καὶ ἀποστολικὴ ἐκκλησία. Well may the theological student, weary at times of these fruitless and hopeless disputes about words, break out into

1 Even one Latin Father (Hilary) speaks of "tres substantiæ." The reader who has no time or inclination for the perusal of long theological treatises, will find a brief account of these variations of language, and of the mere accidents which often determined the selection of orthodox expressions, in Newman "On the Arians," chap. v. sec. 2; Hampden's "Bampton Lectures," Lect. iii. with notes; and Stanley's "Eastern Church," Lect. iv. These authors write from such different points of view, that we shall not be suspected of any partiality in making the selection. The unprejudiced reader will probably arrive at the conclusion that, on these mysterious subjects, nothing can be more prejudicial to faith than attempts at minute definition. "I agree,' says Whately (Life, vol. i. p. 110), with most divines in this, that they set out by admitting the nature of the Deity to be inscrutable; what I differ from them in is, that most of them proceed in the same breath to

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And again: "Nunc etiam se [Chris"tus] lapidibus incessi patitur, non "modò ab obtrectantibus et vexantibus, "sed a nobis etiam ipsis, qui fidei pie"tatem profitemur. Etenim de incor"poreo disputantem, corporeis nomini"bus uti, vexantis fortasse fuerit et lapidantis, sed infirmitati nostræ (ite"rum dicam) venia concedatur. Lapi"damus enim haud lubenter: sed quia "aliter loqui non possumus, quibus 66 possumus, verbis utimur.”

To say

Our space prevents us from submitting to examination other individual expressions of the Creed, but, before passing on to what are called the "damnatory clauses," we may linger for a moment on v. 37: "For as the reason"able soul and flesh is one man, so God "and man is one Christ." nothing of the metaphysical assumption that the soul and body are distinct "substances," we think, on other grounds, that even the strong language of the Bishop of Hereford is hardly exaggerated, viz. that "the analogy, as it is stated, is entirely hypothetical" (based, that is, on the hypothesis of "infusion")," and is calculated to pervert our notion of Christ." For, if we pursue the parallel, we shall be led to the conclusion that, as the body and soul of man are supposed to be separated at death, so we may suppose the human and divine natures of Christ to have ceased to co-exist at the Crucifixion.

The passionate expressions which usher in and close this formulary have, in every age since the Reformation, justly wounded the susceptibilities of some of the most pious and loyal members of the Anglican Communion. We are glad to find, from the extracts

already made from the work of Mr. Ffoulkes, that they are beginning to excite the attention of members of the Church of Rome. Various have been the attempts to justify them, to soften them down, or explain them away. There can, we think, be no doubt that by the author they were presumptuously intended to apply to every word of his composition. But we have as little doubt that by the Church, and especially by the Church of England, they are not intended to receive this interpretation, and that, consequently, it is not binding either on those who sign the Articles or those who recite the Creed. This, however, is no reason against removing what we cannot but regard as a grave cause of offence. With the exception of one day in the year, the only occasion on which anathemas are heard in our churches is when this Creed is recited. And these anathemas are launched not against any moral crime, not against a life of sin, oppression, or idleness, not against a disbelief in God or in Christ, but apparently against those who refuse to accept in its entirety a long, intricate, and in many respects unintelligible exposition of the two most profound mysteries which have ever exercised the intellect of man. We cannot be surprised if, by such a course, the ignorant are repelled from our churches, and the obstinate confirmed in their errors. "Whosoever will be "saved, before all things it is necessary "that he hold the Catholic Faith. "Which faith except every man do "keep whole and undefiled, without "doubt he shall perish everlastingly. "And the Catholic Faith is this," &c. "This is the Catholic Faith, which ex

cept a man believe faithfully, he can"not be saved." Such expressions may influence the timorous and the ignorant. They will have no effect on those who have learned to regard their intellect as the most precious gift with which God has endowed them, the patient, earnest, impartial search after truth as the highest act of worship with which they can adore their Creator.