exists at present only in a fragmentary state. The fragment is contained in No. 3836 of the Latin MSS. of the Paris National Library—a manuscript assigned by Palaeographers, without a single dissentient voice, to the eighth century, written in Lombardic characters and comprising an ancient collection of Canons. Montfaucon, in his Diatribe de Symbolo Quicunque, says that experts of his time dated this MS. about the age of Pepin, i. e. the middle of the eighth century; and such was his own opinion. The authors of the Nouveau Traité Diplomatique affirm that 'the Latinity and faulty spelling prove clearly enough that it was written before the revival of letters in the time of Charlemagne. A facsimile of the writing, which includes the fragment we are referring to, appears in the third volume of the publications of the Palaeographical Society; and the editors describe the MS. as belonging to the eighth century. This fragment is introduced after a reference to the Council of Chalcedon with the following note: Haec invini Treveris in uno libro scriptum sic incipiente Domini nostri Ihesu Christi et reliqua.' In it the author of the Sermon adapts and modifies several verses of the Athanasian Creed, for the purpose of instructing his hearers in the doctrine of the Incarnation. It begins abruptly with the words of the twenty-ninth verse: Domini nostri Ihesu Christi fideliter credat ;' and all the verses following down to the thirty-ninth inclusive are thus dealt with. The text of the Creed is not followed literally and exactly. No verse is reproduced without some variation, and in some places the divergence is very great. The thirty-fifth verse is almost passed over. Still the resemblance between the two documents is sufficiently obvious to show beyond a possibility of doubt the close Tom. iii. p. 73.

relationship between them. One must have been framed from the other; the Creed from the fragment or the reverse. The late Dr. Swainson and Dr. Lumby, following in his steps, believed the former to be the case, that the fragment was the embryo out of which the latter part of the Quicunque grew; and very naturally they did so, considering the exigencies of their hypothesis respecting the Creed, that it is a work of the ninth century, not earlier. Notwithstanding these high authorities, I venture to maintain on the other hand, and with the fullest confidence, that the Trèves fragment was built upon the Creed as its basis; and I believe this to be the conclusion to which nine out of ten persons qualified to form an opinion on the subject would be led by a careful comparison of the two documents. As this is a point of great importance, I think it expedient to reproduce here as briefly as possible some particulars of the proof which on a previous occasion I produced upon the subject.

Let the verses 34 and 35 of the Creed be contrasted with the corresponding passages from St. Augustine and the fragment.

Unus Christus est

Ut quemadmodum homo 'Unus omnino non est anima et caro, sic esset confusione substantiae, non confusione substanChristus Deus et homo. sed unitate personae. tiae, sed unitatem perIdem Deus qui homo et qui Nam sicut anima ratio- sonae qui... passus,' Deus idem homo: non con- nalis et caro unus est etc. (Trèves fragment: fusione naturae sed unitate homo, ita Deus et homo see Appendix A.) personae.' (S. Augustini unus est Christus. Qui Sermo clxxxvi. cap. 1.) passus est,' etc. (Atha'Sicut enim unus est nasian Creed, verses 34, homo anima rationalis et 35, 36.)

The reading 'unitatem' may be passed by as of no significance. Probably it was owing to the ignorance or

It

carelessness of the scribe, and was not originally in the Sermon. On comparison of the above passages it must be evident that the verses of the Creed could not be drawn from the fragment, because they contain important matter which is not to be found there, also that they were drawn from the passages of St. Augustine In verse 34, 'unus omnino' is an abbreviated rendering of 'idem Deus qui homo et qui Deus idem homo' in the first passage of St. Augustine, and 'substantiae' in the former is substituted for 'naturae' in the latter. Verse 35 is nothing but the second passage of St. Augustine with a similar transposition of words in each member of the sentence. is still further clear that the fragment, or to speak more accurately, the author of the Sermon, of which it originally formed a part, drew immediately from the Creed, not from St. Augustine, because he adopts the 'substantiae' of the former, not the 'naturae 'of the latter; and, wishing to avoid using the illustration of Christ's unity which appears in verse 35, he still borrows from it 'Christus est,' and substitutes this for the 'omnino' of the Creed in order to make clear the reference of 'qui... passus.' Obviously the verses of the Creed supplied the materials with which this passage of the fragment was constructed. This is quite sufficient proof of the point I contend for; but I will add two others in confirmation. In the thirty-sixth verse the Athanasian Creed has ad inferos,' for which the fragment substitutes ad inferna '-a change which the homilist would naturally make in discoursing at the 'Traditio Symboli,' for the Catechumens whom he was addressing would have just before been taught to repeat the latter words in the Apostles' Creed. On the other hand, if the Quicunque was drawn from the fragment, as Professors Swainson and Lumby have asserted, why did not the former retain the

'ad inferna' of the latter? The use of' ad inferos' in Confessions of Faith is so very rare, comparatively speaking, that the substitution of it for the more common and familiar expression would be perfectly unaccountable. Once more the Creed reads 'resurgere habent' in the thirty-eighth verse-a peculiar idiom, but one of common occurrence in the writings of St. Augustine. In its place the fragment gives 'erunt resurrecturi,' which savours of the corrupt Latinity of the sixth or seventh centuries. Had the author of the Creed drawn from the fragment, he would probably have substituted for this barbarism 'resurrecturi sunt,' but it is most improbable that he would have put in its place such a peculiar expression as 'resurgere habent.'

This Trèves fragment is a document of such importance in the history of the Athanasian Creed, that we have great reason to be thankful for being furnished with an accurate copy of it in the facsimile of the Palaeographical Society. From this source I have printed it in Appendix A.

It has been very frequently, indeed commonly, described as the Colbertine MS. of the Athanasian Creed-Colbertine, because the MS. containing it belonged originally to the Library of Colbert, the Minister of Louis XIV. And the result of this has been that an undue weight has been attached to it for determining the true readings and text of the Creed. But this view is entirely erroneous; and it is specially necessary to note the error on account of the mischievous consequences with which it is fraught. The fragment, it is important to remember, is not a copy of the Athanasian Creed, nor yet of a part of it: but it is a copy of the conclusion of a Sermon delivered to Catechumens at the Traditio Symboli'-the ceremony preparatory to

Baptism in which they were instructed in the Apostles' Creed; and the preacher, as I have already said, therein gives an exposition of the doctrine of the Incarnation, which obviously, though not avowedly, is built upon the lines of the Quicunque, and to a certain extent, indeed a large extent, employs its very language. That this is the true nature of the document, is obvious in the first place from the remarkable variations which it presents when contrasted with the text of the Athanasian Creed as found in all ancient MSS., among which the diversity is notably small. And next, this is obvious from the fact of its modifying the words of the Creed for the purpose of a discourse. Thus instead of 'inde venturus iudicare vivos et mortuos' we find, 'inde ad iudicandos vivos et mortuos credimus et speramus eum esse venturum.' And thirdly, it contains a distinct allusion to the ceremony of the 'Traditio Symboli' in the words introduced immediately after the article ad dexteram Dei Patris sedet,' viz. sicut vobis in symbolo traditum est.' It must be remarked also that these words occur immediately before the words-' inde ad iudicandos,' &c.—just quoted, taken in connexion with which they show very plainly and vividly that this fragment was not only part of a Sermon, but of one addressed to Catechumens at the Traditio Symboli.'

Such being the true account of the Trèves fragment, it follows that although it is not a copy of the Athanasian Creed nor of a part of it, still it is of the greatest value as evidence of its antiquity, the Creed being the basis, as we have seen, and supplying to some extent the very wording of the doctrinal teaching on the Incarnation contained in it or rather in the Sermon, of which it formed a part. What was the date of this Sermon? This it would be important to ascertain, if possible, in order to arrive at a true estimate