to assault the citadel of Anglican liberty, not from without but from within. He wrote a treatise, the famous Tract XC, in which he aimed to show that the Articles had been so loosely or inadvertently drawn that they might be grammatically construed into a sense opposite to their original purport. By the aid of his unrivalled dialectic, he traversed the Articles and reversed their meaning, till it almost seemed as if the object of the Protestant reformers had been to reunite the Anglican Church with the Church of Rome. The Thirty-nine Articles were made to seem patient of an interpretation which harmonized them with the definitions of the Council of Trent. It is a familiar story - the consternation into which England was thrown, which finds its only parallel in the ancient church, in the time of the Arian controversy. From that moment Newman's days in the Anglican Church were numbered. But nothing that he ever wrote or confessed showed that the attempt to undo the Thirty-nine Articles rested upon his conscience. His devoted friend and admirer, Dr. Pusey, who refused to follow him, defended the effort to "reinterpret" the Articles. On the basis of this reinterpretation, which reversed their original purport, many were enabled to remain in the Church of England who must

otherwise have left. From this time a "Catholic sense was imposed on the formularies of the Book of Common Prayer, and apparently with a clear conscience. A new school arose who appropriated as their own the Anglican Church, making it over to suit their own convenience, till at last those who sought to stand on the foundations of the Reformation appeared as no better than traitors to God and humanity.

In questions about the interpretation of the Creed, the judgment of the "man on the street" has no value, even though it find vigorous and severe expression in the utterances of the secular press. For the "man on the street does not care a rap about dogmatic formularies and subtleties," and it is just these very things which are at issue. In the matter of religion, no amount of business training or skill in journalism or knowledge of affairs is of any avail. Religion has its own laws, it is guided by deep motives, which only those interested or, as it were, obsessed by them can understand.

Let us take an example. In Old Testament history we read how the brethren of Joseph sold him a captive to traders going down into Egypt. They acted with a definite purpose and for this very end. They were responsible for their deed. But when, years afterward, they themselves were

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forced to go to Egypt because of the famine, they encountered their brother in a high official position, and they were afraid in consequence of their evil act. And Joseph said unto them, 'Now it was not you that brought me hither, but God." What would the verdict of the "man on the street" be, when, knowing the circumstances, he was confronted with this statement? To his mind it would seem as plain as daylight that Joseph was guilty of falsehood in denying what was a simple matter of fact. But in Joseph's mind, the matter of fact had faded away into legend or myth or unreality, and only the spiritual reality behind the fact remained.

CHAPTER IV

INTERPRETATION OF THE VIRGIN-BIRTH IN

THE ANCIENT CHURCH

"THE truth of a Creed," said Coleridge, "must be tried by the Holy Scripture; but the sense of the Creed by the known sentiments and inferred intentions of its compilers." It is not with its truth, then, as tested by Holy Scripture, but with its sense, that we are concerned, as we come to the clause "born of the Virgin Mary." The apparent meaning may not have been the original purpose and intention. There is evidence tending to show that the primary object in alluding to the birth of Christ was to maintain the reality of His human birth, His birth of a woman whose name is given, just as in the case of His death the name of Pontius Pilate is mentioned in order to verify the fact. The Creed is chiefly concerned at this point with the assertion of the full humanity of Christ, not of His divinity. In a later age when the controversies of the second century had been forgotten, another interpretation was placed upon this

ΙΟΙ

clause, which put the stress upon the Virginbirth. But meantime great changes had passed over the Church, and in consequence of them the original sense of the Creed had been lost.

In the earliest form of the Apostles' Creed,1 which is known among students of the creeds as the Old Roman Creed, originating in Rome, it is thought, about the middle of the second century, the clause had not yet been inserted "conceived by the Holy Ghost." That may have been added a generation or more later. The related clauses of the Creed then ran in the earliest form:

"Born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, and buried, rose again from the dead on the third day."

Birth, death, and resurrection as actual and historic facts are thus grouped together. Here

1 The best book of reference for the ancient creeds and rules of faith is Hahn, "Bibliothek der Symbole," 1897. As it is not intended here to make any special study of the creeds, the reader may be referred for the bibliography to Dr. McGiffert, "The Apostles' Creed," pp. 3-5. Caspari's exhaustive studies, covering many years, have been succeeded by the very important work of Kattenbusch, "Das Apostolische Symbol," Bd. i, 1894; Bd. ii, 1900. Among works from the Anglican point of view may be mentioned: Heurtley, "Harmonia Symbolica" and "De fide et Symbolo"; Swainson, "The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds"; also Schaff's "Creeds of Christendom."