DEAR MR. GLADSTONE,

The real points at issue in the controversy on the Athanasian Creed have been so overlaid with irrelevant matter that it is not easy for the public at large to understand the exact position of the question. No doubt the debate in the Lower House of Convocation is well calculated to clear away a cloud of misapprehensions and errors on the subject. But the meagre reports of the debate that have been published in the secular press are worse than useless for that purpose, and the one or two Church papers which have given full reports are read by a comparatively select portion of the community. Something is still needed to place the question in its true bearings before the public mind, and the lull that is likely to follow the recent somewhat stormy discussion seems to offer a favourable opportunity to anyone who will venture to make the attempt. A great deal has been done already in this way by Mr. Brewer; but his two able Essays are confined chiefly, though not entirely, to the historical aspect of the question, and are addressed rather to the learned than to the popular mind. There is still room for a popular exposition of the true import of the Creed--popular at least so far as this, that nothing more than a very moderate education is required to follow the argument.

I trust that some one more competent than myself will apply his mind to the subject. In the meantime I offer the following pages as a humble contribution to so desirable an undertaking, and I have asked your kind permission to address them to you for two reasons: first, because the retention of the Athanasian Creed in the public service of the Church is alleged to be especially a layman's grievance; and secondly, because the question has an important political side to it in which statesmen can hardly fail to be interested. For it is now clear beyond all possibility of doubt, that a successful attempt either to mutilate the Creed or to degrade it from the position which it now occupies in the Prayer Book would have the effect of causing such a rent in the Church of England as would make the triumph of the Liberation Society a question of time, and of a very short time too. About thirty years ago Dr. Newman, in a letter to the late lamented Mr. Archer Butler, expressed his conviction that "our Church could do anything, humanly speaking, if it knew its own strength, and if its members were at peace with each other." [The italics are not mine.] These words are true to-day. It is not the schemes of the Liberation Society which we have to fear, but the intestine strife which reigns within our own borders; and no small part of this strife arises, I believe, from our mutual misunderstanding of each other. "Half the controversies in the world," says the same writer, "are verbal ones, and could they be brought to a plain issue they would be brought to a prompt termination. Parties engaged in them would then perceive either that in substance they agreed together, or that their difference was one of first principles. This is the great object to be aimed at in the present age, though confessedly a very arduous one. W e need not dispute, we need not prove,--we need but to define. At all events let us, if we can, do this first of all, and then see who are left for us to dispute with, what is left for us to prove. Controversy, at least in this age, does not lie between the hosts of heaven, Michael and his angels on the one side, and the powers of evil on the other; but it is a sort of night battle, where each fights for himself, and friend and foe stand together. When men understand what each other means, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless." ['University Sermons,' p. 192.]

It is impossible to read the Athanasian Creed debate in Convocation without recognizing the truth so felicitously expressed by Dr. Newman in this passage. It is, indeed, "a sort of night battle" where friends and foes are often mingled, and in which the combatants are evidently either agreed in substance, or reason from premisses which are in their nature irreconcilable. The first thing that must be done, therefore, is to rid the question of all issues which are plainly irrelevant.

Conspicuous amongst these is the authorship of the Athanasian Creed, which has been pushed to the front in recent discussions on the subject, but which has really nothing to do with the question. "The single practical question," as the Bishop of St. David's truly observed, "is this: whether we are or are not to continue the use of the Athanasian Creed in the public services of the Church; and I hold that with regard to this it is almost absurdly irrelevant to dwell on the authorship of the Creed. [See 'Guardian,' February 14, p. 208.] For my own part, I would say that if I were as firmly convinced that every syllable came from the pen of St. Athanasius as I am persuaded of the contrary, that would not in the slightest degree affect my objection to the continued use of the Creed in the services of the Church." [Speech in Convocation. See 'Guardian' of February 14, 1872.] On the other hand, those who uphold the present position of the Creed would not be the least affected by the discovery that every word was composed centuries after St. Athanasius had slept with his fathers. [What, by the way, is the Dean of Westminster's authority for asserting ('The Athanasian Creed,' p. 83) that "the Creed was received and enforced when it was believed to be 'the Creed of St. Athanasius'"? Is there any evidence to show that the compilers of the Prayer Book enjoined the use of the Athanasian Creed because they believed it to have been composed by St. Athanasius?] They regard the authorship of the Creed as a question of considerable literary interest, but of no practical importance whatever. So that if Mr. Ffoulkes's argument were as conclusive as it is manifestly and egregiously inconclusive, the Athanasian Creed would still rest on the prescriptive authority of Christendom for upwards of a thousand years.

Equally irrelevant with the authorship of the Athanasian Creed, as it appears to me, is the question of testing the accuracy of its text by the evidence of ancient manuscripts. In the case of Holy Scripture the testimony of ancient manuscripts is all-important, for the Church is but "the keeper of Holy Writ," and even an cumenical Council would have no authority to retain in the inspired Canon any passage that was clearly proved to be an interpolation. But the case of a Creed is altogether different. If the original manuscript of the Athanasian Creed were discovered, and were found to differ widely from the received text, it would not at all follow that the Creed ought to be amended into harmony with the manuscript. The Church accepts or rejects a disputed verse in the Bible on the ground of its being or not being an integral part of the original record; that consideration, and that only, suffices to decide the matter. But the Church sanctions a Creed on the ground of its expressing her mind on the points with which it deals. And therefore if she takes up a form of words, and authorizes their use as a confession of faith, what matters it whether that form of words is, or is not, in agreement with ancient manuscripts? All that we have to consider is whether it is in truth the Creed which the Church has sanctioned. Grant, for the sake of argument, that it has been altered and enlarged. What then? So has the Apostles' Creed. Yet who would venture to propose any mutilation of the latter on the ground of its present form differing from some newly-discovered manuscript?

But we are told that the Athanasian Creed does not rest on Church authority at all, inasmuch as it has never received the sanction of a General Council. Are we to understand that all who object to the Creed would be satisfied if it could be proved to rest on the authority of a General Council? If they would not, the objection is not a sincere one; it is merely an argumentum ad hominem, intended to damage their opponents, but having no value in the eyes of those who use it. I am far from saying that arguments ad hominem are inadmissible in controversy; but in a discussion of this solemn nature it would certainly be convenient if writers on either side would restrict themselves as much as possible to arguments of which they would admit the force if they were used against them.

But, after all, it does not follow that the Athanasian Creed is deficient in authority because it lacks the direct sanction of a General Council. That argument would prove too much. It would be as fatal to the Apostles' as to the Athanasian Creed, and would even invalidate the authority of some parts of Holy Scripture. For the Bible, though appealed to in a general way, has never received the imprimatur of an cumenical Council book by book. General Councils meet for the purpose of condemning errors or settling disputed points; but it would be superfluous to call a General Council for the purpose of authorizing admitted truths and sanctioning points which were not disputed. If the Athanasian Creed were really so contrary to the spirit of the Gospel as its opponents would have us believe, we may be very sure that the mind of the Church would long ago have been declared against it.

Another argument against the Athanasian Creed is so extraordinary that I must quote it in the very words of one of its sponsors. "The recitation of this Creed," says the present Dean of Canterbury, "is a violation of Church principles, and condemned in the severest terms by the highest ecclesiastical authority. For the Church of England professes to receive the four first General Councils as next in authority to Holy Scripture, and accordingly the bishops of the whole Anglican Communion at the recent Lambeth Conference affirmed that they received the faith as defined by these Councils. But the Council of Constantinople in its seventh canon, and that of Chalcedon in the Definition of the Faith appended to its Acts, expressly forbid 'the composing, exhibiting, producing, or teaching of any other Creed.' For this they give a sufficient reason, namely, that the Nicene Creed, as finally settled at Constantinople, 'teaches completely the perfect doctrine concerning the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and fully explains the Incarnation of the Lord.' To guard more carefully against the imposition of new Creeds, they command that every bishop or clergyman so offending should be deposed, and every layman anathematized."

The first remark I have to make on this singular argument is that, if it can be proved to be valid, all the bishops and clergy of the Church of England, including Dr. Payne Smith, ought to be instantly deposed, "and every layman anathematized;" and this, not merely for using the Athanasian Creed, but for the additional offence of using the Constantinopolitan Creed, as they always do in the Communion Service. For it so happens that the Third General Council, that of Ephesus, prohibited the use of any other Creed than that of Nicæa in terms as stringent and peremptory as those in which the Fourth Council prohibited any other Creed than that of Constantinople.

The Ephesine fathers "decreed that it should be unlawful for any man to propose, or subscribe, or make any other Creed, but what had been resolved upon by the holy fathers assembled at Nice, with the Holy Ghost." And they went on to add that "they who dare to compose another Creed, or to introduce it, or offer it to them who are disposed to be converted to the knowledge of the truth from heathenism or Judaism, or any heresy whatsoever, should be deposed, if bishops, from the Episcopate; if priests, from the priesthood; and if laymen, that they should be anathematized."

It is not, I repeat, "the Nicene Creed as settled at Constantinople," but the Nicene Creed as settled at Nicæa, which is fenced round with these terrible safe-guards. There is no room for doubt on this point, for the Nicene Creed, properly so called, is not only expressly mentioned in the canon, but is quoted at full length without the additions made to it by the Council of Constantinople in 381. If therefore the Dean of Canterbury's argument holds good, we are landed in this pleasant dilemma: we come under the anathema of the Council of Chalcedon for using "any other Creed" than "the Nicene Creed as settled at Constantinople," and we come under the anathema of the Council of Ephesus for using "any other Creed" than the "Nicene Creed as" not "settled at Constantinople." [Another inference from Dr. Payne Smith's argument is, that the anathemas which were appended to the original Nicene Creed ought to be still appended to it. If the prohibition against the use of "any other Creed" is directed against any expansion of the Creed, much more must it be directed against any curtailment of it. The Dean of Canterbury does not appear to be alive to the proverbial danger of playing with edged tools.]

Surely an argument which involves a reductio ad absurdum of so glaring a character as this refutes itself, and the wonder is that two Deans, who have filled respectively the Regius chairs of Divinity and Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford, should have committed themselves to so transparent a sophism. It is obvious that by the phrase "any other Creed" is not meant any orthodox addition to the Creed, either of Nicæa or Constantinople, but any different Creed--different in the sense of containing alien doctrine. The fathers of the Ephesine Council meant precisely what St. Paul meant when he anathematized all who should "preach any other Gospel" than that which the Galatians had received from him. In fact, it is not another Creed, but "another faith" which is forbidden. Any other interpretation would not only make the Fourth General Council contradict the Third, but would, in addition, lay such a yoke on the Church throughout all ages as even a General Council is not competent to impose. Neither the Fathers of Ephesus nor those of Chalcedon could foresee the needs of the Church throughout all time, and they had as little authority as they had inclination to forbid the imposition of a new Creed if circumstances required it. To add to the confession of the Church's faith is not to add to the faith, for the faith admits of no addition. The Athanasian Creed is therefore not "another faith," but a fuller confession of the very faith which the Third and Fourth General Councils sought to guard by forbidding the substitution of any other. Besides, it is clear from the terms of the canon on which the Deans of Canterbury and Westminster rely that it was not the Church collectively which was forbidden to impose new Creeds, but only private individuals, who, of course, have no authority to impose any Creed, however orthodox, other than that which the Church has enjoined.

Another argument against the use of the Athanasian Creed in the public services of our Church, is founded on the allegation that "it is never recited in a mixed congregation in any other Church than our own." ['The Athanasian Creed,' by the Dean of Westminster, p. 84. See also his speech in Convocation, 'Guardian,' May 1, p. 579.] If this assertion were ever so true, I am not sure that it would much strengthen the cause in behalf of which it has been enlisted. For granting, for the sake of argument, that the Athanasian Creed "is never recited in a mixed congregation in any other Church than our own," it is undeniable that the clergy of the Church of Rome are bound to recite it, on an average, about twenty-two times a year. But the proposal of the party of whom the Dean of Westminster is the most conspicuous champion is to relieve both clergy and laity from all obligation to read the Athanasian Creed at all. The argument would have some force if the proposal were to place the Creed on the same footing in the Church of England as it occupies in the Church of Rome; it loses its point altogether when urged in favour of degrading the Creed to a place below that which it occupies either in the Western or Eastern Church.

There has been a good deal of controversy as to the exact place occupied by the Athanasian Creed in the Church of Rome, and some eminent members of that Church, whom I have consulted on the point, do not give me precisely the same answer. I believe, however, that Dr. Newman has given a sufficiently clear statement of the case in the following passage, which I have his permission for quoting, in a letter which he has kindly written to me on the subject:--

"First, you must recollect we have nothing answering to the Anglican Prayer Book with you--no common prayer. Devotions are in great measure left to the private judgment of the individual. As to the Breviary, it is not, properly speaking, congregational at all. It is the solemn prayer of the clergy, the united prayer, said by each separately from the impracticabil-ity of saying it together, though such union is recommended, and actually said by them together in chapter, collegiate churches, monastic bodies, &c.

"Such public service the laity may attend, may join in,--in some countries, as in France, have been used to join in. But they might come to church while it went on, and say their own private prayers under (so to say) the shadow and in the power of it, joining in and with the Latin service, but using the while their own private prayers, under the feeling that all Christians are one, and have substantially the same words and petitions, and that their hearts are all open to God. They would join with the choir, as being helped by them and helping them also."

It is also true, as Dr. Newman informs me, that the book of private devotions, which has the special sanction of the Holy See (I mean the Raccoltà), does not contain the Athanasian Creed. "But further," I am quoting Dr. Newman, "in each country the local ecclesiastical authority not exactly provides, but sanctions, certain devotions. Hence we have various popular prayer books, of a miscellaneous character, containing prayers and offices for all classes of the faithful, and for all circumstances, such as the Garden of the Soul, &c. Now as to the French and Irish prayer books, some of them, as the Key of Heaven and the Ursuline Manual, do not contain the Athanasian Creed; but the English, all of them, do, viz. the Garden of the Soul, which dates from the time of Bishop Challoner, a century ago; the Golden Manual, the Crown of Jesus, and the Path of Heaven. The Athanasian Creed is in all these popular books, and the use, or at least the perusal and knowledge, of that Creed, is part of our good English tradition."

This "good English tradition," I am sorry to find, is being encroached upon by foreign devotions of a less masculine type, and in some recent editions of the Garden of the Soul the Athanasian Creed is not to be found. I am told, however, that it is not omitted because there is any objection to it on the part either of the clergy or laity of the Roman Communion; it is simply elbowed out by devotions of a more emotional character. I may add, further, that more than one Roman Catholic priest, who have every right to speak on behalf of the sober catholicism of their Church, not only regret the encroachment on their old English devotions by foreign rivals, but would, moreover, be very glad to see the Athanasian Creed used generally in the public services of their Church. They believe, so one of them told me the other day, that their people suffer a great loss by seldom or never hearing the Creed in congregational worship; and there are proposals in some quarters to insert it into the office of Benediction. [See M. Michaud's letter in the 'Guardian' of May 1, in which he laments the disuse of the Athanasian Creed among the Catholic laity of France, and traces it to the development of Ultramontanism.] So that at the very time some English churchmen are agitating for the extrusion of the Creed from the public service of our Church, some of the thoughtful members of the Church of Rome are proposing to restore it to the public service of their communion.

What, then, is the exact position occupied by the Athanasian Creed in the Churches of England and Rome respectively? In the Church of England it is appointed to be used, at Morning Prayer, thirteen times a year; but out of these thirteen days there are only four on which the laity generally attend Morning Prayer. This must be qualified, however, by the admission that of the remaining nine days two, on an average in the course of the year, fall on a Sunday; so that the laity, as a body, are obliged to listen to or join in the recitation of the Athanasian Creed six times a year. The clergy are, of course, under obligation to use it thirteen times in the year, and the Eighth Article, moreover, binds them to accept its statements as implicitly as they do those of the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene. I am aware that this has been questioned of late, especially by the Bishop of St. David's, and I shall presently give some reasons why I think that his Lordship's opinions on that part of the subject cannot be sustained. But if they could be sustained they would weaken his case instead of strengthening it. He maintains, if I understand him aright, that absolute certainty is impossible in the sphere of religious truth; that contradictory statements in matters of faith are therefore equally admissible; and that consequently the "most certain warrants of Holy Scripture" predicated of the Athanasian Creed in the Eighth Article merely mean such warrants as appear certain to particular minds, and need not preclude a subscriber to the Article from conscientiously believing that the testimony of Holy Scripture is really against the Athanasian Creed.

This line of reasoning reduces subscription to a solemn mockery, but it also takes the sting out of the grievance which the Bishop of St. David's finds in the compulsory use of the Athanasian Creed. For if solemn language may be interpreted in the elastic sense for which the bishop contends, I do not see why the man who is obliged to recite the Athanasian Creed is in a worse case than the man who is obliged to sign the Eighth Article. The conscience which can subscribe without a twinge the proposition that the statements of the Athanasian Creed "may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture," and yet at the same time believes the contrary, need not, surely, be grievously shocked by the public recitation of a document to which he has already given his explicit sanction with a mental reservation. The Bishop of St. David's theory of interpretation has been compared with that of Dr. Newman in Tract XC. But there is really no analogy between the two cases. Dr. Newman contended that the popular interpretation of the Articles was not, or at least need not be, their real meaning, taking all the facts of the case into consideration; that, for instance, the doctrine of Purgatory condemned in one of the Articles does not mean every doctrine of purgatory, but only the "Romish doctrine." The reasons adduced by Dr. Newman in support of this view appear to me conclusive, and they have since been justified by the Judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the case of 'Essays and Reviews.' It is there decided that Mr. Wilson's doctrine of Purgatory is not inconsistent with faithful subscription to the Twenty-second Article, and the present Archbishop of Canterbury "is glad that the expression of such a hope" in Purgatory "is settled not to be actually punishable by the laws of our Church." [See Preface to his 'Sermons on the Word of God and the Ground of Faith.']

This is very different from the Bishop of St. David's theory of interpretation. He maintains "that it will be found possible to prove by most certain warrant of Holy Scripture two propositions which are in direct conflict one with the other," and that therefore a subscriber to the Eighth Article may conscientiously maintain that the Athanasian Creed cannot "be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture," and further, that "those portions which are the very essence of the Creed . . . ought never to have been made articles of faith." [See his speech in Convocation, 'Guardian,' February 14, p. 208.] To compare this view of subscription with that advanced in Tract XC. is simply absurd. The one maintains that the Thirty-nine Articles are historically and grammatically capable of a catholic interpretation; the other asserts that two distinctly contradictory interpretations of the Articles are equally tenable, since truth is relative to the individual, and not absolute in itself. In other words, the theory of the Bishop of St. David's is founded on Pyrrhonism pure and simple, while that of Dr. Newman merely maintains that the popular gloss on the Thirty-nine Articles does not represent their true meaning. I cannot help expressing my regret that the Bishop of St. David's should have been a party to the hounding of Dr. Newman out of the Church of England a quarter of a century ago for putting forth a view of the Thirty-nine Articles which is mildness itself compared with that which the Bishop himself has now propounded.

But to return to the place which the Athanasian Creed occupies respectively in the Churches of England and of Rome. In the Church of England the laity, as a body, are obliged to recite or listen to it about six times a year. The clergy are bound to recite it thirteen times a year, and to acknowledge, in addition, that it "ought thoroughly to be received and believed," because it "may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture."

In the Church of Rome the clergy are bound to say the Athanasian Creed about twenty-two times a year. The office in which it occurs is, in theory, an office for united worship, and is used as such in cathedral, collegiate, and monastic establishments. Practically, however, the laity seldom attend the office of Prime, and have, indeed, but few opportunities of doing so; and consequently they rarely hear the Athanasian Creed in the service of the Church. On the other hand, there is no question in the Church of Rome as to the Athanasian Creed being untrue or uncharitable, or unsuited for lay use. On the contrary, it is found in nearly all the books of devotion recommended by the Church for the use of the laity in this country. "That it is the authoritative word of the Church," Dr. Newman tells me, "and the infallible answer of the Church to all her children who ask questions on the subject of which it speaks, is quite certain."

In both the Roman and Anglican Churches, therefore, the Athanasian Creed holds at present an authoritative and a dogmatic position. In the Church of Rome the use of the Creed is binding on the clergy with far greater stringency than it is on ours, but the use of it is not imperative on the laity at all. [Nor is it on our laity. The only Creed which is, properly speaking, imposed on our laity is the Apostles' Creed.] In both Churches it is a dogmatic standard of appeal for clergy and laity on the questions of which it treats; but it is evident that it would lose its dogmatic position in the Church of England if any of the chief proposals lately made respecting it should be carried into effect.

1. The proposal most in vogue during the past twelvemonth, and which has been fathered on the Bishop of Winchester, is that the Creed should be taken out of the Prayer Book and buried among the Thirty-nine Articles. This proposal was advocated at a public meeting in St. James's Hall, by Mr. Cowper Temple, the Bishop of Exeter, Dean Stanley, Dr. Barry, Dr. Miller, and others, and was carried by a large majority. There is no need, however, to discuss it now. It found no advocate in Convocation, even Dean Stanley expressed his contempt for it afterwards, and its putative parent has scornfully disowned it.

2. Another proposal is to make the Creed optional, either by putting "may" instead of "shall" in the rubric which prescribes its use; or by leaving it to the discretion of the officiating minister to use it on the appointed days instead of the Apostles' Creed. This is a trifle less degrading to the Creed than its banishment among the Thirty-nine Articles; but the proposal is both illogical and mischievous. If the Creed "savours of heresy," as Canon Swainson asserts, or is "avowedly heretical," as the Dean of Westminster assures us, or is terribly uncharitable and unchristian, as all who agitate for its abolition declare, it is surely a strange remedy to leave every parish priest in England free to use it or not, as his fancy dictates. Would the laity who object to the Creed consider it less objectionable if it were imposed upon them by the private judgment of a single clergyman rather than by the authority of the Church? I have naturally a great respect for the clergy of the Church of England; but I protest against our being empowered to impose our own opinions as articles of faith on the laity. For it is evident that under an optional system the clergyman who read and he who omitted the Creed would alike be imposing their own opinions on the laity, and the Creed would thus be robbed of all dogmatic authority. It would no longer be what Dr. Newman says it is in the Church of Rome, "the authoritative word of the Church, and her infallible answer to all her children who ask questions on the subjects of which it speaks." I can now refer to the Athanasian Creed as an authoritative exposition of the faith; but I can do so no longer if the Church of England should authorize its disuse on the ground of some of its clauses being both false and unchristian. And the proposal would prove to be not less mischievous than illogical. In truth it would be difficult to devise a plan better calculated to set clergy and laity by the ears. If an ill-instructed layman here and there sits down and shuts his book with a bang when the Creed is said on the authority of the Church, what would be the measure of his indignation when it was said on the private authority of the parson? The optional use of the Creed would, in fact, introduce the seeds of strife into almost every parish in England; a curious result certainly from the labours of a Royal Commission which was appointed for the express purpose of bringing about a more uniform observance of the rubrics of the Prayer Book.

3. The third proposal is to mutilate the Athanasian Creed--to cut out of it the clauses which give offence to some persons. This is a proposal which, I hold, lies absolutely beyond the competency of the Church of England. At present, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, the Athanasian Creed is an exposition of the Catholic faith, accepted as such by the whole of Christendom. Mutilate it, and it ceases to be the Athanasian Creed; it becomes a new and a different confession of faith. All that has been said about the "damnatory clauses" being only "the setting" of the Creed is mere rubbish. They belong to its essence, and are, in fact, implied in all Creeds. Why is any Creed necessary if belief in it is, after all, a matter of indifference? And belief in it must be a matter of indifference if the principle of the "damnatory clauses" is repudiated. I repeat, therefore, that the excision of the "damnatory clauses" would make the Athanasian Creed a new Creed; and the advocates of mutilation are thus landed in a strange inconsistency. They object to the Creed because it is not older, as they think, than the time of Charlemagne; and by way of remedy they propose to make it as modern as the time of Queen Victoria. They wish to abolish it because it is not old enough; and they propose to retain it on condition that it can be made less old than it is! They think it ought not to be used in the public services of the Church, though it has the approval of Christendom, because it has not the express sanction of an umenical Council; but they think it would be right to use it in the public services of the Church if it were mutilated into a shape which has never been sanctioned by any portion of the Catholic Church.

4. The fourth proposal, and the last which I shall notice here, is that of leaving the Athanasian Creed as it is in the Prayer Book, but abolishing the rubric which prescribes its use. This, of course, would be equivalent to a prohibition against its use; and if it is forbidden to be used, I see no reason why it should be retained in the Prayer Book at all.

I have now noticed the only proposals which, as far as I know, have been seriously entertained by those who dislike the Athanasian Creed, and it is obvious that the effect of adopting any of them would be to deprive the Creed of all dogmatic authority, and to degrade it below the place which it occupies throughout the rest of Christendom. In the Church of Rome and in the Eastern Church the Athanasian Creed is acknowledged as a dogmatic rule of faith. It was adopted as such by the English Church at the Reformation, and also by all continental reformers. "Lutherans, Zuinglians, and Calvinists, vied with each other in their adoption of the Athanasian Creed." [Palmer's 'Treatise on the Church of Christ,' i., p. 98.] What is now proposed, therefore, is not to put the Creed on the same footing which it occupies in other Communions, but to put an indignity upon it which neither the Church of Rome nor the Eastern Church would endure for a moment. And yet we are seriously asked to believe that the degradation or mutilation of the Athanasian Creed would greatly facilitate the reunion of Christendom. The difference between ourselves and the Church of Rome--and the same may be said of the Eastern Church--in the use of the Athanasian Creed is a difference of method, not of principle. [The Senior Professor of Theology in Maynooth College, Dr. Murray, allows me to state, on his authority, that "the Church (of Rome) is fully committed to the perfect purity of each doctrinal statement in the Athanasian Creed, just as much as if that purity had been defined by a General Council."] I quote Dr. Newman again: "It is no sound argument that you should remove it from your Common Prayer because we haven't it in our Common Prayer, for we have no united vocal Common Prayer. You might as well say that you should leave out the Ten Commandments because we have not the Ten Commandments read in Church; for we have no imperative Common Prayers such as yours. The Athanasian Creed is imposed upon our clergy." This pertinent observation is equally true of the Eastern Church. It has "no united vocal Common Prayer." But the Athanasian Creed is in the Horologium; and it is in books of devotion recommended for the use of the laity. Clearly, therefore, no valid argument for the disuse of the Athanasian Creed can be drawn from the practice of the Greek or Roman Church, and all that has been spoken or written on that point may be dismissed as irrelevant rhetoric.

I am far from asserting, however, that under other circumstances, it might not be advisable to modify in some degree the obligation to use the Athanasian Creed; as, for instance, among some of our mining population, who "are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat." In such cases I see no reason, abstractedly, why the Ordinary should not be empowered to dispense an incumbent from the obligation to use the Creed till such time as his people were sufficiently instructed to digest "strong meat." [I am obliged to say that I offer even this suggestion with considerable diffidence; for it is a very remarkable fact that every missionary bishop in Convocation insisted on the value of the Athanasian Creed even in the case of neophytes. Bishop Claughton found it useful among the natives of Ceylon, Bishop M'Dougall among his Chinese converts in Borneo, and the Bishop of Lichfield among the Maories of New Zealand. The late Bishop Cotton, too, having gone to India with some prejudices against the use of the Athanasian Creed, found it so valuable as an antidote against the various forms of Oriental theosophy, that he became one of the most earnest advocates for its use in congregational worship.--See Appendix, Note A.] But no concession which did not go farther than this would satisfy those who dislike the Creed, and any concession would certainly be misunderstood at this time. The most conspicuous assailants of the Creed have been very careful to assure us that they do not object to it because they think it too strong meat for such as are "babes" in religious knowledge, but because they think it untrue and uncharitable. This was the ground taken up by Dean Stanley, whom even those who differ from him most must admire for the fearless honesty with which he always accepts the full consequences of his premisses. He declared the other day, in his place in Convocation, that the "damnatory clauses" in the Athanasian Creed were "absolutely false;" and in his little bookÝ on the subject he affirms emphatically that the Athanasian Creed, "so far from recommending the doctrine of the Trinity to unwilling minds, is the chief obstacle in the way of the acceptance of that doctrine." ['The Athanasian Creed,' p. 85. Dr. Swainson uses language equally strong and somewhat more offensive in his speech in Convocation. "With regard to the last clause, he had no hesitation in saying that it was false, and it was time for it to be altered. Whatever explanations were put upon it, they were not the meaning which the words conveyed. They were explaining away, and a thing that wanted explaining away ought not to be kept This was not a time to speak smoothly, and therefore he would say it was because he held the clause to be, literally speaking, untrue, that he objected to hear in the documents of the Church of England expressions which required such explanations."--'Guardian,' April 24, p. 535. Since Dr. Swainson thinks that "this is not a time to speak smoothly," I hope he will forgive me for asking, who is Dr. Swainson that he should lay down the law in this dictatorial manner, making his own mind, forsooth! the rule and measure of all human intelligence? When the intellect of Dr. Swainson is on one side and the intellect of Christendom for centuries on the other, I hope it is not very presumptuous to believe that Dr. Swainson's interpretation of the Athanasian Creed is possibly an erroneous one.]

To make any concession at the present moment, therefore, would be to acknowledge the justice of the Dean's strictures, and to proclaim to the world that the Athanasian Creed contains propositions which are "absolutely false," and an obstacle in the way of those who would otherwise willingly accept the doctrine of the Trinity.

But it is worth while, in passing, to examine the Dean of Westminster's startling statement a little more closely. He asserts that the Athanasian Creed, "so far from recommending the doctrine of the Trinity to unwilling minds, is the chief obstacle in the way of the acceptance of that doctrine." Doubtless the Dean knows what he says, and must have facts to support him. But I am inclined to think that his experience is a very exceptional one. Mine, at all events, is of a contrary character. I have been told by more than one Nonconformist that they have found the Athanasian Creed a great help in laying hold of the doctrine of the Trinity. A great deal depends, however, on the meaning which we attach to the word Trinity, and I do not feel quite sure that I understand the sense in which the Dean uses it in the above passage. "Emmanuel Swedenborg," he tells us, "and his followers, who acknowledge no Person in the Trinity but that of 'the Divine Man Jesus Christ,' are yet ardent admirers of the Athanasian Creed, and claim its sanction for their doctrine, and are ready to 'demonstrate that all its contents, even to the very words, are agreeable to the truth, provided that for a Trinity of Persons we understand a Trinity of Person'"--provided, that is, we suffer the doctrine of the Trinity to evaporate in the shadowy counterfeit of it which Sabellianism offers in its place. ['The Athanasian Creed,' p. 22. The italics are the Dean's.] "With this reservation," the Dean of Westminster goes on to say, quoting White's 'Life of Swedenborg,' "the mind of a Swedenborgian may traverse the clauses of that arduous dogma with joyful assent and consent." Doubtless; for the reservation in question gives us, not a Trinity of Persons, but a triune manifestation of one Person. No doubt the Athanasian Creed "is the chief obstacle in the way of the acceptance of that doctrine." But the doctrine of the Trinity which the Dean of Westminster and I hold is very different. We believe that the Trinity of the Christian Creed does not mean a succession of characters assumed by one Person in the sphere of time, but a distinction of Persons whose relations to each other are coincident and eternal. I wonder the Dean did not see that his quotation from Swedenborgian theology is, in fact, a striking tribute to the value of the Athanasian Creed as a bulwark of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Swedenborg could accept the "arduous dogma" of the Trinity in a Sabellian sense, "provided" the Athanasian Creed were abolished or altered. Just so. And therefore I trust that the Athanasian Creed will neither be abolished nor altered. To do either, in response to this challenge, would be to abandon the faith and commit the Church of England to Sabellianism.

I cannot see much in the argument that the Athanasian Creed ought to be disused because some distinguished names have at different times objected to it, for a much larger number of names still more distinguished could easily be marshalled on the other side. Still, if the Athanasian Creed is to be thrown down by having great names flung at it, care should be taken that none but fairly legitimate names are summoned for that purpose; and this caution is especially necessary in the case of persons who are no longer on earth to defend themselves. The Dean of Westminster has, I think, been a little hasty in this respect. He has quoted Chillingworth's strong language in 1635, namely, that "the damning clauses in St. Athanasius' Creed are most false, and also in a high degree schismatical and presumptuous;" but he has forgotten to add that Chillingworth practically retracted this opinion three years afterwards. In the year 1635 Chillingworth refused to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, partly on account of the "damnatory clauses" in the Athanasian Creed, and partly because he did not think the Fourth Commandment binding on Christians. But, "upon more mature consideration," as W aterland says, "he happily got over his difficulties and subscribed," in the following terms:--

Ego Gulielmus Chillingworth, Clericus, in Artibus Magister, ad Cancellariatum Ecclesiæ Cathedralis Beatæ Mariæ Sarum, una cum Præbenda de Brinworth, alias Brickleworth, in Comitatu Northampton Petriburgensis Diæceseos in eadem Ecclesia fundata, et eidem Cancellariatui annexa, admittendus et instituendus, omnibus hisce Articulis, et Singulis in eis contentis, volens et ex animo subscribo, et consensum meum eisdem prbeo. Vicesimo die Julii, 1638. Gulielmus Chillingworth.

It is a mistake, therefore, to quote Chillingworth against the Athanasian Creed. If he is to be cited at all, he is rather a witness for the defence, unless it be maintained that he was a hypocrite when he signed the Articles, in which case his opinion would be worthless on either side. For surely the adhesion, ex animo and "after mature consideration," of a man who condemned the Athanasian Creed in such unqualified language, is a much more striking testimony to its value than that of one who never doubted. If Chillingworth had never retracted his adverse opinion, opposed as it is to the consensus of Christendom, that fact would not influence my judgment in the slightest degree. But those who think much of his passionate invective against the Athanasian Creed ought to be still more impressed by his subsequent acceptance of it volens et ex animo. Is it not possible, moreover, that if they follow his example and enter on a dispassionate and "mature consideration" of the Creed, they, too, may be able in the course of three years to regard it with different feelings? And this is one good reason why Convocation should have decided against precipitate legislation.

Another name which the Dean of Westminster presses into his service is that of Baxter. It is not an authoritative name on such a subject; but, quantum valeat, the real drift of his testimony is rather against the Dean of Westminster than for him. It is true he had an objection to the "damnatory clauses," but he would have been quite satisfied with such an explanatory note as, for instance, the Oxford Professors have suggested. His words are, "the damnatory clauses excepted, or modestly expounded, I embrace the Creed commonly called Athanasius' as the best explanation of the Trinity." And elsewhere, "I unfeignedly account the doctrine of the Trinity the sum and kernel of the Christian religion, as expressed in our baptism and Athanasius' Creed, the best exposition of it I ever read." I humbly submit, therefore, that Baxter cannot fairly be quoted, any more than Chillingworth, by those who would banish the Athanasian Creed from the public services of the Church. It is to be observed, too, that this eminent leader of Nonconformity found the Athanasian Creed the reverse of "an obstacle in the way of his acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity."

Jeremy Taylor is undoubtedly a greater name than Baxter or even Chillingworth, and both the Dean of Westminster and the Bishop of St. David's have accordingly not failed to invoke his aid against the Athanasian Creed. It may be questioned, however, whether his alliance in this matter is not more damaging than his hostility would have been. For charm of diction, affluence of imagination, and the fervour of his devotional writings, Jeremy Taylor will always occupy a distinguished place in our literature. But whoever wants accuracy of theological thought and expression must seek it elsewhere than in the works of Jeremy Taylor. He had something like a passion for running his head against all articles of faith which placed any check on the wanderings of an unusually discursive imagination, and as a controversialist he was not always very scrupulous; nor had he, when the mood was upon him, any objection to "damnatory clauses" of his own, in comparison with which those of the Athanasian Creed are mild indeed. ["Jeremy Taylor, in two singularly unrhetorical and unimpassioned chapters, deliberately enumerates the most atrocious acts of cruelty in human history, and says that they are surpassed by the tortures inflicted by the Deity. A few instances will suffice. Certain persons 'put rings of iron, stuck fast with sharp points of needles, about their arms and feet, in such a manner as the prisoners could not move without wounding themselves; then they compassed them about with fire, to the intent that, standing still they might be burned alive, and if they stirred the sharp points pierced their flesh What, then, shall be the torment of the damned where they burn eternally without dying, and without the possibility of removing? . . . . Alexander, the son of Hyrcanus, caused eight hundred to be crucified, and whilst they were yet alive caused their wives and children to be murdered before their eyes, that so they might not die once, but many deaths. This rigour shall not be wanting in hell. . . . Mezentius tied a living body to the dead until the putrefied exhalations had killed the living. . . . What is this in respect of hell, when each body of the damned is more loathsome and unsavoury than a million of dead dogs? . . . . Bonaventure says, if one of the damned were brought into this world it were sufficient to infect the whole earth We are amazed to think of the inhumanity of Phalaris, who roasted men alive in his brazen bull. That was a joy in respect of that fire of hell The torment. . .
comprises as many torments as the body of man has joints, sinews, arteries, &c., being caused by that penetrating and real fire, of which this temporal fire is but a painted fire What comparison will there be between burning for an hundred years' space, and to be burning without interruption as long as God is God?' ('Contemplations on the State of Man,' book ii., ch. 6-7.) "--Lecky's 'History of European Morals,' ii., p. 239.] A writer who could characterize the Arian controversy contemptuously as a dispute about a vowel, and who held himself at liberty to accept or reject the Nicene Creed, is not likely to be owned as an authority on matters of faith by those who believe, as the Church throughout the world has always believed, that the very life of Christianity depended on the definition of Nicæa. To say that it makes no difference whether we consider the Son as omoousioV or as omoiousioV with the Father, is simply to say that it matters not whether we believe in the Trinity or not. For if the Son is not consubstantial with the Father, He is either a creature or another God: a creature, if He is of a created substance; another God, if His substance is uncreated, yet not identical with the Father's.

With his looseness of view on this point, it is no wonder that Jeremy Taylor wrote disparagingly of the Nicene as well as of the Athanasian Creed; but surely the very fact of his having done so ought to have disqualified him as a witness in this controversy. The Bishop of St. David's, however, is of a different opinion. He thinks that Jeremy Taylor "is a person whose opinions are entitled to very considerable respect;" and it must be owned that the respect which his Lordship does pay to them is even more than "considerable." He actually seems to have persuaded himself that the single authority of Jeremy Taylor is sufficient to outweigh the decision of a General Council. Nor is this a mere hasty opinion uttered on the spur of the moment in the heat of debate, for the Bishop repeats it deliberately in a letter to the 'Guardian' of April 10. "In my speech in Convocation," he says, "I drew attention to the fact that, in Jeremy Taylor's view, it was a matter open to very grave doubt whether the Council of Nicæa was justified, in point of discretion, in framing any new Creed at all. He himself clearly thought that it would have been better to have 'kept the very words of Scripture,' and not to have introduced such a term as omoousioV." No doubt that was Jeremy Taylor's opinion, and for that very reason it appears to me "a matter open to very grave doubt whether" an opinion so subversive of the dogmatic position of the Church of England ought to have been quoted with approbation by a Bishop of that Church. The plain truth seems to be that the Bishop of St. David's has relied too much on the native acuteness of his intellect, and has not taken the trouble to acquaint himself with the real attitude of the Church of England in respect to the authority of the General Councils. His off-hand reference to the Twenty-first Article proves this. "If," he says, "the Article which requires us to believe that 'General Councils may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining to God,' sanctions such a judgment in a Creed promulgated by a General Council, much more must we be at liberty to hold a like opinion with regard to the composition of any private Doctor, even if it was Athanasius himself."

With the leave of the Bishop of St. David's, I humbly venture to deny that the Twenty-first Article gives any such sanction as he imagines to Jeremy Taylor's flippant "judgment on a Creed promulgated by a General Council." The truth is, "General Council" is an equivocal phrase. It covers the Creed of Nicæa; but it may also cover the Creed of Ariminum. A General Council, in its idea, is an assembly in which all the Sees of Christendom are represented. But no such Council has ever taken place. In the era of the Arian controversy the number of Sees in East and West together was about two thousand, and of these only a moiety were represented in the first six General Councils, whose decrees are accepted by the Church universal. The Council of Nicæa numbered only three hundred and eighteen Bishops, that of Ephesus about two hundred, and that of Constantinople only one hundred and fifty; in other words, the number of bishops present at the first three cumenical Councils respectively were about one-thirteenth, one-ninth, and one-sixth of the whole Episcopate. On the other hand, several Councils whose decisions have been rejected by the Church were much more representative as regards numbers than most of those whose decrees, as the Church of England declares, "are allowed and received of all men." The Arianising Council of Ariminum was attended by four hundred bishops, and Eutychianism prevailed in a Council consisting of above six hundred.

It is evident, therefore, that we cannot predicate inerrancy beforehand of any Council; for it is not the number of bishops present, but the consent of the Church dispersed throughout the world, that confers on the decrees of any Council an cumenical character.

It is of course morally impossible that the collective mind of Christendom, if it found a truly representative organ, could go astray in a matter of faith; for otherwise our Lord's promise would fail, "and the gates of hell" would indeed "prevail against" His Church. But whether the collective mind of the Church at large is fairly represented in any particular Council can only be ascertained by the consent of the Church afterwards. A Council whose decrees, on being made known throughout the world, are accepted by the Church universal as the expression of its faith, receives thereby an cumenical character, and its decrees are universally binding. On the other hand, a Council, however general in the composition and number of its members, whose decrees fail to command this universal assent, is not really cumenical; and it may be truly said of it not only that it "may err," but that it "has erred" in fact.

This is a distinction which is quite familiar to theological students, and I am surprised that the Bishop of St. David's should have overlooked it. "The final authority of proper cumenical synods," says Palmer, "does not arise merely from the number of bishops assembled in them, but from the approbation of the Catholic Church throughout the world; which, having received their decrees, examines them with the respect due to so considerable an authority, compares them with Scripture and Catholic tradition, and by an universal approbation and execution of those decrees, pronounces a final and irrefragable sentence in their favour." ['Treatise on the Church,' ii., p. 151.] This is certainly the view of the Gallican School of Roman Catholic divines. They all declare that the consent of the Church dispersed is necessary to the validity of all conciliar decrees. The following authorities are quoted by Palmer:--

De Barral, Archbishop of Tours, says, "These are facts which prove in an invincible manner that neither the decrees of Popes nor even those of Councils acquire an irrefragable authority except by virtue of the consent of the Universal Church." "The last mark of any Council or assembly's representing truly the Catholic Church," says Bossuet, "is when the whole body of the Episcopate, and the whole society which professes to receive its instructions, approve and receive this Council; this, I say, is the last seal of the authority of this Council, and the infallibility of its decrees." Again, "The Council of Orange . . . was by no means universal. It contained chapters which the Pope had sent. In this Council there were scarcely twelve or thirteen bishops; but because it was received without opposition its decisions are no more disputed than those of the Council of Nice, because everything depends on consent. There were but few bishops of the West in the Council of Nice, there were none in that of Constantinople, none in that of Ephesus, and at Chalcedon only the legates of the Pope; and the same may be said of others. But because all the world consented then or afterwards those decrees are the decrees of the whole world. . . . If we go farther back, Paul of Samosata was condemned only by a particular Council held at Antioch; but because its decree was addressed to all the bishops in the world and received by them (for in this resides the whole force, and without it the mere address would be nothing), this decree is immoveable."

These are specimens of the teaching of the moderate school in the Church of Rome, and Palmer is amply justified in saying that "it is now generally affirmed by Roman Catholic theologians of respectability, after Bossuet, that the only final proof of the cumenicity of a Council is its acceptance by the Universal Church as cumenical; and that this acceptance confers on it such an authority that no defects in its mode of celebration can be adduced afterwards to throw doubt on its judgments." Nor is the distinction here insisted on confined to writers of Bossuet's school. The Ultramontane Bellarmine divides Generalia Concilia into Generalia Concilia approbata, Generalia Concilia reprobata; Generalia Concilia partim approbata, partim reprobata; Generalia Concilia nec manifeste probata, nec manifeste reprobata. [De Conciliis Ecclesiæ,' lib. i., c. 5-8.] So that, in the opinion of Bellarmine, a Council might be "general" and yet err, and he enumerates several General Councils whose decrees have been repudiated by the Church, and which therefore must be considered to have erred.

That this is the sense of the Twenty-first Article is evident, because the Church of England acknowledges, in the Second Book of Homilies, the authority of "those six Councils which were allowed and received of all men." And an Act of Parliament declares that "nothing is to be adjudged heresy but that which heretofore has been so adjudged by the authority of the Canonical Scriptures, or the first four General Councils, or some other General Council, wherein the same hath been declared heresy by the express words of Scripture." [1 Eliz., cap. i., A.D. 1558.] Moreover, in her Canons of 1571, the Church of England expressly enjoins her clergy to be careful "that they never teach aught in a sermon, to be religiously held and believed by the people, but what is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old or New Testament, and which the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have collected from that very doctrine," This Canon was framed nine years after the publication of the Thirty-nine Articles, and by the same hands; and it supplies us therefore with the meaning which the Twenty-first Article bore in the minds of those who composed it. It is clear that they accepted the authority of "those six General Councils which were allowed and received of all men," as final, and their decrees as irrevocable. In fact, there is no reasonable doubt that the Twenty-first Article was aimed at the Council of Trent, which was then sitting. It was a declaration beforehand that its decrees would not be considered binding by the Church of England. Jeremy Taylor, therefore, in claiming the right of sitting in judgment on the Nicene Council, simply repudiated the authority of the Church from which he received his commission; and the Bishop of St. David's, in backing him up, is amenable to the same observation.

So far I have been dealing with matters which, though imported into the discussion on the Athanasian Creed, do not really touch the essence of the controversy. The Athanasian Creed, after all, is not assailed because its reputed authorship is doubtful or spurious, or because the Church of England makes a more prominent use of it than other Churches, or because various names, great and small, have at different times objected to it, or because its technical language makes it unsuitable for use in mixed congregations, or because it never received the sanction of an cumenical Council; but because it asserts, in language too plain to be misunderstood or explained away, that wilful perversion of the Christian faith is as perilous to men's everlasting interests as wilful transgression of the moral law. The "damnatory clauses" are the real rock of offence, and the assailants of the Creed will be appeased by no concession which stops short either of their excision or of the abrogation of the compulsory use of the Creed. Now, for my own part, I will say frankly that the "damnatory clauses" have never presented the smallest difficulty to my mind. I have always repeated them ex animo and without the least hesitation or compunction; and yet I do not think that my natural disposition is exceptionally cruel or even intolerant; nor do I admit, on the other hand, that I interpret the Creed in any non-natural sense whatever. I apply to it the same rules of interpretation which men in general apply to the Bible or to Blackstone's 'Commentaries,' and I accept it in as literal a sense as the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene. Suffer me then to put down in plain language what I conceive to be the natural and obvious meaning of the so-called "damnatory clauses."

"Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith, which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly."

Terrible words certainly. What do they mean? Unquestionably they must be understood as meaning that an Arian, for example, or Sabellian, or Nestorian or any other proved heretic, "shall perish everlastingly." This is the plain and obvious meaning, and any interpretation short of it must be rejected as absolutely irreconcilable with the language of the Creed. But having admitted so much, I proceed to draw an important distinction. To say "an Arian shall perish everlastingly" is a very different proposition from saying "Arius shall perish everlastingly." And if anyone thinks that this is a subtle distinction, and, in fact, a mere playing with words, we can easily test the validity of my explanation by transferring the question from the region of theology to that of morals. Is there no difference between saying "a murderer shall perish everlastingly" and saying "Marguerite Dixblanc, the Park Lane murderess, shall perish everlastingly." Clearly there is, and everybody admits it. The former is an abstract proposition. It denounces a certain punishment against a certain crime, and the denunciation is in a personal form, since of course a crime necessarily supposes a criminal. But the criminal is denounced quâ criminal, and not quâ man. The crime is personified, and judgment is passed upon it accordingly. Murder is inadmissible in heaven, and therefore no murderer, as such, can be admitted there. But man is a complex being, and we cannot be sure that any specific offence against faith or morals is a true index to his character as a whole. It is the key in which the thoughts habitually move that determines the condition of man as a responsible moral agent, and God alone, Who sees the heart, can know for certain what that key is. The sum total of man's capacities for everlasting life are not necessarily exhausted by the few gross acts incident to social relations or open to human valuation; but it is on such acts alone that human judgments can be passed, as well in the sphere of faith as in that of morals. The Church solemnly warns her children that as there is but one "straight and narrow way that leadeth unto life," wilful deviation from that way leads to perdition; but she does not point to any individual human being and say, "thou art the man, thou shalt perish everlastingly." St. Paul, for example, lays it down as an axiom of the Christian religion that certain gross sins exclude the sinner from heaven. "Ye know that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." This is another way of saying that such offenders "shall perish everlastingly," for exclusion from the kingdom of God is perdition. And this is quite true in the abstract. No unclean person, as such, has any inheritance in the kingdom of God. But did the Apostle intend that his universal proposition should have a particular application? In other words, did he mean that any Ephesian offender in particular should "perish ever-lastingly"? No one will think so. The unclean Ephesian, while unclean, came within the sweep of the Apostle's damnatory proposition. But the man who is unclean to-day may, by the mercy of God, be clean hereafter. The proposition itself is true universally, true for ever; but not till the Books are opened shall we dare to say that it is true of any person in particular.

No one has any difficulty in perceiving that such limitations as these are as natural as they are necessary in the "damnatory clauses" of Christian morality. Why, then, should they be deemed evasive or non-natural when applied to the "damnatory clauses" of the Athanasian Creed? If I may say, without offence, that immorality excludes from the kingdom of God, why should it be considered uncharitable to say that heresy also excludes from the kingdom of God? If wilful resistance to the will of God as revealed in His moral law puts the rebel in jeopardy of everlasting ruin, what ground is there for supposing that we may deprave with impunity the revelation which He has graciously made to us of His eternal nature?

I can declare therefore, without the slightest shock to my feelings of benevolence, that an Arian or Sabellian "shall perish everlastingly;" but I decline peremptorily to express any opinion whatever on the final destiny of either Arius or Sabellius individually. To do so would be a presumptuous and uncharitable exercise of private judgment utterly unsanctioned either by the Church or Holy Scripture. I find it hard to fathom the mysteries of my own being and to forecast its future; and shall I presume to sit in judgment on the soul of a fellow sinner and pronounce sentence of everlasting perdition upon it? Certainly I dare not; and, what is more, the Church of God, "pillar and ground of the truth" though she be, has never presumed to do so in her collective capacity, much less encouraged any of her children to do it. Arius depraved the faith of Christendom; and, in vindication of that faith and of the numberless blessings of which it is the guardian, Arius was justly condemned. But where is Arius now? And in what relation does he stand to that Lord whose Godhead he blasphemed on earth? Have the scales fallen from his eyes, and does he see the truth at last? Were there any extenuating circumstances in his case which the eye of man could not detect, but for which He who "knoweth all things," and "willeth not the death of a sinner," made due allowance? These are questions which I cannot answer, and into which I have no warrant to pry. I leave the solution where the Church has left it--in the hands of an all-wise, all-merciful Saviour. All I presume to say is that a heretic, as such, shall not inherit the kingdom of God; that no one who wilfully rejects the truth can, during his persistence in error, be in a state of salvation. If Arius is not now in the outer darkness, if he has been at last made "meet for the inheritance of the saints in light," he is no longer an Arian; and it is of the Arian, the heretic, the wilful corrupter of the faith, that the Church predicates everlasting perdition, not of the individual soul who bore the name of Arius, and who, for aught I know, may have long since repented of the errors which he taught on earth. This is an answer to those who say that the Athanasian Creed damns Milton to everlasting perdition, because Milton was an Arian. But was he an Arian wilfully and deliberately? That is to say, was the truth placed before him in such a way that he had no valid excuse for rejecting it? And even then was his rejection of it so persistent and habitual as to deprave his character beyond the possibility of recovery? We must be in a position to affirm all this of Milton, or any other heretic, before we can say that he "shall perish everlastingly."

But this explanation is said to be a mere evasion, and, in fact, a simple explaining away of the "damnatory clauses" of the Athanasian Creed. On the contrary, it is a mere truism in morals, and is at least as old as Aristotle, who lays down in the third Book of his Ethics the very principles of the explanatory note suggested by the Oxford Theological Professors. He draws a fundamental distinction between a wrong act done in ignorance, and one done because of ignorance. The latter, he says, excuses from all blame; the former does not, but may, on the contrary, aggravate the offence. "There seems to be a farther difference between acting because of ignorance, and doing a thing in ignorance. Common opinion pronounces that the drunken or the angry man does not act because of ignorance, but in consequence of drunkenness or anger, and yet that he does not act wittingly, but in ignorance. Undoubtedly every depraved man is in ignorance of what he ought to do, and of that from which he ought to refrain; and it is in consequence of this error that men become unjust and altogether bad. But the term involuntary is not meant to cover ignorance of man's true interest. Ignorance which affects moral choice, and ignorance of the universal, are the causes, not of involuntary action, but of wickedness; and it is precisely for this ignorance that wicked men are blamed. The ignorance which causes involuntary action is ignorance of particulars, by which I mean the circumstances and the objects of actions. With regard to these particulars, pity and pardon may be proper; for the man who acts in ignorance of some particular is an involuntary agent." ['Nicom. Eth.,' b. iii., c. i., 14-16.]

"The connection of this somewhat compressed passage," says Sir Alexander Grant, "is as follows. An act is involuntary when caused by ignorance. But ignorance cannot be said to be the cause of an act if the individual be himself the cause of the ignorance. In that case ignorance rather accompanies the act (agnown prattei) than causes it (di agnoian prattei). We See this (1) in instances of temporary oblivion, as from anger or wine; (2) in those of a standing moral ignorance, or oblivion. The only ignorance, then, which is purely external to the agent, so as to take away from him the responsibility of the act, is some chance mistake with regard to the particular facts of the case Aristotle strictly confines ignorance, as a cause of involuntary action, and therefore as excusing from blame, to mistakes about particulars. Before proceeding to this particular ignorance, he separates from it that kind of ignorance which is faulty, because caused by the agent himself. Of this there are two kinds--the temporary, as, for instance, that caused by intoxication; and the permanent, such as that caused by any vicious habit." ['The Ethics of Aristotle,' illustrated with Essays and Notes. By Sir Alexander Grant, Bart., ii., p. 11.]

Aristotle gives the following illustrations of many acts done because of ignorance, and therefore excusable. Æschylus, being summoned before the Areopagus on the charge of having revealed the Mysteries, pleaded that he had never himself been initiated, and therefore was not aware that the Mysteries which he had put into one of his Plays corresponded with the real Mysteries. He had therefore sinned because of ignorance. Again, there may be a mistake about the thing or person made the object of the action; Merope, for example, did not know it was her own son she was killing. Or one may make a mistake in respect to an instrument, such as fancying that one's spear had a button on it. Or the purpose or tendency of the act might be good, as one wishing to save life might, through some misadventure, kill. Or one might strike harder than one wished, and so destroy life.

The difference, therefore, between sinning because of ignorance and sinning in ignorance may be stated briefly thus: The first is strictly an act for which no other ultimate cause but ignorance can be assigned. The second will be found to arise from some other ultimate cause, as when a man kills another in a fit of drunkenness. He was unconscious of what he was doing at the time; but he is responsible nevertheless, if he was the cause of his own drunkenness--that is, if he became drunk voluntarily. A man is responsible for every act which is the result of any moral or mental condition which he might have avoided.

Let us apply these considerations to the case before us. A man is in formal heresy, and therefore culpable, when he wilfully rejects the truth. But this is a state of mind which the Dean of Westminster cannot conceive possible. "It may be safely affirmed," he says, "that, in the only sense in which these words can have any meaning, no one ever did or ever can 'wilfully reject the Catholic faith.'" ['The Athanasian Creed,' pp. 94, 95.] With equal plausibility Socrates maintained that no one could be wilfully vicious. And undoubtedly that opinion has an element of truth in it; for "if a perfectly clear intellectual conviction of the goodness of the end and of the necessity of the means is present to a man he cannot act otherwise than right." [Sir A. Grant's 'Essays on Aristotle,' p. 125.] So, too, it may be said that if a man has a perfectly clear intellectual apprehension of the truth, and to equally clear conviction of the necessity of embracing it, it is morally impossible that he should reject it. But, in both cases, the man may have incapacitated himself for this clear apprehension and conviction by a previous course of misconduct; and therefore he is guilty of wilfully rejecting virtue or truth, though at the moment of rejection his vision of either may be obscure and distorted. For let it be remembered that the intellect, no less than the feelings and affections, is capable of contracting bad habits, which need not, however, at all interfere with the soundness and acuteness of it in general, though it may corrupt and disable the judgment upon particular subjects. But who can say of any heretic in particular that his rejection of the truth is of that fatal kind which excludes hope, because it denotes an incorrigible perversion of the moral and intellectual faculties? "This is life eternal," says our blessed Lord, "that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Now if this is true, if life eternal consists in the knowledge of the Trinity in Unity and of the Incarnation, surely he who deliberately rejects these verities puts himself outside the pale of salvation. And by a deliberate rejection I mean a rejection which might have been avoided if the man had made use of his opportunities. An intelligent consent of the will is of the essence of any act of sin whether in the sphere of faith or in that of morals. Heathens, therefore, and in fact all who have never had the Catholic Faith placed before them in such a way that they had no valid excuse for rejecting it, are not touched by the "damnatory clauses" at all. The "damnatory clauses" apply to sinners only, and a sinner is a person who knowingly does wrong, and a man knowingly does wrong not merely who is conscious of wrong-doing in the moment of transgression, but who has reduced himself to a state of moral obliquity which impairs his vision of what is right.

This seems to me such an elementary principle in morals that I find it hard to realize the state of mind of those who denounce it as an evasion. Dr. Swainson is passionate in his repudiation of the plea of "invincible ignorance," or "invincible prejudice." Very good. But how then does he explain our Lord's words, "The time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service"? What is the state of mind here indicated but one of "invincible prejudice," and therefore pardonable? So, at least, thought a greater authority than Dr. Swainson--one who describes himself as having been before his conversion, "a blasphemer and a persecutor, and a man of overbearing insolence; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief." So invincible was the prejudice, that it required "a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun," to dispel it. Notwithstanding the high authority of Dr. Swainson, then, I am inclined to think that the greatest of heathen philosophers and the most philosophic of inspired Apostles are safer guides to follow than he, and I shall accordingly still continue to believe that "involuntary ignorance or invincible prejudice" is a valid plea in cases of unbelief.

The Dean of Westminster insists, with almost passionate vehemence, that the whole Eastern Church, and divines like Bull and Pearson, are "doomed to everlasting perdition" by the Athanasian Creed: the former for denying that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father, the latter for teaching the doctrine of the Son's subordination to the Father "even as to Divinity." It is impossible to know the Dean of Westminster, even slightly, without feeling some pain at the thought of being in opposition to one so genial and kind-hearted. But he is the last man in England who would think of deprecating adverse criticism on that score. He is very frank in the expression of his own opinions, and I am sure that he will appreciate the most unreserved frankness on the part of those who differ from him, as I do most sincerely, on this question. He will not be offended, then, if I take the liberty of expressing my humble opinion that his strong feeling against the Athanasian Creed has in some degree made him theologically colour-blind in all that relates to this controversy. How is it possible otherwise to explain his reiterated assertion that the Eastern Church and all who think with Bull and Pearson are "doomed to everlasting perdition" by those who believe the Athanasian Creed? If the Dean's view is correct, not only is the whole Eastern Church "doomed to everlasting perdition," but the whole Western Church as well; nay, the author of the Creed has doomed himself to the fate of Bull and Pearson, for he teaches precisely the same doctrine of subordination which is taught by these two distinguished divines, and which is, in fact, one of the truisms of Catholic theology. The doctrine is thus stated by Pearson:--

"The third assertion, next to be demonstrated, is that the Divine essence which Christ had as the Word, before He was conceived by the Virgin Mary, He had not of Himself, but by communication from God the Father. For this is not to be denied, that there can be but one essence properly Divine, and so but one God of infinite wisdom, power, and majesty; that there can be but one person originally of Himself subsisting in that infinite Being, because a plurality of more persons so subsisting would necessarily infer a multiplicity of Gods; that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is originally God, as not receiving His eternal being from any other. Wherefore it necessarily followeth that Jesus Christ, who is certainly not the Father, cannot be a person subsisting in the Divine nature originally of Himself; and consequently, being we have already proved that He is truly and properly the Eternal God, He must be understood to have the Godhead communicated to Him by the Father, who is not only eternally, but originally, God. All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine, saith Christ; because in Him is the fulness of the Godhead, and more than that the Father cannot have; but yet in that perfect and absolute equality there is, notwithstanding, this disparity, that the Father hath the Godhead not from the Son, nor any other, whereas the Son hath it from the Father: Christ is the true God and eternal life; but that He is so is from the Father: for as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself, not by

participation, but by communication. It is true our Saviour was so in the form of God that He thought it no robbery to be equal with God; but when the Jews sought to kill Him because He made Himself equal with God, He answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do: by that connection of His operations

showing the reception of His essence; and by the acknowledgment of His power professing His substance from the Father. From whence He who was equal, even in that equality confesseth a priority, saying, the Father is greater than I: the Son equal in respect of His nature, the Father greater in reference to the communication of the Godhead. I know Him, saith Christ, for I am from Him. And because he is from the Father, therefore He is called by those of the Nicene Council, in their Creed, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God. The Father is God, but not of God; Light, but not of Light; Christ is God, but of God; Light, but of Light. There is no difference or inequality in the nature or essence, because the same in both; but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ hath that essence of Himself, from none; Christ hath the same not of Himself, but from Him. And being the Divine Nature, as it is absolutely immaterial and incorporeal, is also indivisible, Christ cannot have any part of it only communicated unto Him, but the whole, by which he must be acknowledged coessential, of the same substance, with the Father; as the Council of Nice determined, and the ancient fathers before them taught. Hence appeareth the truth of those words of our Saviour, which raised a second motion in the Jews to stone him; I and the Father are one: where the plurality of the verb, and the neutrality of the noun, with the distinction of their persons, speak a perfect identity of their essence. And though Christ say, the Father is in Me and I in Him; yet withal he saith, I came out from the Father; by the former showing the Divinity of His essence, by the latter the origination of Himself." ['On the Creed,' i., pp. 170-2.]

And Hooker:--

"By the gift of eternal generation Christ hath received of the Father one and in number the self-same substance, which the Father hath of Himself unreceived from any other. For every beginning is a father unto that which cometh of it; and every offspring is a son unto that out of which it groweth. Seeing therefore the Father alone is originally that Deity which Christ originally is not (for Christ is God by being of God, light by issuing out of light), it followeth hereupon that whatsoever Christ hath common unto Him with His Heavenly Father, the same of necessity must be given Him, but naturally and eternally given, not bestowed by way of benevolence and favour, as the other gifts both are. And therefore when the Fathers give out for a rule, that whatsoever Christ is said in Scripture to have received, the same we ought to apply only to the manhood of Christ; their assertion is true of all things which Christ hath received by grace, but to that which he hath received of the Father by eternal nativity or birth it reacheth not." ['Eccles. Polity,' b. v., liv., 2. It is evident that Hooker had no idea that in teaching the doctrine of the Son's subordination he was making himself amenable to the "damnatory clauses" of the Athanasian Creed; for he asks, "Is there in that confession of faith (i. e. Athanasian Creed) anything which doth not at all times edify and instruct the attentive hearer? Or is our faith in the blessed Trinity a matter needless to be so oftentimes mentioned and opened in the principal part of that duty which we owe to God, our public prayer?"--B. v., ch. xlii., 12.]

With this agrees the passage quoted by the Dean of Westminster from Bishop Bull:-- "The Catholic Doctors, both before and after the Nicene Council, are unanimous in declaring that the Father is greater than the Son, even as to Divinity--i. e. not in virtue of any essential perfection, but alone in what may be called authority--that is, in point of origin, since the Son is from the Father, not the Father from the Son."

If the question were one in which the Dean's feelings were not so strongly enlisted as they are in this, it could hardly have escaped him that the words which I have marked by italics, in the quotation from Bishop Bull, are a complete answer to his objection; for they show distinctly that the subordination of the Son to the Father, which Bishop Bull, in common with the whole Catholic Church, teaches, is not at all inconsistent with the assertion of the Athanasian Creed, that "in this Trinity none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than another; but the whole Three Persons are co-eternal together and co-equal." "In nature or any essential perfection" "none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than another." But in point of order the Father is "the fount of Deity" (phgh qeothtoV), and the Son and Holy Spirit derive their divinity from Him, as the stream is derived from the fountain and the ray from the sun. In this respect, and in this only, the Father may be called greater than the Son and Holy Spirit. But it is not in this respect that the Athanasian Creed asserts their perfect equality; for it says, immediately before, that "the Father is made of none; neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made nor created, but begotten." Here is the very subordination on which Bishop Bull insists. "The Father is made of none," but the Son is of the Father, not in time, but in respect to derivation; for, of course, the relations of the Persons of the Trinity to each other are eternal relations. In our finite experience a son is posterior to his father in point of time. But notions derived from temporal relations are obviously inapplicable to a state of existence which is altogether independent of space and time. Both the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene, as well as Holy Scripture, plainly intimate that Fatherhood is an essential attribute of the first Person of the Blessed Trinity. As He was always Almighty, so He was always the Father of His only-begotten Son, who is therefore rightly called "the eternal Son" "begotten of His Father before all worlds." And thus the relation of God the Father to His coeval Son does not imply priority of existence, or inequality of power or glory, but simply a difference of order.

I know how very difficult it is to express these things in language which shall be accurate and intelligible at the same time. "No tongue, how perfect soever it may appear, is a complete and perfect instrument of human thought. From its very conditions every language must be imperfect. The human memory can only compass a limited complement of words; but the data of sense, and still more the combinations of the understanding, are wholly unlimited in number. No language can, therefore, be adequate to the ends for which it exists; all are imperfect." [Sir W. Hamilton's 'Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic,' iv., p. 143.] If human language is thus imperfect when it deals with the ordinary conceptions of the human mind, how much more incompetent must it be to give articulate expression to mysteries which the intellect of man cannot grasp? The truths of eternity are far too vast to be capable of being envisaged in the forms of time, and even the profoundest minds, when they make the attempt, are, at best, like Moses in the cleft of the rock on Horeb, not able to behold the "face," but only the "back parts" of the vision which is graciously vouchsafed to them. "Divine truth," as has been well observed by a divine who is less known than he deserves to be, "hath its humiliation and exanition, as well as its exaltation. Divine truth becomes many times in Scripture incarnate, debasing itself to assume our rude conceptions, that so it might converse more freely with us, and infuse its Divinity in us; God having been pleased herein to manifest Himself not more jealous of His own glory than He is (as I may say) zealous of our good. Nos non habemus aures sicut Deus habet linguam. If He should speak in the language of eternity, who could understand Him, or interpret His meaning? Or if he should have declared His truth to us only in the way of the purest abstraction that human souls are capable of, how should then the more rude and illiterate sort of men have been able to apprehend it? Truth is content, when it comes into the world, to wear our mantles, to learn our language, to conform itself, as it were, to our dress and fashions."' ['Select Discourses' of John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist, p. 173.] But our dress never fits it, and can at best do no more than give a faint outline of its form. Yet the dress is necessary, for without it we should have no idea at all of those great realities which lie behind this shifting scene of fleeting phenomena. God the Father and His Eternal Son are not related to each other as a human father and son are related; and yet the human relationship may be the nearest approach to the truth of which our feeble minds are capable.

I shall continue to use the Athanasian Creed, then, without any fear that I am thereby consigning "to everlasting perdition" Bull and Pearson, who are in full agreement with the Church universal in teaching the perfect equality of the Father and the Son in all essential attributes, save only that which is peculiar to each, namely, Fatherhood and Sonship. In the Divine Essence, which is common to the Three Persons, there is no inequality; but in their interior relation to each other there is a subordination of order.

Equally untenable, I venture to think, is Dean Stanley's assertion that the whole Eastern Church is doomed to "perish everlastingly," if the Athanasian Creed is true. The difference between the Eastern Church and the West on the vexed question of the Filioque is clearly a difference of statement, not of doctrine. It all turns on the meaning of the word "procession," which the Easterns use in one sense, and the Westerns in another; so that what the former deny is not what the latter affirm, and vice versâ. The phrase is manifestly equivocal, as the logicians say, and there are senses in which the Greeks would accept it without hesitation. They hold, as do the Westerns, that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone with respect to that Personality which is the cause of the Trinity; but they admit that He proceeds from the Son also in respect of that common Essence of Deity, which is numerically one in the Three Persons, but which the Holy Spirit receives from the Person of the Father as the cause.

Again, it may be said that the Holy Ghost "proceedeth from the Father and the Son" in this way: from the Father alone in respect of His own Personality, or origin as a Person, but from the Son also in respect of His Essence considered apart--I mean apart by an abstraction of human thought, not as a theological reality. [It is scarcely necessary to explain that the word "origin" is used here, and elsewhere in this connection, as indicating derivation, not beginning of existence; as a flame is the origin of the light which it diffuses without being therefore anterior to the light, or as heat derives its origin from fire without necessarily coming after it in the order of time.]

A third sense in which the Greeks would admit that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son is in respect of temporal mission. The Son sends the Holy Ghost from the Father, and therefore the procession is from both the Father and the Son, though in different senses.

In short, what the Greeks are anxious to protect is the Monarchia of the Trinity, and they fear that by admitting the Filioque they would sanction the notion that there are two ·DP"\ in the Trinity, or that there was something besides the Three distinct Persons and the one Common Essence, namely, some peculiar Essence belonging to the Father and the Son apart from the Holy Spirit. These are two errors which the whole of the Western Church would repudiate as heartily as the Eastern; and if both sides would only act on Dr. Newman's advice, and define instead of disputing, the controversy about the Filioque would speedily come to a peaceful end.

The Greek Church, therefore, would not be touched by the "damnatory clauses" of the Athanasian Creed, even if we were to transfer to it the Filioque of the Nicene Creed, for it would still remain a question whether the doctrine affirmed in the one case was denied in the other. But, as a matter of fact, the Filioque does not exist in the Athanasian Creed. The words of the Creed are, "The Holy Ghost is of (a not ex) the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding." No Greek doctrine comes in collision with this statement. Even Mr. Ffoulkes admits that "it is literally moderation itself. Few advocates of the Latin doctrine would have been content to stop where it stops; few Greeks . . . would have declined going as far. The Holy Ghost is described as 'of the Father and of the Son,' first--the preposition used being a, not ex: and then 'neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.' The copula, rigidly supplied in the two previous verses, is altogether wanting in this. The words may imply, but they certainly stop short of asserting, that 'the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son' in the Latin sense, 'ex Patre Filioque procedit.'" ['On the Athanasian Creed,' p. 263.] And yet Mr. Ffoulkes has written a book of 374 pages to prove that this very Creed, which "is moderation itself," and to which "few Greeks" would object, was wickedly and fraudulently imposed on Christendom by Charlemagne and two of the ablest divines and best men of their age, for no other purpose than to cause a schism between East and West! But I am not concerned with Mr. Ffoulkes's historical vagaries here. His own book contains abundant materials for its own refutation, and his wild theory has already been sufficiently disposed of by competent scholars. What I wish to point out is that a writer, whose antipathy to the Athanasian Creed amounts to a kind of craze, is obliged to confess that its "damnatory clauses" do not touch the Greek Church at all. I do trust, therefore, that we shall hear no more of the Greek Church being "doomed to everlasting perdition" by those who advocate the retention of the Athanasian Creed in its present position.

But, after all, what is meant by "perishing everlastingly"? The late Mr. Charles Buxton objected, as one of the Ritual Commissioners, to the Athanasian Creed, because, among other things, "it commits the Church of England to the doctrine, long since exploded, that error is a crime punishable with horrible torments." Now I am not prepared to deny that error, if wilful, does entail "horrible torments." It is often so in this life, and I see no reason why it should be otherwise in the world unseen. But, on the other hand, wilful sin, whether in faith or morals, brings its own punishment. God is only indirectly the author of the sinner's torments by having given him a constitution which, in virtue of free will, is capable of being ruined; and in that ruin lies the misery of the lost. But it is easy to see that what Mr. Buxton had before his mind was the image of a vengeful Miltonic Deity, "hurling headlong . . . . down to bottomless perdition" the erring victims of His implacable wrath.

This, I need hardly say, is not the doctrine of the Church, however individual writers may here and there have caricatured her teaching. When the Pharisees asked our Lord, "When the kingdom of God should come?" He answered, "The kingdom of God is within you." With equal truth it may be said that the kingdom of Satan is also within us. Each man has within himself, during the period of his probation, the elements of his own final condition. His character is developed from within, and outward circumstances are but the passive materials on which it feeds. They are necessary to its growth, but they do not determine the direction in which it shall grow; that is the province of man's free will, which makes him master of his circumstances, not their slave. In this respect man differs essentially from all else that lives upon this earth. He possesses a conscious, self-determining power, and can shape all external influences after the fashion of the governing principle which rules his conduct from within. In one sense, indeed, all organic existences may be said to have a self-determining power. Every form of created life in the universe is built upon a certain type, and aspires, consciously or unconsciously, to some ideal as the final cause of its existence; and any life, from an acorn to an Archangel, which fails to realize the end of its being, may truly be said to "perish everlastingly." It happened to me, not long ago, to wander through a forest by the sea, in which all the trees were misshapen and stunted. They had been exposed to the withering blasts of an eastern ocean during their period of growth, and so they were not able to reach the perfection of which their nature was potentially capable. They had passed their probation, they had arrived at maturity, and had no longer any possibility of amendment. The tempest might break or root them up; but no force of man or nature could ever again change their shapes without destroying them. They "perished everlastingly."

Have we not here a parable of human life? Man's soul, like a tree, or like the body which clothes it, has its period of growth, and tends to a state of unchanging fixedness. It is as true of him as of the trees of the forest that the influences of a comparatively short period determine the character of a period indefinitely long. Exposure to a demoralizing set of influences for a given time may fix the character so irrevocably in a wrong groove that, in Scriptural language, it is "impossible to renew it again unto repentance." And, on the other hand, perseverance in the right way will, in due time, impress upon the human will such a character of strict conformity to God's will, that it can no longer be tempted to evil; "sin will no more have dominion over it," and a fall will be impossible.

But the analogy of the vegetable kingdom does not carry us very far. There is a vital difference between the development of a tree and that of human character. For the tree is at the mercy of surrounding circumstances; it cannot move out of its place or protect itself against the influences of the eastern breeze. But man can rise superior to circumstances. He can "work out his own salvation," and can turn even his temptations into blessings. No combination of circumstances, however hostile, can injure his true self without the concurrence of his own free and presiding will. He is thus the author of his own final destiny, whatever that destiny may be. God damns none of His creatures to everlasting perdition. He shuts the door of heaven against no one who has not previously closed it on himself. In making man capable of everlasting bliss He has necessarily made him capable of everlasting perdition. God Almighty Himself, with reverence be it said, could not create a being who should be capable of virtue without leaving him, at the same time, capable of sin. For virtue implies a free will, and a free will implies the power of choice, and liberty of choice implies the possibility of making a wrong choice, and a wrong choice, confirmed into a habit, may result in such a moral paralysis as shall make recovery impossible. The man who has thus reduced himself to a state of "incorrigibility," to use Aristotle's phrase, "finds no place of repentance," not because God refuses to be gracious, but because the perverted will no longer possesses the power of making a right choice.

Is it not strange that, in an age when the fixity and invariability of Nature's laws is preached as almost a new Gospel, men should forget--and scientific men are among the chief offenders--that human character, too, has its laws, and that its laws are--what the mechanical laws of the Universe are not--in a certain degree independent of the will of God? There is no reason at all in the nature of things why we should confidently expect the continuance of the present order of things in the natural world. Apart from faith in God, our only ground of confidence is in the subjective impression made on our imaginations by the immemorial uniformity of the laws which govern our system. It would not contradict any of the laws of thought if we were told that there were other systems similar to ours, but governed by an entirely different system of laws. But we cannot conceive the possibility of a virtuous being who never had any freedom of choice, or of a really free will which could not rebel against its Maker for ever and make itself miserable for ever in consequence.

Undoubtedly God might have created intelligent beings who should obey Him unceasingly under a law of mechanical necessity. But He could not have created beings capable of yielding Him a moral service without bestowing on them the awful gift of a free will--the power to do or to forbear. The lower creation, through all its ranks, obeys its Maker's will. "He hath given them a law which shall not be broken," and therefore "they continue this day according to Thine ordinance, for all things serve Thee." They have no power of doing otherwise; they cannot choose but to obey. Nor are the lower animals an exception. Their movements may appear more free than the motions of the heavenly bodies or the changes of the vegetable kingdom. But, after all, they have only the semblance of a free will, not the reality. They have no reasoning faculty properly so called; they cannot analyze

or generalize. They can remember in a dull passive way, but they cannot recollect; they cannot gather up the impressions of the past and make them available for the purposes of the future. In fact, they have neither future nor past--no lively memories or bitter regrets connected with the one, no hopes or prospects connected with the other. They do not contemplate themselves at all. They live in the present, and have no thought beyond the passing hour. Man can impress his will upon them in a measure. He may improve them in breed, as flowers and trees may be improved by cultivation. But there is a certain point beyond which he cannot train them; for they have no real freedom, no self-determining power; and they are consequently incapable of progress. Each of them begins life as if the first of its race, deriving no advantage from the experience of its predecessors, and leaving no legacy of acquirements to those which follow. They "have no understanding," as the Psalmist says, and are therefore "held with bit and bridle."

But man is the subject of a moral Government whose laws he may transgress if he will. His loving Father strives to attract him. He places before him life and death, and bids him choose life, and gives him grace sufficient for his needs. He does everything, in fact, to win him, short of compulsion, because compulsion would be incompatible with freedom, and therefore with virtue. "I will inform thee and teach thee in the way wherein thou shalt go, and I will guide thee with mine eye," not "with bit and bridle," like the lower animals "which have no understanding." If, however, we persist in being like the horse and mule, there is no help for it; God leads us only with His eye; there is no bit and bridle to restrain us; our wills are free and we may go to ruin.

True freedom, however, does not mean the power to choose good or evil. So long as the will is capable of vacillating between right and wrong it is not really free any more than a limb is free which is shaken by paralysis. A man is truly free when his will is only attracted by legitimate objects, and "sin has no more dominion over him." God could, of course, have created intelligent beings unalterably fixed on the side of right from the moment of their creation. But a will which never had a choice would not be free-- would not, in fact, be will at all. It is necessary to our conception of a created free will that it should start with the power of choosing one of two opposite courses--good or evil--and then become, by persevering efforts, so self-determined in the right line as to lose all possibility of doing wrong. When the will has reached this stage it can no longer be tempted to choose evil. The man acts rightly spontaneously and without effort, and his inability to do wrong does not arise from any extraneous restraint, but from the fact that he is become "a law unto himself." He has disciplined his will into perfect and habitual conformity with the will of God, and it is therefore as impossible any longer to tempt him from the right way as it is to "renew again unto repentance" the incorrigibly selfish. To such a soul God's service is no longer irksome or difficult; it is "perfect freedom," as one of our collects beautifully expresses it; just as God Himself is the freest of all beings, though it would be blasphemy to suppose Him capable of doing wrong. Liability to error is, on the face of it, a proof that the will is, so far, imperfect, not that it is in a state of healthy freedom.

I may seem to be insisting unnecessarily on what every well-educated person will at once recognize as a truism in morals. It is a truism; but it is very hard to get a certain class of minds to grasp even a truism when it cuts across their prejudices. There is, for instance, a violent article against the Athanasian Creed in the April number of the 'Contemporary Review,' which denies peremptorily the truisms on which I have been insisting above, and uses them, in fact, as one of the chief arguments against the Athanasian Creed. The writer, who signs himself "Anglicanus," animadverts on "a common argument, recently adduced by the late Archbishop Longley, to the effect that the same word 'eternal' (aiwnioV) is applied to both states of the departed, and that if heaven is 'everlasting,' so must the other state be." "The answer," "Anglicanus" thinks, "is not very clear or satisfying, if we assume that the good are fixed in heaven for ever by an immutable decree, and that falling from it is an impossibility. The very essence of spirit is freedom, and we cannot be secured an 'eternal heaven' by any sort of mechanical fixation. An eternity of either virtue or blessedness cannot be guaranteed to us--it must depend on ourselves. Are we not told of certain 'angels who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation'? A fall may be improbable, but it cannot be impossible so long as mind and free choice remain."

This passage reveals a great deal. It shows, among other things, that much of the feeling against the Athanasian Creed is really based on the grossest ignorance of the very rudiments of moral science. Here is a gentleman, evidently of education, who comes forward to enlighten the public on the Athanasian Creed, and he delivers himself of an Essay which proves to demonstration that of theology and Christian ethics he simply knows nothing. With the innocent ingenuousness of ignorance he coolly propounds a doctrine which strikes at the very foundations of both theology and morality. For if "the very essence of spirit is freedom," and freedom means an endless liability to sin, we have no real security against the final triumph of evil over Almighty God Himself. Evil may eventually become good, and good evil. The "great gulf fixed" between the abode of the lost and that of the blessed may at length be passed, and the inhabitants of heaven may exchange places with the denizens of hell. Surely to state such a theory is to refute it; yet it is on a par with the reasoning of the whole Essay. What is to be thought of a reasoner who actually thinks that the doctrine of eternal perdition is confuted by the article of the Creed which declares "the forgiveness of sins"? "Observe," he says, "to what puny and pitiful dimensions this glorious clause of the Creed has been reduced by the progress of dogmatic development. 'Forgiveness of sins' is limited--to this world and to this life! We must have our pardon sealed in heaven before we go hence and be no more seen. Forgiveness of sin, then, is a thing of time and space; it is a geographical consideration. It is accorded only within the narrowest limits. That which results from, and is an expression of, the unchanging mind and nature of God is a thing 'subject to all the skyey influences.' The temperature changes; there is a sudden access of frost or cold, the man dies; from that moment the hitherto relenting Deity, who wooed the sinner with the sweetest tones of mercy and the fullest assurance of pardon, is changed on the sudden, and is henceforth and for ever to him as deaf as the wind, as inexorable as the roaring sea. The Eternal is subject to Time! the Omnipotent is limited to a poor corner of space! These considerations are enough to disprove the whole doctrine, and show it to be but a fable. According to the current doctrine, what is true of the Almighty to-day may be false to-morrow. He is merciful one day, inexorable the next." And then "Anglicanus" thinks that such prayers as the following:--"O God, whose nature and property is ever to have mercy and to forgive"; or such Psalms as speak of God's mercy "enduring for ever," --are plainly inconsistent with the notion of any creature perishing everlastingly. And he denounces the Athanasian Creed accordingly. It teaches "a doctrine worthy only of the priests of Moloch!" and "an inward revulsion seizes the minds of all who hear it; one's gorge rises at the very name of it." [The italics are not mine.]

It would have been more modest on the part of "Anglicanus" not to have assumed that all other gorges are in the same state of morbid irritation as his own. What authority has he for asserting that "an inward revulsion seizes the minds of all who hear" the Athanasian Creed? The multitude of petitions lately presented to Convocation in its favour is a curious commentary on the wild declamation of "Anglicanus." Who he is I know not, except that he is not the distinguished ecclesiastic who sometimes assumes the nom de plume of "Anglicanus." But whoever the "Anglicanus" of the 'Contemporary Review' is, he has evidently yet to learn the rudiments of Christian ethics. As a matter of fact, our Lord has said that there is a sin which is "never forgiven, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come." But I do not dwell on this. Let it suffice to point out that "Anglicanus" misses the whole point of the question which he has discussed with an intemperate zeal which certainly is "not according to knowledge." The question is not whether God's "mercy endureth for ever," but whether the sinner will for ever remain amenable to its influence. God, of course, remains ever the same--"the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." His love is not stinted by the sins of His creatures, nor changed to hate by the fact of their death. But, on the other hand, Divine love, in its essence and manifestation, implies freedom in those with whom it has to do. Its power is such that wherever there is the least germ of moral life it can develop it. But is it not possible for man to destroy this germ so as to retain no elements within him upon which the love of God can act? Does not the mystery of human freedom imply the possibility, at least, that some may be eternally lost? Is it not a fact of experience that men do actually resist the holiest strivings of Divine love on earth? And if on earth, why not in the world unseen? If the human will remain essentially the same (and if it do not, the man is no longer the same person), why should it be impossible for it to continue its resistance to Divine grace ad infinitum? Either it can do so, or one of the essential elements in man's constitution is destroyed, and he ceases, in fact, to be man. What use is forgiveness to the impenitent prodigal who still prefers the "riotous living" in the "far country" to the feast in his Father's house? The sore distress which softens one heart may harden another. If one prodigal is constrained to cry, "I will arise and go to my Father," another may assert his freedom by persevering in his evil ways. Of what avail is it, then, that God's "nature and property is ever to have mercy to forgive," if the sinner remains still obdurate in his sin? Can he do so? If not, his liberty is a myth, and he is not a responsible being; from which it follows that, as he is not capable of sin, he is not susceptible of forgiveness. If, on the contrary, he can offer an endless resistance to the Divine will, he may make himself the victim of a never-ending misery--that is to say, he can "perish everlastingly." But in that case, he is himself, and not God, the sole cause of his own ruin.

This doctrine appears to me very simple and reasonable, and not hard to be understood; and I am therefore all the more surprised that a periodical usually so dispassionate and acute as the 'Westminster Review' should have offered to its readers the following caricature of the doctrine of the Fall and its consequences:--"God was in the beginning, as He is still, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, prescient. He said, 'I will create a being whom I shall call man. I could create him, if I so wished, not only perfect, but free from all risk of imperfection to come. But I shall not do this. I shall create him with a faculty for disobeying me, which will be a flaw in him. I know beforehand that he will exercise this faculty, and when he does I will consign him to endless misery and perdition.'" ['Westminster Review,' April, 1872, p. 382.]

I should like to ask the writer of this article whether he believes that man is really free to make a moral choice. If he admits as much, he cannot deny that the Fall of man is a possible consequence of his freedom, and that such a fall may have its consummation in "endless misery and perdition." But to such a doom God "consigns" no one. Certainly He need not have created such a being as man at all. But having created such a being, I should like to know how even "Omniscience," "Omnipotence," and "Omnibenevolence" combined could have prevented the catastrophe, with all its consequences, which is commonly called the Fall. No doubt, God could have created a being "free from all risk of imperfection to come." But such a being would not be man. The quarrel of the 'Westminster Reviewer,' if he would only be logical, is not with the doctrine of the Fall and of endless misery, but with the creation of moral agents at all. Once grant the existence of an intelligent moral being, and all the rest follows, as Bishop Butler has it, "by way of natural consequence." At all events, man, with his liability to sin and capacity of misery, is a fact which Theology has not made, but found; and those who quarrel with the account of the matter which Theology furnishes are bound to give an account of their own, which shall be more in harmony with reason and with facts. Until they have done so, I shall continue to believe that Christian Theology supplies not only the most rational, but the only rational, theory of man's origin and destiny.

But this is by the way, for I am not concerned here with the professed impugners of the Christian Faith, but with those whose repugnance to the Athanasian Creed arises, as I humbly venture to think, from a hasty misunderstanding of its "damnatory clauses." Their error, if I may presume to say so, is twofold: they forget, in the first place, that the "damnatory clauses" cannot possibly apply to any but such as wilfully deprave the Faith, since the conscious consent of the will is essential to any act of sin; ["A state or act, that has not its origin in the will, may be calamity, deformity, disease, or mischief; but a sin it cannot be."--Coleridge's 'Aids to Reflection,' p. 215.] and, in the second place, they imagine that everlasting perdition means a punishment inflicted arbitrarily from without by an angry God, instead of being, as I believe, the natural consequence of inward dispositions on the part of man. "The happiness which good men shall partake is not distinct from their God-like nature. Happiness and holiness are but two several notions of one thing. Hell is rather a nature than a place, and Heaven cannot be so well-defined by anything without us as by something within us." [Mr. John Smith's 'Select Discourses.' 'On the Happiness and Nobleness of True Religion.' Edition of 1673. This passage is amplified and marred in subsequent editions.] The incorrigible sinner is in hell wherever his local habitation may happen to be, for he carries the undying worm and the unquenchable fire within him. Material flames, if applicable at all to an immaterial being, could add but little to the agony of "a mind diseased." The immaterial part of man is, after all, the real seat of pain, and we know that even in this life a powerful mental emotion will make a man insensible to the pangs of bodily wounds. In the aberration of noble endowments, in the anarchy of a ruined constitution, in the consuming restlessness of matured selfishness--"seeking rest and finding none"--in the remembrance of joys that might have been, but now can be no more, a soul abandoned to the intolerable tyranny of its own "will-worship" will find its surest and most terrible hell. [". . . . nessun maggior dolore / Che ricordarsi del tempo felice / Nella miseria."--Dante, Inferno, cant. v. 121.] This view of the self-engendered endless misery of the impenitent sinner is put with remarkable force and clearness by a writer who will not be accused of undue reverence for traditional views of religion. "In the present state," says Channing, "we find that the mind has an immense power over the body, and, when diseased, often communicates disease to its sympathizing companion. I believe that in the future state the mind will have this power of conforming its outward frame to itself incomparably more than here. We must never forget that, in that world, mind or character is to exert an all-powerful sway; and accordingly it is rational to believe that the corrupt and deformed mind which wants moral goodness, or a spirit of concord with God and with the Universe, will create for itself as its fit dwelling a deformed body, which will also want concord or harmony with all things around it. Suppose this to exist, and the whole creation which now amuses may become an instrument of suffering, fixing the soul with a more harrowing consciousness on itself. You know that even now, in consequence of certain derangements of the nervous system, the beautiful light gives acute pain, and sounds which once delighted us become shrill and distressing. How often this excessive irritableness of the body has its origin in moral disorders perhaps few of us suspect. I apprehend, indeed, that we should be all amazed were we to learn to what extent the body is continually incapacitated for enjoyment, and made susceptible of suffering, by the sins of the heart and life. That delicate part of our organization on which sensibility, pain, and pleasure depend, is, I believe, peculiarly alive to the touch of moral evil. How easily, then, may the mind hereafter frame the future body according to itself, so that, in proportion to its vice, it will receive through its organs and senses impressions of gloom which it will feel to be the natural productions of its own depravity, and which will in this way give a terrible energy to conscience! For myself, I see no need of a local hell for the sinner after death. When I reflect how, in the present world, a guilty mind has power to deform the countenance, to undermine health, to poison pleasure, to darken the fairest scenes of nature, to turn prosperity into a curse, I can easily understand how, in the world to come, sin, working without obstruction according to its own nature, should spread the gloom of a dungeon over the whole creation, and, wherever it goes, should turn the universe into a hell." [Works, vol. iv., pp. 164-166.]

This is a terrible commentary on S. Paul's Resurrection doctrine: "To every seed his own body." Every seed has its own specific life, which builds around it an outward organization suited to its peculiar character. The human frame is made up of material particles identical in kind with those which compose the bodies of the brutes that perish, and the difference of organization is in virtue of the different vital principles which energize from within. Man was created in the image of his God; but if he subordinates the spiritual to the animal part of his nature, does it not stand to reason that the development of his character will be in a brutish direction, and that the image of Christ will be changed into that of the sin to which he clung during the period of his probation, and which now clings to him like the poisoned shirt of Nessus? Death does not break the continuity of human life; it merely disengages the man's true self from the restraints and environments of this world, and reveals him just as he is--transformed into the image of his Saviour or into that of the Fiend. Thus viewed old age