Confession. For although it be but twice actually rehearsed yet we must conceive it virtually prefixed to the head of every article."

Bishop Pearson was not unaware that in the ancient church a distinction had been made between the articles of the Creed, but he does seem oblivious to the fact that the same distinction had been made in the Church Catechism. He refers to St. Augustine who had taught that to believe in God, meant not only assent to the truth of His existence but implied a religious act, an act of faith, love, and obedience. Thomas Aquinas had also made the same distinction, as had Peter the Lombard before him. But Bishop Pearson takes issue with them all, finding his support in texts of Scripture, for the conclusion that the distinction between believe in and believe (credere Deum, and credere in Deum) has no validity. There is no difference between faith and assent. "Faith is a habit of the intellectual part of man.'

"To believe, therefore, as the word stands in the front of the Creed, and not only so but is diffused through every article and

proposition of it, is to assent to the whole and every part of it."1

The exaggerated intellectualism or scholastic tendency of Bishop Pearson left its impression on his age. It was born of the same mood that produced Puritan scholasticism, the feeling that in systems of theology lay the salvation of the Church from unbelief; that the intellect could bolster up a creed which without such support was in danger of losing its hold on life. But the commentary on Protestant scholasticism is written in the age that followed, and is most instructive. The unbelief came in like a flood, known as Deism, and the spiritual life of the Church sank in the eighteenth century to its lowest ebb, until Wesley and Whitefield restored again the old meaning to the words, I believe.

The attitude of Pearson would indeed justify the striking comparison of the articles of the Creed to a group of precious stones, twelve in number, no less and no more. But the comparison fails, in one point at least, when we recall the fact that the American Episcopal Church gave permission in 1789 to any congregation to omit from the Creed one of its articles, "He descended into hell." The permission was with

1 "Exposition of the Creed," p. 19.

drawn in 1892. The omission, however, is of no special importance, if the significance of the creeds, or that which is chiefly to be learned from them according to the Anglican formularies, is the central fundamental truth - the doctrine of the Trinity. All else is subordinate to this supreme possession, as the all-inclusive formula of the Christian faith. To the three eternal distinctions in the Godhead, the words "I believe" apply with a meaning and a force, which is not carried by the minor clauses.

So long as the creeds were recited in the offices of the unreformed church by the clergy alone, whether at the altar in ordination as an ecclesiastical vow, or in the Liturgy, or at the saying of the daily office in monasteries, it might have been possible by a fixed dogmatic system, such as that of the Greek and Roman churches, to secure a certain amount of uniformity of interpretation. When the creeds came to be recited by the whole congregation in every act of public worship, as in the Anglican Church, with no commentary authorized by the Church to fix their meaning, to secure even this degree of uniformity was impossible. The history of the creeds reveals divergence of opinion on almost every article or phrase. It would require a treatise of no small dimensions to do justice to

the extent and significance of these variations. The discussion of them here must be brief and condensed.

The variations confront us at the very opening words.

GOD THE FATHER

ALMIGHTY, MAKER OF

HEAVEN AND EARTH

If there were any one point on which the mind of the ancient church was agreed, it was that God made the world, in opposition to heathen theories of emanation or evolution. But evolution has worked its way into the modern mind in contrast to the creation by the fiat of the divine will, if not in conflict with it. The word "made, or created, has been stretched to take in the modern conception, which changes the ancient meaning.

CONCEIVED BY THE HOLY GHOST

In regard to the mode of the Incarnation the language of ancient fathers shows diversity. This phrase was not originally in the Roman Creed, but may have been introduced by the end of the second century. It did not find its way into the Eastern creeds until after the middle of the fourth century, and its absence from the

original Nicene Creed should be noted. In his treatise on the Incarnation, Athanasius does not employ it, but attributes the divine activity to the Logos, the second person in the Trinity, who "when He was descending to us, fashioned His body for himself from a Virgin.” ***“ "For being himself mighty and artificer of everything, he (the Logos) prepares the body in the Virgin. ("De Incar.," 8.)

BORN OF THE VIRGIN MARY

As this is now among the sensitive spots in the Creed, around which controversy and agitation have gathered, the discussion of it is postponed to a later chapter, in order to a fuller treatment. But it may be said in passing, that with some the emphasis has been placed on the womanhood of Mary, or, in the words of St. Paul, “born of a woman, born under the law"; with others on her virginity as essential, in the nature of the case, to the incarnation. This divergence dates back to the second century.

HE DESCENDED INTO HELL (Descendit ad inferna or ad inferos)

This phrase was not introduced into the Roman Creed (Apostles') until the middle of the eighth