A common sense view of the Athanasian Creed Question

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A COMMON SENSE VIE\V^

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©fie ^tDanasiait CreeU d^uestion

BY

HENRY ARTHUR WOODGATE, B.D.

RECTOR OF BELBROUGHTON

HONORARY CANON OF WORCESTER

AND PROCTOR FOR THE CLERGY OF THE DIOCESE IN THE

CONVOCATION OF CANTERBURY

SECOND EDITION.
Siaattt appentrii.

RIVINGTONS

1872

Price Fourpence

" The cause of Truth universally, and not least of religious Truth,
is benefited by everything that tends to promote sound reasoning and
facilitate the detection of fallacy. The adversaries of our Faith would, I
am convinced, have been on many occasions more satisfactorily answered,
and would have had fewer openings for cavil, had a thorough acquaint-
ance with Logic been a more common qualification than it is." —
Archbishop Whately.

A COMMON SENSE VIEW OF THE
ATHANASIAN CREED QUESTION.

" Half tlie controversies in the world 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. We need not dispute ; we need not prove ; we
need but 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
mean, they see for the most part that controversy is
either superfluous or hopeless." *

The above passage, written thirty years since by one
of the most intellectual, learned, and earnest men of the
age, and whose testimony to the Truth is in no way

* Kewman's ' University Sermons.'

B 2

A COMMON SENSE VIEW OF

aiFected by events which have since taken place, forms
an appropriate introduction to the following remarks.
It describes, if not the beginning, at least the earlier
stages of that want of logical accuracy and sound
reasoning which enters so largely into the controversies
of the day, whatever the subject, whether Civil, Eccle-
siastical, Political, or Social. We see disputants either
repudiating the conclusions which follow logically from
their own admitted premisses and acknowledged prin-
ciples ; or refusing to giye up the latter when shown to
lead necessarily to conclusions which themselves repu-
diate. Whether arguing deictically or elenchtically,
whether by demonstration or refutation, we find the
same want of consistency and fair reasoning. Whether
this arises from an intellectual defect, or the want of
fairness, or from that temper of the times which, im-
patient of argument and accustomed to address popular
audiences and minds of an inferior order, refers the
decision of great questions to the passions rather than
the reason, I am not concerned now to show. But in
nothing has this been more conspicuous than in the
discussions, at least on one side, which have arisen on
the subject of the Athanasian Creed.*

It is earnestly hoped, however, that the Title prefixed

* Let me here take the opportunity of offering my thanks to
Mr. MacCoU and the Dean of Norwich for their admirable works
on the question. They should be carefully read by everyone who
wishes to make himself master of the subject.

'S

UIUC .1

^*cn^

THE ATHANASIAN CREED QUESTION. 5

to these remarks will not lead anyouc to infer that the
great and sacred truths with which they are indirectly
connected are made subject to the treatment or the rule
expressed by it. To subject the great and saving
doctrines of the Gospel, as such, to the final test of
Human Reason, or to treat from an external point of
view that in which we have so deep and personal an
interest, would be as repugnant to my feelings as it
would be to the principles of Revealed Truth and the
faculties to which it addresses itself. It is the external
arguments by which the Athanasian Creed is assailed
to which these remarks chiefly apply ; to the doctrines
themselves only indirectly, and so far only as may be
necessary for the purposes of illustration.

The grounds on which the assailants of the Creed
clamour for its excision or optional use may be said to
be mainly: — 1. The preciseness of its definitions;
2. The Anathemas pronounced on its rejection — or, as
they are otherwise termed, its warning or (by others)
damnatory clauses. It will be found that the argu-
ments against the first apply in their degree to all
Creeds and confessions of faith ; and that those against
the second apply equally to the necessity of any belief
being necessary to Salvation. Let me take the latter
first.

It would tend much to clear the ground for a due
consideration of this question, to enter one's protest at
once and summarily against that monstrous assertion

A COMMON SENSE VIEW OF

which the enemies of the Creed have so unbhishingly
and persistently set forth, — that by this Creed and the
warning clauses appended to it, the Church denounces
and consigns to perdition those Avho do not receive it.
Nothing can be more untrue ; and it is lamentable to
see men in high places, who ought to know better, thus
throwing dust into the eyes of the ignorant, and stirring
up their passions. So far from condemning, the Church
in this Creed neither speaks of or to those without. She
speaks in the name of and to her own members, as the
terms on which she is commissioned to offer Salvation
through Christ ; and puts in their mouths this outpour-
ing of belief and praise, accompanied by warnings of the
danger of neglecting or departing from it. To others
she speaks not — nor of them, till called upon to do so
in her missionary character; and then, like every
other religious community, declares the substance of
that mission and her terms of communion. Wisdom
speaks to her own children ; they understand her, and
of them she is justified. To others she speaks not, or
in a different language. Yet men who ought to know
better persist in repeating this untruth, regardless of all
the considerations by which such a statement should
be tested, whether of fact or analogy. The Law spoke
to those under the Law. "While to the Israelites it de-
nounced idolatry as one of the greatest sins, and as an
act of high treason against the Most High, yet it did
not preach a crusade against the heathen. It left them

THE A THAN AS IAN CREED QUESTION. 7

to be judged by the different Law under which God had
placed them. Human law, as such, is only addressed
to subjects of that law. Foreigners are not under
English law till they come to England. Our Lord's
words before His Ascension were not uttered against
all who believed not the Gospel, but those who, after
receiving the message which immediately preceded
them, wilfully rejected it. St. Paul's fearful "Ana-
thema Maranatha " was not uttered against those who
had not had the opportunity (of which God alone is.
judge) of knowing and " loving the Lord Jesus Christ,"
but against those to whom He had offered Himself, and
of whom He had said that it would be more tolerable
for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of Judgment than
for them. Nay, I would go further and say that if any
of her own children were to tell her that they had a
difficulty in believing the Catholic Eaith as therein
stated, not from a spirit of proud defiance or self-satis-
fied independence of thought, but from causes whicli
they could not control but would not be unwilling to
see removed, the Church, while feeling that she had no
power to alter her message or relax her terms of com-
munion, would not abandon hope for them at the Judg-
ment Seat. It is worse than idle to speak of the
Church as condemning in this Creed all who do not
accept it. If such an assertion proceeds from ignorance
and thoughtlessness, it is from culpable and responsible
ignorance ; and when put forth and acted upon, as has

A COMMON SENSE VIEW OF

been recently done by persons in high places, who are
bound by virtue of their position and office to know
better, it admits of no excuse.

To revert now to the main question : —

Let me premise here that I ask of those to whom I
address myself nothing but candour and clear logical
common sense ; that they will state frankly, first, what
they do admit, and next, that they adhere to it, and not
retract it, as many disputants do as soon as they find
that it is against their own foregone conclusions ; like
the well-known automaton chess-player, whose owner
boasted that he had never been beaten, from the simple
fact that, whenever he found the game going against
him, lie put an end to it by knocking over the table.

I would begin, then, by asking them whether they
admit that any belief is necessary to Salvation : whether
they believe our Lord's words, "He that believeth
and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth
not shall be damned," or any of those passages dis-
persed through the New Testament which connect
Faith with Salvation ? If they do not, I have nothing
further to say ; we have no common ground on which
an argument can proceed. If they do, they at once
concede the principle involved in the warnings of the
Athanasian Creed.

I would ask them next. Would you object to these
clauses being appended to the Apostles' Creed, which is
chiefly confined to a recital of facts, all of which be-

THE ATHANASIAN CREED QUESTION. 9

lievers in the New Testament, whether in the Church
or not, profess to receive? If they would retain the
chiuses for this simple Creed, I would ask them if they
would allow them for the Nicene Creed, which adds to
tlie historical facts of the other a few definitions of the
nature of the Godhead. If they admit these, I would
go on to the Athauasian Creed, and ask them to state
the points in these closer degrees of definition at
which the clauses or our Lord's words ought not to be
applied. That is the point to be di-awn from them,
assuming that there is anything which they admit to be
" necessary to everlasting Salvation : " they must, by
the terms of the discussion, be tied down to this
admission.

Or I would reverse the process : I would begin with
the xithanasian Creed, and ask them to strike out the
various parts to which, in their judgment, the clauses
ought not to be applied. I would ask them to do the
same with the Nicene, and, if necessary, the Apostles'
Creed. If they would retain the warning clauses with
the slightest remnant after these excisions, they con-
cede the whole principle. If they will not retain them,
how do they dispose of our Lord's words before referred
to, or words of like import ?

I am aware that an answer will be given by many to
the effect that they receive our Lord's words as appli-
cable to a general belief in the main doctrines of the
Gospel, but not beyond that point at which men split

b3

A COMMON SENSE VIEW OF

off into various sects; still less as applicable to the
stricter definitions and finer distinctions contained in
the Athanasian Creed. Now here again is a fallacy
(not morally wrong like the charge, before spoken of,
brought against the Creed, and representing it as say-
ing what it does not pretend to say, but), one showing a
great intellectual defect, and one which, if persisted in
wilfully, assumes the character of a grave moral defect
also. As the understanding has much to do with the
commencement of this fallacy, it makes this question
one on which a common sense view is especially re-
quired.

I would observe, then, that the common expression of
" Believing in Christ " has no definite meaning. You
cannot believe in a term. The subject of belief must be
a 'proposition, expressed or understood ; and though, for
the conveniences of language and expression, the pre-
dicate and copula are frequently merged and resolved
into the abstract instead of the concrete, and then ap-
pended to the subject in the genitive case, as e. g. the
Eesurrection of the body, the Divinity of Christ, the
Communion of Saints, the Divinity and personality of
the Holy Ghost, yet strictly speaking, the subject of
belief is the proposition that the body will rise again ;
that Christ is God ; that the Saints have communion ;
that the Holy Ghost is God and distinct in Person.
When therefore people talk of believing in Christ,
they may fairly be asked what they believe respecting

THE A THA NA ST A N CREED Q UES TION. 1 1

Him, or as that which may be predicated or said of
Him. That one bearing that Name lived and died ? No
one will question that, any more than the existence of
Mahomet. We may all safely profess that in that sense
we believe in Mahomet or Alexander, Julius Caesar or
Pontius Pilate. If you say you believe in Him as the
Saviour of mankind, as He that saved mankind, the
question presents itself — saved them from what ? how ?
and this at once opens the question connected with and
dependent upon the person, character, and power of the
Agent. If you say you believe in Him as the Son of
God, then arises the question. In what sense. Son? In
tke orthodox sense, or the Unitarian ? and thus you are
brought, not only to the threshold, but actually into
the precincts of the ground occupied by the Athanasian
Creed.

Or, to begin with our Lord's own words which speak
of believing (in one word), with Baptism, as essential to
Salvation: Believing what? Here we are of course
referred, first to the " Gospel" which he had just before
commanded the Apostles to preach. But what is im-
plied by this word ? In what does the Gospel consist ?
For this we are referred necessarily to historical testi-
mony, beginning with the Acts of the Apostles and
passing from Scripture into the history of doctrine and
controversy, until, through the decrees of various
councils, we find ourselves landed in the definitions of
the Athanasian Creed.

A COMMON SENSE VIEW OF

Nor can this be regarded as other than a necessary
consequence. For, to begin again ' with our Lord's
words, and again asking the question, " Believe what ? "
the earliest and shortest expansion of the words will be
found either in the confession of Martha before His
Passion, " I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son
of God, which should come into the world ; " * or in that
of the Eunuch (uttered, be it observed, after Philip's
declaration of the necessity of believing, without de-
fining the subject), " I believe that Jesus Christ is the
Son of God." t In both these replies the nature of the
Sonship and the oflSce of Christ are left unexplained.
That they require that explanation is evident from the
host of controversy which has arisen respecting them.
That our Lord did not design them to be unexplained is
evident from the momentous consequences attached to
their acceptance or rejection. Nor is it less true that
the instrument by which He ordained that these great
truths should be gradually unfolded and established
was controversy. If we trace this through its various
stages, we shall see how these various successive enun-
ciations of doctrine were drawn forth defensively by
assaults upon the Faith, till they may be said to culmi-
nate in the fuller and more precise definitions of the
Athanasian Creed.J Hence the negative character which

* John xi. 27. f Acts viii. 37.

;J; " The first generations of the Church needed no explicit decla-
rations concerning His Sacred Person. Sight and hearing

THE ATHANASIAN CREED QUESTION. 13

pervades them so largely, stating what the truth is not,
against the apostles of false doctrine. I would therefore
again say to the assailers of the Creed, Take your
choice ; If you believe the declarations of Holy Scrip-
ture, our Lord's words in particular, that any definite
faith is necessary to Salvation, say what that faith is ;
but do not shelve or evade the question by platitudes
about simplicity of faith, dislike of controversy, and
the like. Go on with the Eunuch's definition or that
of Martha ; and go, as far as you w ill, through the
Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, and say at
what point, in these gradually-unfolding statements,

the multitude of words ; faith dispensed with the aid of lengthened
Creeds and Confessions. There was silence. But when the light
of His Advent faded, and love waxed cold, then there was an
opening for objection and discussion, and a difficulty in answering.
Then doubts had to be allayed, questions set at rest, innovators
silenced. Christians were forced to speak against their will, lest
heretics should speak instead of them. In the New Testament we
find the doctrine of the Incarnation announced clearly indeed, but
with a reverent brevity. ' The word was made Flesh.' ' God was
manifest in the Flesh.' ' God was in Christ.' But we are obliged
to speak more at length in the Creeds to meet the perverse ingenuity
of those who, now that the voices of the Apostles have died away,
can with impunity insult and misinterpret the letter of their
writings. Nay, further, so circumstanced are we, as to be obliged
not only thus to guard the Truth, but even to give the reason of our
guarding it. For they who would steal away the Lord from us,
not content with forcing us to measures of protection, even go on
to bring us to accomit for adopting them, and demand that ivc
should put aside whatever stands betiveen them and their heretical
purposes." — Newman's Parochial Bermons (Vol. II.), "On the
Incarnation." (The italics are mine.)

B 4

14 A COMMON SENSE VIEW OF

you withhold the application of the words you profess
to admit. But in doing this you are bound, in candour
and logical consistency, to answer in some other way
the question that must and will arise, while you re-
pudiate these.

Or begin, if you will, at the other end ; strike out,
one by one, the Articles in the Athanasian Creed, the
belief in which ought not, in your judgment, to enter
into the terms of Salvation; go on till you come to
those to which you think our Lord's words are appli-
cable : still you have not escaped the difficulty. Stop,
if you will, at our Lord's Sonship, His death, and its
object ; if you are asked to explain the nature of the
Sonship, His relation to the Father and the Holy
Spirit, as distinguished from Sabellianism or Tritheism,
and the results of His sacrifice, you are bound to do so,
affirmatively or negatively, having admitted that the
belief in them is necessary to Salvation. The minor
proposition or question must arise out of each succeed-
ing one which you admit. This minor proposition
is no less requisite in Faith than in Morals and
Religion. In the latter it involves the application of
the major proposition or principle, and constitutes its
practical test. The Pharisees were ready enough to
admit the general principle ; the test was its appli-
cation in the minor proj)osition, " Who is my neigh-
bour ? What is murder ? What is adultery ? " and
this they evaded. Analogous to this is the conduct of

THE ATHANASIAN CREED QUESTION. 15

those who make war ou creeds and would abolish them.
The necessity of Faith they cannot well repudiate, nor
do they care to do so as long as they think it pledges
them to nothing. It is the minor proposition consti-
tuting the Creed (the Catholic Faith is ilik, &c.) and
forming the test, at which they rebel; but if you
receive our Lord's words that any thing is necessary to
Salvation, you have no alternative but to go on whither
the Church has gradually extended the application of
those words, whether affirmatively, or negatively and
defensively. If you reject the definitions of the Atha-
nasian or the Nicene Creed, stop where you will, the
same question arises. You have no alternative but to
reject our I^ord's words or accept their legitimately
involved consequences. You may, if you will, reject
one by one, the articles of each Creed in succession ;
but if you receive the New Testament so far as to
believe our Lord's parting words to His Church, or
those of like import in the New Testament, you cannot,
by any rule of fair reasoning or common sense, deny
that there is some profession of Faith, some creed to
which the words attach — "This is the Faith which
except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved ; "
and that faith must be expressed by a definite pro-
position stating what is to be believed, not by a mere
term through which the profession of the Latitudinarian
and the unbeliever alike evaporate. The man who
proposed to get rid of a mound of earth by digging a

1 6 A COMMON SENSE VIEW OF

hole and burying it, was at least as sensible in his
generation as those who, while admitting the ne-
cessity of some profession of faith, would abolish all
Creeds.

The so-called Evangelical party, many of whom have
joined in the assault on the Athanasian Creed, will per-
haps say, as I believe they hold, that faith is not belief
in a proposition, but rather a trust in a person ; so that
the faith declared to be necessary for Saltation only
implies a filial acceptance of Christ as our Saviour,
But this does not answer the question, nor does it
obviate the necessity of reducing this to a definite pro-
position to give it any real meaning. If they say that
Christ is their Saviour, they cannot escape answering
the question, saved them from what ? and how ? And
I believe that this party are very sensitive as regards
anything which will sanction a doubt of our Lord's
Divinity or the Atonement, the assertion of Avhich, if
truly made, involves propositions to that effect. It is
the absence of these definite statements which swells
their ranks by the accession of those who are willing to
admit the general expression of belief in Christ, and of
justification by faith, yet would fall off if made to state
what they do believe concerning Christ, or if required
to acknowledge His Godhead and impeccability.

If they leave these vital points an open question,
merging the whole in a vague general declaration of
justification by faith, trust in the Saviour, &c., yet not

THE ATHANASIAN CREED QUESTION. 17

saying what it is which constitutes justifying faith ;
xoliat they must believe as the title to justification ; xvlio
the Saviour is, and from wliat He has saved them ; they
may retain in their ranks these irregular allies ; but if
they venture to state definitively what I believe most
of them sincerely hold, they would find themselves
deserted by them. It was this, I believe, which, many
years ago, led to the disruption of the Bible Society,
and the establishment of the Trinitarian branch.

It is not to be denied that this attack is not against
this Creed alone, but all Creeds, this one being singled
out first, as presenting features on which an appeal can
be made to the passions of the unthinking and igno-
rant. The so-called spirit of the age revolts against
restrictions on thought, even those which Kevelation
and Philosophy alike declare to be essential for the due
development and strengthening of our moral and intel-
lectual faculties, and rails against dogmatic teaching
(as if there were any subject having its own rules and
principles which is not taught dogmatically and with-
out appeal from its decisions). Men have not yet
arrived at that point at which they may avow them-
selves unbelievers. The tone of the public mind is not
yet ripe, or rather sufficiently decayed, for that. The
enemy of souls has devised a readier way for accom-
plishing his object without prematurely arousing sus-
picion or alarm, and that way is not only to allow
unbelievers to profess a sort of Pantheism or Deism,

A COMMON SENSE VIEW OF

but to allow a large and increasing body of nominal
Christians to make a general profession of faith, and at
the same time to divest it of all that can give it sub-
stance and reality, among whom are to be found those
of whom the kind-hearted Dean of Westminster seems
to have constituted himself the champion, and whose
principle seems to be to have a religion without a creed,
and to separate the religious life from a definite reli-
gious faith. This party act not without reason; the
Christian Faith is for the most part practical. Faith is
represented by a series of propositions or articles, each
of which enunciates some fact or doctrine involving
motives of obedience, and forming its test. The Gospel
is essentially a Eeligion of motives : Christ's relation to
His people is a personal one ; their duty in relation to
Him is personal ; they are not their own, but bought
with a price. Those who cannot realize these motives,
yet can fulfil outwardly the ordinary claims of society
without them, become hostile to the doctrines from
which they flow, and which only serve to condemn them.
That this should be so is nothing surprising ; but it is
sad to see earnest-minded religious men, who do truly
believe in their Saviour and Sanctifier, and acknowledge
to the full what they owe to them, throw their weight
into the scale with these men, adversaries of the Faith,
and join in their onslaught upon it. It may be possible,
nay easy, to pass a short Act of Parliament, as is now
threatened, for the excision of this Creed from the ser-

THE ATHANASIAN CREED QUESTION. 19

vices of the Church; but those better men who are
encouraging this onshiught would do well to ask them-
selves why the same rule should not be applied to other
things, and why the Apostles' Creed, or our Lord's
words before His Ascension, and the like passages, should
not be subjected to the same treatment, or their recital
made optional.

Let me add a few words on the agitation which has
been got up on this subject, which, while it shows the
hollowness and injustice of the demand, illustrates a
lamentable feature in our national character, the source
of many troubles. Moral, Keligious, Social and Political.
There is a close resemblance between this case and that
styled the " religious difficulty " in the Education ques-
tion. It has been truly stated that the religious diffi-
culty was not made hij the poor, but for them. It had
no existence save in (I will not say the imagination, but)
the speeches of dissenting agitators, who, because they
thought it ouglit to exist, as promoting their views,
maintained that it did so. I can only say that in my
experience of twenty-five years as Diocesan Inspector
of an extensive Deanery, comprising large manufac-
turing towns, mining districts, rural parishes, and, so
far, an epitome and sample of England as a whole,
containing many thousand souls and ujiwards of fifty
schools, I have found no sign of its existence. And other
Parochial Clergy and School Inspectors, as well as
school teachers, will bear the like testimony. Also in

A COMMON SENSE VIEW OF

mj experience as a Parochial Clergyman, extending;
over a period of upwards of forty years, although I have
ever encouraged their coming to me with their diffi-
culties, I do not remember to have met with any parish-
ioner who made a stumbling-block of the Athanasian
Creed. I have heard objections made by strangers in
ordinary conversation, and I may have had questions
put to me by some of our people who required in-
formation, but who were not otherwise than satisfied
with the explanation subsequently given. But the
agitation has not been got up hy Churchmen, but for
them ; and this, in many cases, by those who are separa-
tists from our Communion, or sympathise with such.
The same may be said of the outcry and agitation
against what is termed Ritualism, where the stereotyped
phrase is also used that "the Laity must take the
matter into their own hands." Of the 20,000 parishes
of England and Wales, wnll those agitators point out
half a dozen cases, nay, even two or three, where the
mode of conducting Divine Service is against the wishes
of the congregation? The grievance, if it exists, is
made for the congregation, not hy them ; though doubt-
less they may be stirred up, as they have been on the
Athanasian Creed. But this is the peculiar weakness
of the English character. They will allow a small
knot of turbulent agitators to get up an outcry, and
allow themselves to be persuaded that these represent
the people at large, and to affix their names to peti-

THE ATHANASIAN CREED QUESTION. 21

tions and declarations of which they disapprove, or to
which they are indifferent — in the same way that in
EngUmd a mob of an hundred men and boys will, pro-
vided they make noise enough, keep a large town in
terror day and night; the inhabitants will see their
windows broken, houses fired, and property plundered
or destroyed; will telegraph for troops, and stand
paralyzed with fear ; not reflecting for a moment the
immense disproportion which these rioters bear to the
population, and that, by their united action, and a bold
front, they might of themselves quell a tumult of ten
times the amount. We may lament our national folly
in the temporal matter ; but in the analogous case of
spiritual ones, those awful words rise up and seem to
address us, " Whosoever is ashamed of Me and of My
words in this sinful and adulterous generation, of him
shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He shall come
in the glory of His Father with the Holy Angels."

In the foregoing remarks, I have taken our Lord's
words before His Ascension as the simplest Scriptural
declaration of the necessity of some form of belief for
Salvation. If any are disposed to entertain the question
recently revived as to the genuineness of these Avords,
any of the numerous passages in the New Testament
which connect Faith with Salvation will equally serve
the purpose. Once admit that any faith is necessary to
Salvation, we have right to ask what that faith is, what
is its subject, and the rest follows as a necessary logical

22 THE ATHANASIAN CREED QUESTION.

sequence. But let me again say, in conclusion, that
this only regards the external view of the question.
The Christian verities are in themselves not the sub-
ject of argument, but of faith. Faith is a spiritual
gift ; the effect of grace on the heart, not the result of
an intellectual process. In the preliminary stages,
Intellect, Reason, Imagination, and other faculties have
their part assigned them in the Divine Economy — a
subject full of deep interest, though one into which it is
not necessary for me to enter now ; but the final recep-
tion of the Truth rests with the heart ; and the force of
Christian evidence will rise and fall according to the
spiritual capacity of the latter, whether as affected by
our mode of life, our activity or the reverse in spiritual
exercise and watchfulness, or the partial obscuration
which God may allow for purposes of trial. But in
every case the Great Truth remains, that "with the
Heart man believeth unto righteousness " ; * and " that no
man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy
Ghost." t

* Rom. X. 10. t 1 Cor. xii. 3.

H. A. W.

Belbroughton, September, 1872.

APPENDIX TO SECOND EDITION.

Those persons who attach so mucli importance to a personal
trust, not only as distinguished from the acceptance of a
definite and objective faith as expressed by the Creeds, but
opposed and in disparagement of it, appeal to the faith ex-
hibited by our Lord's disciples before His Passion and by
the recipients of His miraculous cures — constituting in fact
their qualification for partaking of them. But this is not to
be confounded with the faith declared in our Lord's parting
words to constitute the condition of salvation, nor with that
required by the Church as entering into her terms of com-
munion. Though not opposed, they were distinct. The
former was doubtless a personal trust in the main ; but its
subject was a temporal one, having regard to His power to
heal (" faith to be healed "), and the blessing which followed
it was temporal. But even this faith was not only capable of
being expressed by a definite proposition, but was in some
cases required to be so expressed : " Believe ye that I am able
to do this ? " " Yea, Lord " [We believe that thou art able,
&c.]. Also, [I believe that] " if I may but touch his garment
I shall be whole."

In short, in all His miraculous cures it may be said that
the credenclum was " He hath power to do this ; " the trust
was personal, the subject of fiducia ; but the thing believed
was a fact, the subject of fides. The fides expressed by the
proposition was the practical application of the fiducia : the
one precedes the ether but cannot supersede it.

In fact it is difficult to understand how there can be trust
in a person without something to form the subject of that

24 APPENDIX TO SECOND EDITION.

trust, though of the most general kind ; and capable of being
expressed by a definite proposition, though in. most general
terms. " It is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth Him
good," virtually affirms the belief of the speaker that " what-
ever God does is right." The words " shall not the Judge
of all the earth do right ? " not only affirm the same fact as
a proposition, but, as an enthymem, assign the reason also.

But that trust in Christ which, while He was on earth
and the Gospel scheme of salvation as yet unrevealed, took
the form of belief in His power to heal (its merciful exercise
being the subject of prayer), became, after His Passion, Eesur-
rection, and Ascension, and the Coming of the Holy Ghost, a
belief in the efficacy of His Atoning Sacrifice and prevailing
Intercession ; and these rested on facts of which the Articles
of the Creed form a brief summary, and in which the convert
thereby expressed his belief.* But the full efficacy of His
Atonement and Intercession involves truths connected with
His Person which form the subjects of the more expanded
creeds of Nicaea and Athanasius, these last being rendered
necessary by the denial, on the part of heretics, of the truths
which these Creeds re-affirm or the assertion by heretics of
false doctrine which the Creeds deny. There may be as much
personal trust in our Lord now as before His Passion ; but
now it is founded rather on what He Zms done for us, though,
like the faith before His Death (yet in an infinitely higher
degree and directed to infinitely higher objects), it looks
forward to what Be will do, the Faith founded on the
"experience which worketh hope."

Many parochial clergy, in visiting the sick, have met with
the difficulty presented by persons respecting whose state
they have reason to feel uneasy, yet who seem to have no fear
whatever of death or judgment to come, taking refuge in

* Cf. Acts xiii. 26, 39 ; 1 Cor. xv. 1, 11.

APPENDIX TO SECOND EDITION. 25

what they term " trust in tlie Blessed Lord." Yet tlic lives
of ttese persons, whether as careless or evil livers, have been
sadly at variance with a belief in the great Christian verities
on which salvation ultimately depends and which the Creed
brings before us. This may be called a personal trust ; but
it is not one to which the Divine subject of it holds out hope,
to the neglect of the great truths embodied in His Life and
Death. There was much wisdom and mercy in the provision
which, not only in the Baptismal Service made the convert's
profession of faith to consist in an assent to " the Ai'ticles of
the Christian faith," but also in the Visitation of the Sick
required the repetition of that assent to precede the work of
examination, and, if need be, of Confession and Absolution.
I do not say that this is fully carried out in practice, nor
that in every case it could be so done ; but we may safely
question whether a great help and many an opportmiity has
not thereby been lost of bringing persons to the practical
conviction of sin, to which the vague undefined personal trust
will not awaken them.

Neither do I think it wise to discourage, to the extent to
which it is done, the use of the Creed in private prayer. As
a substitute for prayer it may be right to do so, but as an
addition it is different, provided persons are taught to examine
themselves by it, and to see how far they have fulfilled or
violated the obligations involved in the several truths it
enunciates.

Let me here mention, for the benefit of any younger bre-
thren into whose hands this tract may fall, that I have usually
recommended to sick persons who, either from never having
learned or from physical weakness or blindness, are unable
to read their Bible, to repeat to themselves the Creed —
slowly — few clauses at a time — and to meditate on them
with prayer, showing them that it was the best substitute for

26 APPENDIX TO SECOND EDITION.

reading the New Testament, bringing before tbem, in a short
compass, what their Saviour had done and suffered for them,
and serving at the same time, less directly, as an aid to self-
examination. And I have been assured of the blessed com-
fort which they have derived from this. It made to them
the Christian Faith a Eeality, instead of a mere name.

I may also take the opportunity of mentioning, as it bears
on the same subject, that in my office as Diocesan Inspector
and in instructing my own National Schools, and also in
public catechizing in church, I frequently make the chil-
dren, in rehearsing the Creed, prefix the words " I believe "
before each separate Article, with the view of making them
and the congregation see more clearly the Eeality of the
Christian Faith. If this were more generally done, we
should witness less of that profane hurried gabbling of this
important part of Divine Worship which disgraces not only
our parish churches but even our cathedrals. If the chil-
dren were taught to say of our Blessed Lord, " They believe
that He was crucified, they believe that He died, they believe
that He was buried ;" we should not hear these important Arti-
cles of the Christian Faith jumbled together and fused into
the unintelligible and irreverent formula Crucifydeadunhuried.
These three truths are kej)t distinct in the Thirty-nine
Articles as well as in the Creed. Why are they to be thus
irreverently jumbled together in the professions of Faith in
God's house ?

Unless we try to show our people the reality of the
Christian Faith, what it consists of, what is involved in its
various parts, we cannot feel surprise if those who do know
what the Creeds say, but know it only to tremble at their
admission, should find ready hearers among those who have
never been taught their value and blessedness. With the
fulcrum thus supplied by this popular ignorance, the deep-

APPENDIX TO SECOND EDITION. 27

seated liostility has now assumed the character of open war.
The Athanasian Creed stands in the front, and has to receive
the first onslaught. Let us not deceive ourselves that it will
stoj) there. It may be the commencement of the open
attack, but it marks a much more advanced stage in the long
brooding hostility to the faith of Christ. The Creed itself
is the standing record of that hostility. Had attacks not
been made on the faith by heretics, these definitions and
dogmas had never been called for. Again and again have
the errors they were designed to meet revolved in cycles, and
as often have they been confronted by these and like state-
ments. To abandon the latter now, would be to throw down
our fortifications against invasion, while the enemy is allowed
to retain his standing army and weapons of war. But to
conclude, as I began, with appeals to the common sense view
of the matter, I will leave these two questions to be answered
by the assailants.

I. Do you believe that any Faith is necessary to salvation ?
If so, state what it is.

II. If you say that " belief in Christ " is all that is
required, tell me in what respect that belief, as expressed
by and limited to those three words, differs from belief in
Mahomet, Julius CjBsar, or Pontius Pilate ?

In replying to the latter, you concede the lu-inciple of the
definitions of the Athanasian Creed ; in the other, that of its
warnings.

The details of these definitions do not fall within the
scope of these remarks. The warning is best left in our
Lord's own Av^ords, or in the brief and close paraphrase by
which the Church has here rendered them.

LONDON; PEIKTED BY W. CLOWES & SONS, STAMFORD STREET ASD CHAEIKC

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