it had for ever excluded the possibility of any new confession of faith, and had placed the Creed of Nicæa on an impregnable basis. The motive is obvious: to protect what had already been done in the first General Council, and to guard against the multiplication of creeds, of which that age had already had sufficient experience. It is curious that in both particulars this decree entirely failed. The creed of Nicæa, as thus set forth, has now been discontinued throughout the whole Church of the West, and, with the exception of the Monophysite, Nestorian, and perhaps the Armenian Churches,' throughout the whole Church of the East. Its anathemas. are no longer recited, although in the time of its first promulgation they were regarded as of the utmost importance; and in other respects, as shall be noticed presently, its contents have undergone serious modifications. The Creeds which it was intended to prevent have been multiplied beyond imagination in the numberless Creeds of the fifth century, the Athanasian Creed of the ninth, the confessions of Trent, Augsburg, Geneva, and London of the sixteenth century.

Constanti

2

It is by no means clear by what process the change was effected, but we can faintly trace it through the discussions Creed of of the time. The first step, as usual in these nople. innovations, was the most momentous. Previous to the Council of Constantinople, which, as we have already seen, adopted no creed of its own, there was a creed existing in the writings of Epiphanius,3 which agreed in many respects with the creed now commonly, but erroneously, known as the Creed of Constantinople. Besides this, there is a considerable resemblance between the present form of that creed, and what is preserved to us as the Creed of Jerusalem in the writings of Cyril, the bishop of that city. There is, further, a late tradition that the form of the creed now professing to

4

1 See Swainson's Nicene and Apostles' Creeds Compared, p. 143.

2 See Lectures on Eastern Church, Lect. IV.

Epiphanius, Anchoratus (pp. 77–83), A.D. 374.

♦ See Hort's Dissertation, p. 74, in which it is argued with much learning that the Creed was on the basis of the Creed of Jerusalem.

be that of Constantinople was drawn up by Gregory of Nyssa, who was present, as we have seen, in that assembly. But it was in the Council of Chalcedon, for the first time, that we have the startling announcement made by Aetius, Archdeacon of Constantinople, that he was going to read what had been determined upon by the 150 bishops congregated in Constantinople. It is conjectured that, from one or other of the three sources indicated, from the writings of Epiphanius, or of Cyril of Jerusalem, or of Gregory of Nyssa, this creed may have been the subject of some conversation in the Council of Constantinople, and that this was made the ground or the pretext of its being represented by Aetius as the creed of that Council itself. The accuracy of Aetius, as of the other members of the Council, is not above suspicion. The creed was as follows:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten, Who was begotten from the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one substance with the Father, by Whom all things exist; Who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made flesh of the Holy Ghost and of Mary the Virgin, and was made man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and ascended into the heavens, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and cometh again with glory to judge the quick and the dead; of whose kingdom there shall be no end; and in the Spirit, which is holy, which is sovereign and lifegiving, which proceedeth from the Father; Which with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified; Which spake by the prophets; in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church; we acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

This creed, although twice formally recited at the Council of Chalcedon, yet was not allowed to take the exclusive

5 Swainson's Nicene and Apostles' Creeds, pp. 94-96; Tillemont, ix. p. 421, xiv. p. 442; Hort's Dissertation, pp. 74–76.

place given by the Council of Ephesus to the Creed of Nicæa. The decree of Ephesus was still sufficiently powerful to restrain the Chalcedonian Fathers from introducing this creed, so-called of Constantinople, into the place of the one authorised Confession of Faith. But as time rolled on this provision was doubly set aside. The creed of Nicæa, as we have seen, is now read in no European church; and the creed, professedly of Constantinople, really the production of some unknown Church or Father, gradually superseded it. The Emperor Justin, in the year 568, first ordered that it should be recited in the public services of the Church; and from that moment it has assumed its present position.

It is difficult to trace precisely the motives by which this great change was effected. It would appear, however, to have been the result of that lull in ecclesiastical controversy which succeeded to the terrible scenes of the Ephesian and Chalcedonian Councils. Some of the additions to the Nicene Creed might have seemed to have incurred the censure of the Ephesian Council not only in the letter but in the spirit. The clause, He was begotten of the Holy Ghost and of Mary the Virgin,'' did not exist in the Creed of Nicæa, and was in fact vehemently contested in the Council of Ephesus, as having been brought forward by Nestorius and as expressive of his view. The clauses also relating to the Divine Spirit were not contained in the original Creed of Nicæa, and were perhaps added in order to meet the Macedonian heretics. The omission or transposition of the words 'God of God,'' the Only begotten,'' that is to say, from the substance of the Father,' are, to say the least, unwarranted interferences with a document where every word and every position of every word are deemed of importance. But the Creed of Chalcedon (or Constantinople), however doubtful its origin, may still be regarded as, on the whole, an improvement on that memorable document which it supplanted, although under the penalty of deprivation of their orders to

CHAP. XVI.

all the clergy and bishops who use it, and of excommunication to the laity who adopt it. The acquiescence (if so be) of the original Council of Constantinople in a private document which came before them, sanctioned by the authority of Cyril of Jerusalem, and of Gregory of Nyssa, would be in conformity with the abstinence from further dogmatism into which they were driven almost inevitably by a weariness of the whole transaction in which they were involved. With the more moderate counsels which we this also would agree have already noticed, belonging to what may be called the central party at Ephesus and Chalcedon, and the deference at last paid to Theodoret. The total omission of the Nicene anathemas was a distinct step in this direction. The condemnation of anyone who expressed that the Son was of a different person' (or 'hypostasis') from the Father, might well become startling to those who were becoming familiar with the later formula, which at last issued in the directly contrary proposition by pronouncing a like anather a on anyone who maintained that He was of the same hypostasis.'

It was one of the constant charges against Basil and Gregory that they were unwilling to define precisely and polemically the doctrine of the Divine Spirit. Those who read the exposition of this doctrine as set forth in the Greek of these clauses will be surprised to see how wonderfully the harshnesses and roughnesses that appear in the English or Latin translation disappear in the subtle, yet simple language of the original. What may have been the feelings of the followers of Macedonius we know not; but we may certain that no sect now existing, whether belonging to the so-called orthodox or the so-called heretical churches, could find any difficulty in accepting, in their original form, the abstract and general phrases, in which the Biblical doctrine

be

* Τὸ πνεῦμα, τὸ κύριον, τὸ ζωοποιόν, τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, τὸ σὺν Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ συμπροσκυνούμενον συνδοξαζόμενον, τὸ λαλῆσαν διὰ τῶν Προφητῶν· compared with the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son,' &c. (See Hort, pp. 82, 85, 86.)

of the impersonality and neutrality of the Sacred Influence is set forth.

Again, the limitation of the holy inspiration (the 'Holy Spirit spoke by the prophets') is a remarkable instance at once of insight into the true nature of the Biblical writings, and also of the moderation of the highest minds of that age, compared with the fanciful and extravagant theories that have sometimes prevailed in modern times on that subject. The other parts of the Bible, the other writings of the great and good, are no doubt the offspring of the Divine Mind, but it is in the prophetical writings that the essence of Christian morality and doctrine is brought out.

Yet once more, the definition of Baptism (I believe in one Baptism for the remission of sins'), which has been sometimes quoted as if decisive of the whole question then at issue on the intricate question of the mystical or moral effect of Baptism, is couched in terms so studiously general as to include not only Christian Baptism, but the Baptism of John, from which, in the language of technical theology, no transcendental operations could be expected. Only by the most violent anachronisms and distortions of language can the scholastic doctrines of the sudden transformation of baptised infants be imported into words which embrace the doctrine of Baptism in the largest formula which the comprehensive language of Scripture has furnished."

Again, the questionable phrase, the Resurrection of the Flesh' in the Apostles' Creed is here represented by the Biblical expression, Resurrection of the Dead.'

Lastly, it is to be observed that Nicephorus ascribes all these changes to Gregory of Nyssa, whose great name, if he in any way took them up, would, more than any other single cause, have led to their popular acceptance, not only from his own learning and genius, but from the fame of his brother Basil, and from the influence-at any rate at the beginning of the Council-of his friend. The tradition that these words were derived from Gregory of Nyssa,

See Chapter I.