Freedom in the Church : or The doctrine of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and as this Church hath received the same according to the Commandments of God

* OCT 2 1907 *

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FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

-y^^y^o'

ix'

FREEDOM IN THE
CHURCH

OR

THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST

AS THE LORD HATH COMMANDED, AND AS

THIS CHURCH HATH RECEIVED THE

SAME ACCORDING TO THE

COMMANDMENTS OF GOD

BY ,

ALEXANDER V. G. ALLEN

PROFESSOR IN THE EPISCOPAL THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL IN CAMBRIDGE!

D.D. KENYON, HARVARD, AND YALE; AUTHOR OF "CONTINUITY

OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT " ; " CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS ' ' J

**LIFK OF JONATHAN EDWARDS " J " LIFE OF

' PHILLIPS brooks": ETC.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1907

All righti reserved

Copyright, 1907,
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1907.

NorfaootJ iPrfgg

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co.

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE

The situation in the American Episcopal
Church calls for serious consideration in the
interests of theology and of true religion.
There are many issues at stake. Honesty in
the recitation of the Creed is by no means
the only question. Deeper motives lie be-
neath the present disturbance than can be
measured by the uncritical observer. No
amount of practice in ethical theorizing quali-
fies for judgment on the complicated issues
of religion. For religion constitutes a de-
partment of life by itself, independent of
science, or ethics, or philosophy. There is
danger that the cause of religious freedom
and of freedom of inquiry in theology may
be retarded indefinitely unless the emphasis
be again placed upon freedom, the one pre-
dominant motive of the Reformation in the
sixteenth century which gave us the Book of
Common Prayer. The desire for freedom,
the determination to guard the liberty of both

vi PREFACE

clergy and laity then manifested was only
another form of the demand of Magna Charta,
*' Libera sit ecclesia Anglicana/' Other words
which expressed the purpose of the Reformers
and were often quoted were those of St. Paul,
** Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith
Christ hath made us free ; '' and the words
which follow, "And be not entangled again
in the yoke of bondage." Other kindred
words come from our Lord Himself, " Ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free, and if the Son shall make you
free ye shall be free indeed.'' This freedom
is called in question when an interpretation is
placed upon the vows of the Ordinal, foreign
to their original intent, as if they were a
business contract with a corporation in accord-
ance with whose terms the clergy resign their
freedom in Christ for certain material con-
siderations, instead of a guarantee of Christian
freedom, as in the intention of the Reformers
they were meant to be.

The difficulty about the Virgin-birth is
but a symptom of a profounder disturbance
which threatens to shift the base on which
the Church was restored to its pristine purity
at the Reformation. It is a difficulty not
wholly created by the "higher criticism" or

PREFACE vii

engendered solely by scientific distrust of the
miraculous. An effort has been made in the
following paper to trace the difficulty to its
remoter source in the history of theology in
the ancient Church. It was through misin-
terpretation of the Virgin-birth and the undue
prominence assigned to it that the transition
was made to the sterile form of Byzantine
Christianity or to the impotency of the Latin
Church in the ages preceding the Reformation.
There is no denial in this treatise of the
Virgin-birth. It is accepted as the miracu-
lous or supernatural mode by which God
became incarnate in Christ, as the resurrec-
tion and the empty tomb mark the exodus of
Christ from the world. But criticism is
directed against the misinterpretation of the
Gospel of the Infancy or against arguments
used for its support which not only go beyond
God's Word written, but give to it a promi-
nence which changes the perspective of the
Christian faith as revealed in Scripture. The
Apostles' Creed needs to be supplemented by
the postulate of the larger faith in the primary
and essential importance of the life of Christ,
and not only of His birth and passion, — His
life and character. His deeds and teaching ;
in other words, the historical Christ portrayed

viii PREFACE

for us in the Gospels. Out of this study is
now arising a new conviction in the Divine
leadership of Christ and of His mission to
subdue the world unto Himself.

Attention needs to be called anew, and con-
stantly called, to the distinctive character of
the Anglican Church as differing funda-
mentally from the Roman Church on the one
hand, and from the churches of Puritan de-
scent on the other. Hence the preliminary
chapter of this treatise is devoted to an effort
describing the ruling ideas of the Church of
England as incorporated in the Book of Com-
mon Prayer. The pressure of Puritan opinion
and prejudice is in America so great and
widely diffused and its attitude tacitly assumed
to be identical with Christianity itself, that the
Anglican Church has been and is at a disad-
vantage, and some of its cardinal truths re-
garded as no better than a baptized Paganism.
The Church, also, suffers from being regarded
as a diluted form of Romanism. It is neither
one nor the other. Romanism and Puritan-
ism are more closely related in their deeper
spirit to each other than is the Anglican
Church related to either.

A recent English writer has given the fol-
lowing hopeful estimate of Anglicanism and

PREFACE ix

its possibilities, and his words may apply to
the American Episcopal Church as well : —

" It [the Church of England] can go
forth courageously and face the world as
it is, believing that God's revelation of
Himself once made in the person of
Christ Jesus is being continually explained
to man by that progressive revelation of
God's purpose which is continually being
made by the Divine Government of the
world. Steadfast in its hold on the faith
and on the Sacraments by its unbroken
link with the past, it exists for the main-
tenance of God's truth and its applica-
tion to the needs of man, not for the
purpose of upholding its own power. A
Church fitted for free men, training them
in knowledge and in reverence alike ;
disentangling the spirit from the form,
because of its close contact with sons
who love their mother and frankly speak
out their minds ; not wandering among
formulas, however beautiful, which have
lost their meaning ; finding room in-
creasingly for every form of devotional
life, but training its graces into close
connection with men's endeavors and

PREFACE

aspirations; having no object of its own
which it cannot explain and make mani-
fest as being for the highest good of all.
Afraid of nothing ; receptive of new im-
pulses ; quick, watchful, alert ; proving
all things and ever ready to give a reason
for its principles and jfor their applica-
tion ; exhorting, persuading, convincing ;
so rooted in the past that it is strong in
the present, and ever more hopeful for
the future. For the great work of the
Church of Christ is to mould the future,
and so hasten the coming of the King-
dom. Its eyes are turned to the past
for instruction and warning, not for imi-
tation. Steadfast in the faith, built upon
the foundation which its Master laid, it
can speak the truth in love, using such
words and methods as men can best
understand ; so penetrated by the im-
portance of its message that it can speak
it in manifold ways, to men of varying
tempers and knowledge and feelings, but
striving to speak it in such a way that
the method of its teaching ever elevates
and invigorates the taught. . . . Our
difficulties and differences arise because
we have not a sufficiently lofty concep-

PREFACE xi

tion of the destiny of the English Church.
If any disaster befalls it, the record that
shall be written hereafter will be that
English Churchmen of this our day were
not sufficiently large-hearted and high-
minded to recognize the greatness of the
heritage which was theirs."

Cambridge,
January 26, 1907.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

Ruling Principles of the Anglican Church in the

Age of the Reformation . . . . i

CHAPTER II

Historical Variations in the Interpretation of the

Apostles' Creed . . . . . '32

CHAPTER III
The Vows of the Clergy, and Clerical Honesty . 66

CHAPTER IV

Interpretation of the Virgin-birth in the Ancient

Church 10 1

CHAPTER V

The Virgin-birth and the Incarnation after the

Fourth Century 128

xiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER VI

PAGE

Change in the Doctrine of the Incarnation at the

Reformation . . . . . .161

CHAPTER VII
Modern Sensitiveness about the Virgin-birth . • 194

FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

Freedom in the Church

CHAPTER I

RULING PRINCIPLES OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH
IN THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION

Among the more important changes which the
Church made at the Reformation constituting its
characteristics as the national Church of Eng-
land, with which the American Episcopal Church
is in agreement, are these : —

In the first place the Augustinian theology
in its dogmatic limitation was rejected, by mak-
ing the emphatic assertion, which went to the
root of Augustinianism and of the Calvinism then
rising into power, that humanity had been
potentially redeemed in Christ, or in the words
of the Church Catechism, *'I learn to believe in
God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all
mankind.^' For this was the negation of both
Augustine and Calvin, that mankind had not
been redeemed; that the world still lay under
the curse and was a lost and ruined world even
after the advent of Christ; that redemption

FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

was still something to be achieved, — it had been
made possible for some, it had not actually been
accompHshed for all mankind or for the world.
This thought of an actual and universal redemp-
tion occurs again in the prayer of general
thanksgiving: **We thank Thee for the redemp-
tion of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ."
In the light of this truth, the dogmas of elec-
tion, preterition, or reprobation lose their sever-
ity and change their character; embodying the
inevitable comment on the reahties of hfe,
demanding recognition for their spiritual value ;
their modification or rejection when they become
hinderances to the Christian life. (Article

XVII.O

Having got rid of the great negation which
had kept the world in bondage in the Middle
Ages, and was again in its Calvinistic form

^ One of the common objections to the Thirty-nine Articles is
that they teach (Art. XVII) the Calvinistic doctrine of predestina-
tion. But when this Article is prefaced, as it should be, by the
larger doctrine of the Church Catechism, that Christ "hath re-
deemed me and all mankind^'' its language assumes the tone of
common life, of literature, rather than of dogma. It is true, and
who would have it otherwise, that the assurance of being called
(vocation) is a most blessed one; while those who have it not are
warned against the danger involved in dwelling upon its absence
from their experience. Theology like this is not Calvinistic, nor
Arminian; it is the attitude of a great Church, based upon the
Gospel and illustrated by the realities of life.

RULING PRINCIPLES 3

threatening human freedom in the age of the
Reformation, the Anghcan Church reproduces
the ancient CathoHc charter of human freedom,
— the doctrine of the Trinity. In no other
church in Christendom is so great prominence
given to this central all-inclusive doctrine. In
almost every part of the Prayer Book it appears,
it is the constant, ever-recurring refrain, it opens
the service, it is appended to every psalm
and canticle, it is the essence of the creeds, the
formula of blessing. It would not have been
made so prominent if it v^ere not closely con-
nected with that which is most dear to every
human heart, freedom from fear in the inner hfe
of the soul, and freedom from the shackles
without, from every tyranny whether of church
or state. For the doctrine brings freedom by
the proclamation of the coequality of the Son
with the Father ; since Christ therefore is placed
above kings; and thrones must henceforth
retain their power by obedience to the will of
Christ, — as the Lord Christ hath commanded.
On this basis kingship in the English nation
rested, and on this foundation it stood secure.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the Magna
Charta of ecclesiastical and religious Hberty as
against any invasion of Hberty proceeding from

4 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

the secular throne. So long as kings ac-
knowledge Christ as their head and master,
the process must be toward emancipation of
peoples from every form of bondage. But there
were other forms of bondage which hampered the
intellect and the conscience and prevented men
from entering into the full possession of their
inheritance. And one of these was an ancient
error which obscured the Lordship of Christ
and tended to make His presence and power in-
operative. The Anglican Church set forth anew
the doctrine of the Incarnation, and placed it
again on an historic basis, by refusing any
longer to ascribe to the Virgin Mother titles or
attributes which exalted her above her Son —
or led to her worship and finally to her practical
installation in the place of Christ. This was
one of the chief sources of evil in the Church
before the Reformation, nulHfying the Christian
faith, tending to reduce it to the old nature wor-
ship of the heathen world. The Anglican Church
directed the axe to the root of the evil when it
rejected from its formularies the title Mother
of God (9eoT6Ko<;) as applied to Mary. Another
designation of Mary, as ''ever Virgin," was
also rejected. The absence of these desig-
nations is striking, when one compares the
Anglican ritual with the unreformed ritual of

RULING PRINCIPLES 5

the Greek and Roman churches, where, and
especially in the Greek offices, the terms ''Mother
of God" and ''ever Virgin" are of frequent
occurrence. Allowance should be made for a
certain exuberance among Oriental peoples,
where Western Christendom is more reserved.
Thus in the Greek Church, the title "Brother of
God" is given to St. James. St. Jerome did
not hesitate to call a certain woman whose
daughter had become a nun the "mother-in-
law of God"; Joachim and Anna were the
"grandparents of God." But whether the title
"Mother of God" is or is not restricted in
its use, it is misleading, and the AngHcan
Church rejected it altogether. On this point
more will be said hereafter. The rejection of
the term "Mother of God," as applied to
Mary, and the rejection of her worship as well,
left the way open for a more historic and in-
telligible view of the incarnation by which the
power of Christ, as the Word made flesh, was
enhanced.

The use of the phrase " Mother of God " (Oeoro-
Kos) had been sanctioned by General Councils in
the ancient church ; but the Church of England
was not intimidated by this circumstance in the
eff^ort to promote the freedom of her children

6 FREEDOiM IN THE CHURCH

from every form of bondage. Thus in regard
to the authority of General Councils, it is de-
clared in Article XXI : —

" Forasmuch as they be an assembly of
men, whereof all be not governed by the
spirit and Word of God, they may err, and
sometimes have erred, even in things pertain-
ing to God. Wherefore things ordered by
them as necessary to salvation have neither
strength nor authority, unless it may be
declared that they be taken out of Holy
Scripture." ^

^ Something of the attitude of the English Reformers, in regard
to General Councils, may be inferred from the circumstances that
the famous words of Gregory of Nazianzum were cited when the
call of the Pope for a General Council at Mantua was under dis-
cussion in 1537. That Gregory was prejudiced and sore at heart
over his own personal experience does not diminish the significance
of recalling his words at the moment when it was attempted to
heal the difficulties of the time by resort to a council. In writing
to the Emperor, Theodosius, Gregory had remarked that he shunned
all councils: "I have never yet seen that any synod had a good
ending, or that the evils complained of were removed but were
rather multiplied. Since the spirit of dispute and the love of
power (and do not think I am using too strong language) are
exhibited there beyond all powers of description." And again,
**I keep myself at a distance from them, since I have found by
experience that most of them (to express myself in moderation)
are not worth much." Cf. "Life of Gregory," by Ullman, p. 241;
and Burnet, "History of the Reformation," i. 353.

RULING PRINCIPLES 7

From this statement coupled with the rejection
of the phrase '* Mother of God'' from her formu-
laries, it is to be inferred that on this point the
AngHcan Church regarded the Fourth General
Council as having actually erred in things pertain-
ing to God. The implications of that unfor-
tunate phrase led to the degeneration of theology
and to the lowering of the tone of spiritual and
moral hfe, from the fifth century onward. The
designation " Mother of God " was rejected
at the Reformation not only by the Anglican
Church, but by the Lutheran Church, and by
the Reformed Church in all its branches.

The Anglican Church subjected the decisions
of General Councils to the authority of Scrip-
ture ; but she went further than this in the effort
to get rid of that vague, undetermined, and in-
determinable authority known as ''Cathohcity,''
which haunted the Reformers as it haunts their
descendants to-day. And again, in Scripture,
as the Word of God, the rehef and escape were
found. In the Vlllth Article it is declared that
"The three creeds, the Nicene Creed, Athana-
sius's Creed, and that which is commonly called
the Apostles' Creed, ought thoroughly to be
received and believed, for they may be proved
by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture/'

8 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

What is significant here is the abandonment of
the authority of the Cathohc Church as the
ground or warrant for their acceptance/

The Anghcan Reformation gave a new defini-
tion of the ''Cathohc Church" as that phrase
finds expression in the creeds. Hitherto it had
been understood in different ways, — the Greek
Church and the Roman Church each claiming
to be exclusively the Cathohc Church, each de-
nouncing the other as heretical and schismatic.
According to this new, enlarged and Bibhcal
conception given in the XlXth Article, —

"The visible Church of Christ is a con-
gregation of faithful men, in the which the
pure Word of God is preached, and the
Sacraments be duly ministered according
to Christ's ordinance in all those things that
of necessity are requisite to the same."

The Cathohc Church is further defined in
the ''Prayer for all sorts and conditions of
men": —

"More especially we pray for the good es-
tate of the Catholic Church ; that it may be

^ The American Episcopal Church omitted the Athanasian
Creed, but retains the Vlllth Article in other respects unchanged.

RULING PRINCIPLES 9

so guided and governed by thy Good Spirit,
that all who profess and call themselves
Christians may be led into the way of truth,
and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the
bond of peace, and in righteousness of
hfe." '

In the ''Bidding Prayer," given in the Canons
of 1604, set forth by authority of Convocation,
the definition of the CathoKc Church is more
explicit still : —

"In all sermons, lectures, and homihes,
the preachers and ministers shall move the
people to join with them in prayer in this
form or to this effect as briefly as con-
veniently they may: Ye shall pray for
Christ's holy Catholic Church, that is, for
the whole congregation of Christian people
dispersed throughout the whole world."
(Canon 55.)

Of this Church, composed of all Christian
people, it is further alleged that no organized
branch is infalHble : —

^In the American Episcopal Church, the word "universal" is
substituted for "Catholic." The same usage had been adopted
in the creeds by the Lutheran Church.

10 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

''As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria,
and Antioch have erred, so also the Roman
Church hath erred, not only in their hving
and manner of ceremonies, but also in mat-
ters of Faith." (Article XX.)

The infallibility which the Anghcan Church
refuses to the ancient historic churches, she does
not claim for herself. Infallibihty is no longer
to be held as a mark of the Church. Every-
thing must be tested by the appeal to Scripture.
There are things, however, which are not con-
tained in Scripture, such as rites and ceremonies.
In respect of these, the Church of England
claimed authority, — *'the power to decree rites
and ceremonies, and also authority in contro-
versies of faith." But here again, the higher
authority is invoked: ''It is not lawful for the
Church to ordain anything that is contrary to
God's Word written." (Article XX.) And of
the discipline and worship, as well as of the
doctrine, the Anglican Church has ordered that
they be ministered "as Christ hath commanded,"
and "according to the commandment of God,"
which means that the commandments of men
have been set aside.

RULING PRINCIPLES ii

It must be borne in mind that in the Refor-
mation, the old scholasticism of the ancient
church and the Middle Ages still bore heavily
upon the minds and consciences of those who
had received the ''new learning," and who, by
the study of Greek, had seen a new meaning in
Scripture. The tendency of the Reformation
was away from dogmatic subtleties and refine-
ments to the intellectual freedom and the larger
life of the modern world. The purpose of the
Reformation was primarily religious and ethical ;
and wherever in the Prayer Book the reformers
introduced comment or exhortation, the stress
was laid upon the moral duties of hfe and the
character of the Christian man. No contrast in
the history of theology is more striking than this
oasis of the epoch of the Reformation, between
the cumbrous scholasticism of the mediaeval
world, as developed, for example, by Thomas
Aquinas, where unwarranted intellectual in-
ferences were raised to the equality with divine
revelation; this, on the one hand, and the
scholasticism of the seventeenth century, whether
in the Anglican Church, the Lutheran, or the
Reformed. The hyper-orthodoxy of the seven-
teenth century, with its excessive intellectualism,
represented among the Puritans by the West-
minster Confession, or by such writers as

12 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

Pearson in the Church of England, or by the
more luxuriant forms which the same tendency
took in Germany, prepared the way for the
descent of the eighteenth century into every
phase of scepticism or unbehef. Deism was
the natural sequence of the ultra orthodox, dog-
matic spirit which has made the seventeenth
century unattractive, obnoxious, and almost
unintelligible.

The Church of England cannot be under-
stood or appreciated unless this circumstance be
borne in mind. The influence of Erasmus was
felt in England more powerfully than in his own
country, and the Erasmian tendency was toward
the ethical and undogmatic side of the Christian
faith as brought out in his Enchiridion. His
Paraphrase of the New Testament was placed
in the churches, to be read for the light it threw
on Scripture. During the first half of the six-
teenth century the warfare was kept up against
the old scholastic dogmatism, till it became dis-
credited and fell into the obloquy from which
it has never emerged. This dogmatic bondage
was one of the evils which the men of the '*new
learning" were seeking to overcome; among
them Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canter-
bury, to whom we owe the Book of Common
Prayer, and whose influence pervades the Thirty-

RULING PRINCIPLES 13

nine Articles. The result is a certain undog-
matic character in the formularies of the AngUcan
Church, which has been one of its greater charms
for thoughtful minds. The Christian verities
are there and each in its due proportion, but they
are stated in undogmatic ways, in the language
of reHgion and of Hfe, rather than of theology.
The atonement of Christ is impressively set
forth in the office for the administration of the
Lord's Supper, but nowhere is any theory or doc-
trine of the atonement presented, — Anselmic,
Grotian, or any other. And did we not keep
this point in view, it would seem extraordinary
that the Anglican Church, while giving supreme
importance to Scripture, nowhere lays down any
rule for the interpretation of Scripture or any
theory of inspiration. Puritans and Lutherans
and Romanists might look askance, as indeed
they did at such a church, but wisdom is justi-
fied of her children. The Anghcan Church be-
came in consequence the most comprehensive
church in Christendom, free in spirit and in
truth, trusting to the instincts which demand
the Christian faith in its simplicity, and for the
rest, building upon and appeaKng to ''sound
learning," as at once her justification and de-
fence. What Lord Bacon was to science in
opening up a new world of thought and research,

14 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

free from the trammels of the preceding ages,
that the Church of England was for true religion
and piety and a consecrated learning, whose
aim was truth and reality as more important
than any figments of imagination however
imposing. Scripture became the guarantee
against an ecclesiastical rationaHsm claiming
to improve on God's Word written; a strong
tower of defence, from the invasion of the
scholastic tendency, — ''the Word of God"
and ''containing all things necessary to salva-
tion." The Church of England, says Bishop
Creighton, "did not commit the fatal error of
erecting a system, strong in an appearance of
unchangeable organization, possessed with an
answer to every question, and claiming in-
falHble authority. It laid down decidedly
enough the truths of the Catholic faith, it
retained every vestige of primitive practice
and of primitive organization; but it left
ample room for liberty and did not pretend to
remove from the individual his due share of
responsibility. Its great process of reforma-
tion was carried out by the recognition of a
growth of knowledge. The wisdom of that
decision has been abundantly proved by its
results."

RULING PRINCIPLES 15

The undogmatic attitude of the Church of
England may be further illustrated when the
comparison is made with other churches. The
Roman Church has a voluminous Catechism set
forth by the Council of Trent, covering almost
every point of controversy in the experience of a
thousand years, and another large treatise con-
taining the numerous theological definitions of
Trent, together with the long dogmatic creed of
Pius IV, which was thought necessary in addition
to the shorter ancient creeds. And these large
commentaries are in striking contrast with the
very short Catechism of the Church of England
and the brief Articles of Religion, contained
in a few pages of the Prayer Book. The same
contrast is noted in the case of the Greek Church,
where, in addition to the definitions and decrees
of eight General Councils held to be infalhble,
there is the *' Orthodox Confession of the Eastern
Church,'' containing one hundred and twenty-
six questions answered at great length; the
elaborate *' Confession of Dositheus," being *'the
eighteen decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem";
and the ''Longer Catechism of the Orthodox
CathoHc Eastern Church," which is in itself
alone a considerable volume. Or, in the case
of the Puritan churches, it is suggestive to note
how Catechism and Articles in the Prayer Book

i6 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

form less than a hundredth part in length of the
Confession and the Longer and Shorter Cate-
chisms set forth at Westminster.

The contrast is still more impressive when we
turn to the order and disciphne of the AngUcan
Church. Here the reformers were engaged in
emancipating the Church from the authority of
the Papacy and also from that hard fixed dog-
matic system of the Middle Ages, — the work of
monastic students shut up in their cloisters and
detached from the larger reahties of Hfe. Let
any one turn to the oflSce for consecrating a
bishop in the Roman Church, and compare it
with the same oflfice in the Prayer Book, and the
depth and extent of the revolution accompHshed
will be manifest. In the Roman ordinal, out of
seventeen interrogations put to the bishop-elect,
nine are concerned with his faith on individual
points of beHef. It is not enough to ask if he
accepts the Nicene creed, but each article is re-
cited, and expanded to cover ancient doctrinal
controversies, and to each of these the elect
must answer, ** Credo." In the Anghcan or-
dinal all this is omitted, and these interrogatories
are substituted : —

RULING PRINCIPLES 17

'*Are you persuaded that the Holy Scrip-
tures contain all doctrine required as neces-
sary for eternal salvation through faith in
Jesus Christ ? And are you determined
out of the same Holy Scriptures to instruct
the people committed to your charge ; and
to teach or maintain nothing as necessary
to eternal salvation, but that which you shall
be persuaded may be concluded and proved
by the same ?

''Will you then faithfully exercise yourself
in the Holy Scriptures and call upon God
by prayer for the true understanding of the
same ; so that you may be able by them to
teach and exhort with wholesome doctrine
and to withstand and convince the gain-
sayers ?

** Are you ready with all faithful diligence,
to banish and drive away from the Church
all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary
to God's Word; and both privately and
openly to call upon and encourage others
to the same ? "

Even more illuminating is the contrast between
the ''Ordering of Priests," in the Anghcan
Church, and the "Ordaining of a Presbyter"
{De Ordinatione Presbyterii), in the Roman

i8 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

Church. In the latter, the candidates for ordi-
nation standing before the altar make the pro-
fession of their faith by reciting the Apostles'
Creed. It is not expected of them that they be
famihar with the intricacies of doctrine or the
history of heresies. That is reserved for the
bishop alone. No promise is exacted of them
that they shall study Holy Scripture or recognize
their responsibility to defend the faith.

In the Anghcan office the candidate recites
no creed, as a profession of the faith he is to
preach. The vows he takes are modelled after
those in the office for consecrating a bishop, and
they give the supreme place, not to creeds or
doctrines, but to Holy Scripture.

''Are you persuaded that the Holy Scrip-
tures contain all doctrine required as neces-
sary for eternal salvation through faith in
Jesus Christ 1 And are you determined
out of the said Scriptures to instruct the
people committed to your charge; and to
teach nothing as essential to salvation, but
that which you shall be persuaded may be
concluded and proved by the Scripture ?

**Will you then give your faithful diligence
always so to minister the Doctrine and
Sacraments, and the Discipline of Christ,

RULING PRINCIPLES 19

as the Lord hath commanded^ and as this
Church hath received the same according
to the commandments of God ?

''Will you be ready with all faithful dili-
gence to banish and drive away from the
Church all erroneous and strange doctrines
contrary to God's Word?

''Will you be diligent in prayers and in
reading the Holy Scriptures and in such
studies as help to the knowledge of the
same ?"

In these two offices, the "Consecration of
Bishops " and the "Ordering of Priests," we have
the emancipation of the bishop and the presbyter
from ancient or mediaeval CathoUcism. The
bishop is set free from the domination of the
papacy, to which for hundreds of years a vow of
subjection had been taken; and the original
equaUty of the episcopate is restored. In the
case of the presbyter, a great step forward was
taken when the responsibihty was placed upon
him equally with the bishop to defend the
faithy as the Lord hath commanded and as this
Church hath received the same according to
the commandments of God. This was the
presbyter's emancipation from an ignorance and
irresponsibility which had weakened and dis-

20 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

credited the Church before the Reformation;
and Holy Scripture was to be the agency which
should bring the freedom.

Nowhere in the formularies of the Anglican
Church is it creeds on which the stress is laid,
but rather the Scriptures, as the word of God
containing all things necessary to salvation. On
this point the Reformers had learned a lesson
from the formularies in the reign of Henry VHI,
where it was shown what an agent for the tyran-
nical suppression of thought and freedom of
inquiry, a creed, even the Apostles' Creed, might
be. For a man also might recite creeds and
dogmas, and be most loyal in defending without
understanding them; but when Holy Scripture
became the test and standard, it must needs be
carefully and closely and continuously studied
in order to its interpretation, and ''sound learn-
ing" became essential.

This change in the position of the presbyter
of the Anglican Church as compared with the
Roman priesthood or the Greek, has been com-
mented on by Dr. Hampden, late bishop of
Hereford, and the comment is important and
deserves to be cited: —

''Among other solemn pledges which
they [the clergy] are required to give at their

RULING PRINCIPLES 21

ordination to the Priesthood, is that very
remarkable one, that they will * banish and
drive away all erroneous and strange doc-
trine contrary to God's word.' ... I call
this a very remarkable injunction of the
service for the ordination of Priests ; because
in no other Church is the Hke commission
given to any but to the highest order of the
Ministry, the bishops of the Church, ex-
clusively. Neither in the Greek forms of
ordination, nor in the Roman Pontifical, do
we find any such charge given to the Minis-
ters of the inferior orders, but only to the
bishops. All that is exacted of the priest
and deacon, according to the formularies of
the Greek and Roman Churches, is the prom-
ise of obedience to the bishop. . . . At the
Reformation, accordingly, a great change
was introduced in this respect. . . . Under
the previous system the mass of the clergy
were incapable of instructing the people.
... It was rare to find any who could
preach to the people. . . . The Reforma-
tion corrected this evil."

The Church of England is preeminently a
layman's church, more so than any other church
in Christendom. If bishops and clergy were

22 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

emancipated and set free from what had become
the bondage of Rome, still greater was the
emancipation secured to the laity. In the
ancient Church and in the mediaeval they had
no part in the government of the Church or in
the determination of its formularies. It was a
common mode of speech to designate the clergy
as spirituales, the laity as carnales. All this
was changed at the Reformation. It was the
laity who took the first steps toward separating
the Enghsh Church from the authority of Rome,
and who finally completed the process. It was by
the laity that the Prayer Book was approved and
its use made binding. The prominence of the
laity in all the changes wrought at the Reforma-
tion gives a distinctive character to the Anglican
Church as compared with the other reformed
churches.

But in no respect was the revolution made
so manifest as in the one supreme act by which
the Book of Common Prayer was put into the
hands of the people, as the laymen's book no
less than that of the clergy. Hitherto such a
thing was unknown. Primers were sometimes
issued for the instruction of the laity, but at the
Reformation, all the offices of the Church, ren-
dered into English, were placed in their hands.
What had hitherto been the priests' book was

RULING PRINCIPLES 23

henceforth to be the possession of all, men,
women, and children ahke. In the unreformed
offices, the clergy responded to the clergy, and
to say ''Amen" was the only participation of the
people. In the Prayer Book the people respond
to the clergy on equal terms. The clergy appear
acting as the people's representative.

There is a profound spiritual principle in-
volved in this far-reaching change. It is some-
times said by those who are ignorant of the
Anglican Church, that in the Reformation she
put forth no distinctive doctrine. The Zwinglian
Church magnified the glory and majesty of God ;
the Lutheran Church set forth as its controlling
principle, the truth of ''justification by faith";
the Reformed Church buik upon the Divine will
as expressed in decrees of predestination. But
a great act characterizes the Anglican Church —
the making of a book whose possession by the
people becomes a means of education, of en-
lightenment, and of Christian nurture. And be-
neath this act hes a doctrine or truth, which
involves what is essential in the teaching of
Christ — the priesthood of all Christians, who
now offer spiritual sacrifices to God, of them-
selves, and not through another. In the light
of this truth, the agency of the clergy is subordi-
nate. In the mutual response of people and

24 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

clergy lies the visible and outward sign of
Anglican worship, as contrasted with Greek or
Roman or Puritan worship, where the isolated
officiant at the altar or in the pulpit alone is
speaking and the people are silent.

It is another distinguishing mark of the
Reformation in the Church of England, that it
was not overcome by a reactionary tendency,
as was the case in the Reformed Church, and
to a certain extent also in the Lutheran Church.
The Anglican Church retained what Christian
piety had accumulated during the Christian ages
in the hne of devotion and in the Christian or-
dering of time, or in the aesthetic and impres-
sive arrangement of its worship. But there was
a cleansing and a purification; whatever was
contrary to the Word of God was rejected;
whatever harmonized with it was retained.
The Prayer Book was not an accidental or
fortuitous production, but the work of one who
devoted many years to Hturgical study, and who
by practical experience knew the impressive
points in breviary or missal, and felt the im-
pressive features which carried a religious and
Christian appeal. The Prayer Book became
through Cranmer's influence a constructive work
of literary skill and of artistic merit as well as

RULING PRINCIPLES 25

a summary of religious devotion. It was done
also at the right moment in history, a moment
which unavailed of would have been lost forever.
The juncture of the new and the old constituted
a plastic creative hour; and the man met the
hour, who was devoted to the Christian faith as
revealed in Scripture, but who without prejudice
or reactionary tendency was able and glad to
discern in the religious consciousness of the past
whatever bound it to the present or to the future.
No great and pure religious instinct was over-
looked. Indeed there was some concession to
the weakness of those with whom past associa-
tions were too sacred to be sundered sharply or
rudely.

Thus in the stately offices of Morning and
Evening Prayer, constituting the staple and
normal worship of the people, it is the for-
giveness of God which is offered; and in the
Reformation, it was God's forgiveness, and not
that of the Church or of the priesthood, which
was most desired and needed, and most highly
valued. But for those with whom the conscious-
ness of God was weak or who shrank from the
Divine approach, those who were sick or at the
point of death, the forgiveness of man was al-
lowed, as in the phrase of the form of absolution
of the thirteenth century, — ego te absolvo. It

26 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

is something to be valued — the forgiveness of
man as representing the Church ; but there is a
higher forgiveness for which the soul hungers in
its highest mood, which no lower forgiveness
will satisfy. But this is one of the few conces-
sions to the religious mood bred by mediaevalism.
For the predominant note in the Prayer Book is
God, revealed in the sacred and eternal Trinity,
— the divine love and the divine forgiveness;
and the response of man implies the cultivation
of moral character, as what God desires. It
is this which lends dignity and weight to the
exhortations distributed throughout the book.

Another feature giving high distinction and
value to the Prayer Book is its conservative
tone, which becomes a strong apologetic for
the Christian faith. To discard the devotions
of past ages, in the effort at reform, would have
implied that the work of Christ had been in
great part a failure, that the Church preserved
no continuous faith or hfe. Such a temptation,
and it existed, Cranmer rose above — even if
circumstances had not favored his purpose. He
could beheve that the churches of Jerusalem,
Antioch, and Alexandria had erred in matters of
the faith, that the Church of Rome had griev-
ously erred ; but he also beheved that they had
conserved the Christian faith to a saving extent,

RULING PRINCIPLES 27

and that they remained true churches, despite
their errors. He could hold that General Coun-
cils had erred in matters of faith, and yet retain
for them high reverence as having set forth and
maintained the fundamental truth of the co-
equahty of the Son with the Father.

In the age of the Reformation the Bible was
distinguished from other books, as the Word of
God. It was the Word of God, when compared
with ecclesiastical traditions which were the
commandments of men ; the Word of God as
reveahng the Divine will, and because the scope
of the whole is to give all glory to God; the
Word of God, because it contained all things
necessary to salvation ; the Word of God, pre-
eminently, for it carried the portrait of Christ,
the life and character and teaching of Him who
is the Word of God made flesh and dweUing
among men. Further than this the Anghcan
Church did not go. It makes no answer to the
questions, How or Why. It off^ers no theory of
inspiration, no dogma as to mode of composition
of the various books, their date, or their author-
ship. It is content to trust the Scriptures to the
clergy and laity for their devout study, throwing
on them the individual responsibihty for the
interpretation of its contents, by the aid of sound

28 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

learning, and by the use of such helps as minister
to the knowledge of the same. In its conception
of the Bible the Anghcan Church differs from
the unreformed churches, Greek and Roman, in
not placing tradition or the creeds above the
Bible, or in valuing the Bible chiefly as the bul-
wark of the creeds, in accordance with which its
interpretation must be confined. Hence there
is no sensitiveness, no fear about the Bible, as
with those who subordinate it to the creeds.
The Anglican Church has made no effort to
guard the Bible by theory, definition, or dogma.
Not even its infalKbihty is asserted. It is
Romanism or Puritanism which asserts the
inspiration of all and every part of Scripture.^
Theories about the Bible devised in the seven-
teenth century, and chiefly by divines of the
Puritan school or by Lutheran theologians, are
very often attributed to the Anglican Church, and
fastened upon her, by a preponderating senti-
ment from without her pale, which it is some-
times hard to resist. But the most careful
search of Anghcan standards reveals no trace of
them. It must be remembered in this connec-
tion, that in the age of the Reformation, while
the Bible was held in love and reverence, yet

^ Cf. "Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent," Session IV,
"Westminster Confession," Ch. i.

RULING PRINCIPLES 29

there was also greater freedom in its interpreta-
tion than in the age which followed. Luther's
BibHcal criticism to a later age would appear Hke
the destructive attack of modern rationalism.
He thought it a matter of indifference whether or
not Moses wrote the Pentateuch. He compared
the books of Scripture with each other and
assigned them a relative importance according
to their subject-matter or their mode of treat-
ment. To the Gospel of St. John he gave the
preference above the Synoptics, and thought the
Epistles of St. Paul of greater authority than
the gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, or St.
Luke. If one had St. John's Gospel and St.
Paul's Epistles, he had all that it was necessary
to know. He found no inspiration in the Epis-
tles of James or Jude, or in the Book of Revela-
tion. The test with Luther was the appreciation
of the Person and work of Christ. Our view
has changed about the relative value of the
books of Scripture ; but what it is important to
recognize here, is that opinions, such as those of
Luther, were well known in England at the time
when our formularies were issued, and may be
responsible for the somewhat cautious and
moderate language used in defining Scripture,
as the ''Word of God, containing all things
necessary to salvation." Cranmer, who is re-

30 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

sponsible for the phrase, was familiar with the
new learning of his time ; he was a scholar also,
and had the moderation of one who looked at
a subject in its different aspects. To his mind
the unity of Scripture lay in the presentation of
Christ, by anticipation in the Old Testament
and by its fulfilment in the New. **Both in the
old and New Testament everlasting hfe is offered
to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator
between God and man, being both God and
Man" (Article VII).

On this point. Dr. Creighton, the late bishop
of London, has remarked : —

*'The Church of England stands in a
remarkably free attitude toward the prog-
ress of human learning. It has nothing to
conceal and shrinks from no inquiry. No
religious organization attaches a higher
importance to Holy Scripture or venerates
more highly its authority ; but it has never
committed itself to any theory concerning
the mode in which Scripture was written
or the weight to be attached to it for any
other purpose than that of ascertaining all
that is necessary to salvation. That the
Scriptures contain God's revelation to man,
there must be no doubt; but the Church

RULING PRINCIPLES 31

of England has never erected any artificial
barrier against inquiry into the mode in
which that revelation was made, into the
method and degree in which God's spirit
made use of human instruments, into the way
in which national records were penetrated
with a sense of the divine purpose. It is true
that assumptions have been made on these
points and others. Men have always asked
questions and have given themselves answers
to the best of their capacity. Such answers
are of the nature of hypotheses, founded on
the best knowledge available, but capable of
extension or alteration as knowledge ad-
vances.'' ^

The fear and the disquiet caused by BibHcal
criticism are overcome when we concentrate
attention on the essence of the Christian faith as
consisting in the Person of the Christ, who is the
"Way, the Truth, and the Life." The Bible is
the divinely ordered record of that Person. We
read the Bible that it may show us Christ, and
that by prayer and study and meditation Christ
may grow in our hearts by faith.

^ "The Church and the Nation," pp. 78, 79.

CHAPTER II

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS IN THE INTERPRETATION
OF THE CREED

I

I. The creed commonly called the Apostles'
Creed took its origin in Rome about the middle
of the second century, and may in a general way
be regarded as a summary of those convictions
regarding the Christian faith in the strength of
which the rising Cathohc Church overcame the
heathenism of the Roman Empire in the West.
Viewed from this point, it is seen to include two
unique statements which never gained formal
entrance into Eastern creeds, but were for the
Western Church embodiments of profound and
influential conviction. These two statements,
so difficult for the modern mind to receive, but
of the highest significance in the ancient Church,
are the ** descent into hell " {descendit ad inferos) ,
and the ''resurrection of the body'' (resurrec-
tionem carnis)} In their origin and in their

^ The translation, "the resurrection of the hody^' is found in
the "Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man,"

32

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 33

development, they were the expression of vital
belief in the ancient and the early mediaeval
Church. Long before its insertion in the creed,
the *' descent into hell " was associated with the
conviction that Christ had not only been actually
born into this lower world and had actually died
on the cross, and had made this world His own ;
but that He also had ranged through the universe,
as the victorious, unconquerable Son of God,
who, in the power of immortal youth, had visited
every place where human souls were to be
found, even hades and hell ; that He had met the
evil spirit, the enemy of man, and had routed
him from his stronghold. Then, when the under
world had yielded up its contents to Him,
began the upward movement. Henceforth souls
ascended instead of going down into the lower
parts of the world. Heaven was revealed, — an
unknown sphere to the ancient world. So, hav-
ing accompHshed His work in the under world
and routed the prince of darkness. He rose up
again from the dead and ascended into heaven,
and He sitteth henceforth on the right hand of
the Father, which implies the attitude of assured
success, that evil had been conquered in its
strongholds. But it also means more, — that at

put forth by the king's authority in 1543. But the original pur-
port of the article was to lay emphasis on the flesh.

34

FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

the right hand of the Father, He is also in the
thick of the strife, ever ready to come to the aid
of His Church ; or, as St. Stephen, before he fell
asleep, beheld Him, not sitting, but standing,
as if the assault moved Him to rise in behalf of
His devoted follower.

Whatever may be one's difficulty in believing
in the descent into hell, the Church w^ill not
v^iUingly yield this picture of the immortal, con-
quering Christ. If the dread of the evil spirit
in the universe has been exorcised, it is owing
to this ancient behef, or rather it is owing to the
influence of Christ Himself, as His followers saw
Him, when they no longer knew Him only after
the flesh, but in His transfigured career through-
out the universe of God. Nor does it weaken
the beauty or truth of the picture when we recall
how the old Roman world, from the second to
the fourth century, was invaded by Mithra, to
whom a similar role was assigned in the heathen
imagination. Light has been shed on the re-
ligious ferment of that age, by researches of
modern scholars.^ Mithra is now recognized
as having been a competitor for the suffrage
of the Roman emperors. He appeared as an
immortal youth, endowed with great beauty.

1 Cf. Cumont, " The Mystery of Mithra.'*

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 35

He, too, had a miraculous entrance into the
world, being born out of a rock. He ranged the
universe as the champion and protector of souls,
he was victorious over evil, he was related to the
Sun, with whom he sat down at a banquet.
His religion was popular in the army, and it is
now known that his worship was practised in
every, even remotest, part of the Western Empire.
One advantage he had over the Christian faith,
that he posed as the special friend of the empire
and of Roman emperors and of the army, —
the patron of the established order, who gave
victory to the Roman legions. Here was his
strength and here was also his weakness. When
the Roman army met with successive defeats,
his hold began to weaken, and after the time of
Julian the Apostate (361-363) it began to dis-
appear before the conquering Church. But what
hurt the worship of Mithra most was the deep
conviction of the reality of the birth and passion
of Christ as enshrined in the Apostles' Creed.
For Mithra never existed, and Christ had really
been born and had really suffered and really
died. It is of scenes like this that we are re-
minded as we recall the struggles of our brethren
in the ancient church, resisting unreahty and
building on the soHd foundation of historic
fact. ,

36 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

In regard to the "resurrection of the ilesh,"
that also takes us into the heart of that distant
age, which found comfort and support in the
Apostles' Creed. The beHef was invading the
West, coming from Oriental religion, that a
sharp distinction existed and separated between
soul and body, that the connection with the flesh
stained the spirit and weakened its power, and
that any redemption must be from the power of
the flesh, in order to gain immortahty. Such a
conviction conditions the conception of the
under-world, as in Homer and Virgil, where
spirits wander aimlessly and sad, suffering from
the disembodiment of death. The doctrine of
the resurrection of the flesh was therefore a
profound protest against the dreary view of
Orientahsm, — it meant life and hope in this
world and in the other.^ In it we may see
the prophecy of modern science, attaching
importance to the human body, whose re-
sults are more and more apparent in the
physician's art; the basis, too, of modern
painting, as it revived in the age of the Renais-
sance, and attached itself to what .was posi-
tive in the early art of the Greeks. When

^ How much the resurrection of the flesh implied to the old
Roman world, may be seen in TertuUian's treatise, De Resuv
rectione Carnis.

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 37

we recall that, in the places where Oriental
religion or Mohammedanism has prevailed,
there has been no scientific study of the human
body and that the healing art is still in its
rudiments; or that the plastic art of painting
has received no development, nor added to the
pleasure and the enlightenment, to the beauty
and dignity, of human life, as in Western
Europe, we may be grateful for the clause in
the Apostles' Creed, — the resurrection of the
flesh. But this conviction has not been with-
out solace to the religious heart. The in-
sistence on the body of Christ with which He
ascended into heaven, the insistence on the
resurrection of the human body, tended to
disarm death of its terrors. It was a response
to an universal human instinct.

There are other features of the Apostles' Creed
which, while they still retain their appeal to the
Christian mind and conscience, made that appeal
with intenser force, in a more realistic way, in the
ancient church. Such was the conviction of
the indispensable importance of the new society,
which was taking the place of the old — the
organization of the Church elaborated and per-
fected with surpassing skill and diligence. Into
this new society each man was to be born by
baptism, and baptism stood for an inward

38 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

purification. The kingdom of this world was
passing over into the Kingdom of God, — so it
began to be interpreted from an early time.
Nor did the great structure of the mediaeval
Church in the West or the various Christian
nations of the East ever lose this consciousness
of a divine origin within the Church, however
stagnant or debased they may appear in later
ages. From the second century, the ' Cathohc
Church" as the new society founded by Christ
and intended to embrace the world was the most
inspiring of convictions.

The " forgiveness of sins " has a deep sig-
nificance when we recall the limitation placed
upon its scope by movements such as Monta-
nism, in the second century; but also a deeper
significance when we place it over against the
teaching of Gnostic sects, where forgiveness was
unknown, where souls were what they were
and must ever so remain in consequence of a fixed
evolution or emanation in the physical order.
Such was the central principle of Gnosticism,
working in disguised and subtle ways, which,
if it had not been excluded from the Western
world, would have made progress and hope
for mankind impossible. The doctrine of for-
giveness strikes its roots into the civil order,
reconciles man to life, gives courage and hope,

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 39

and constitutes the foundation of Christian
civilization.

All these things were but the expansion of the
Divine Name, or of the baptismal formula, —
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; they
were implications wrapped up in the new name
of God. They might all be dropped or omitted,
but the Name would abide, and continue to
generate the forces of the spiritual hfe. Nor
was this origin of the Creed forgotten. Ever and
anon, in the Middle Ages, it is set forth as the
essence of the Creed — a protest, it is possible,
against the dogmatic tendency, which in ad-
vocating too exclusively this or that feature of
the Creed failed to do justice to its larger
character and purpose. The Fatherhood of
God, the redemption of the world by Christ, the
higher life of the soul begotten by the Spirit,
these threefold agencies, eternal distinctions in
the Divine being and operating in time, were
the essence of the Christian revelation. God
the Holy Ghost drawing all men into the fellow-
ship of the Eternal Father and the Eternal Son —
such was the Christian motive, which was to
remake this lower world, and to bring it into
harmony with the upper world, so that through-
out the universe there should be unity of motive
and unity of result ; and the earth should aspire

40 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

to attain the fellowship and communion which
constitutes the glory of heaven.

For such reasons as these the old Roman or
Apostles' Creed has won the confidence and the
loyalty of the Christian Church. It may be that
taken in its original purport it cannot hold quite
the place it did in the ancient church. The
world has been revolutionized, new issues have
arisen, the outlook upon Hfe has changed. The
new learning, the modern sciences, have modi-
fied our beliefs. But taking it as a whole and
with a large construction, no ancient document
retains such a living character and even adapta-
bihty to the needs of modern hfe. And as the
symbol, whose summary of contents represents
the process by which the Christian Church won
its stupendous victory over ancient heathenism,
it has an historic interest unsurpassed except by
the annals of the life of Christ.

It is when we turn from a large constructive
estimate of the Creed to the historical interpre-
tation of its separate clauses, that we become
aware of many divergencies of interpretation
affecting almost every statement it contains.
They are not evasions of its meaning nor efforts
to empty its clauses of their significance. They
are historical monuments of different ways of
regarding the Christian revelation. They go

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 41

back to the remote Christian ages. They are
not devices of modern scepticism to get rid of
difficulties ; nor are they efforts to vaporize doc-
trines by construction, in order to their denial
under the guise of interpretation. The Greek
and Latin churches differed from the first in
their apprehension of the Christian faith, and di-
vergencies appear in their respective commenta-
ries on the Creeds. But the Anglican Church has
no authoritative commentary, fixing the meaning
of each and every clause beyond the possibility
of dispute. Hence, there have arisen various
modern interpretations of credal statements,
v^hich have been legitimated within the Church
by the comprehensiveness which is a mark of the
Church of England, as compared with the an-
cient historic churches, or with the Reformed
churches, so far as they still hold by the West-
minster or other standards. These variations
give the Anglican Church its adaptedness to the
varying currents of the national life in succes-
sive generations, in contrast with the stagnation
of the ancient churches, which have endeavored
to stereotype the one aspect under which alone
the Christian faith appears to them.

42 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

II

The Apostles' Creed has been subject to di-
verse interpretations. It is not the question,
whether it should be so; the simple fact con-
fronts us. The clauses of the Creed have been
expanded, or, to use another expression, they
have been *' stretched" to include modern re-
ligious thought and even divergent attitudes of
opinion.

In the age of the Renaissance, the Creed
suffered a severe shock when it was shown
by Laurentius Valla that it was not originally
composed by the twelve apostles. A tradition
was thus rudely dispelled which had come
down from time immemorial, clothing this
venerable symbol with a sanctity to which
creeds with oecumenical authority could not
aspire.

The Anglican Church in the age of the Refor-
mation laid down the ruling principle for its
interpretation ; but in so doing departed widely
from another method of interpretation which
had long prevailed. A new religious motive
born at the Reformation inspired the authors
of the Church Catechism as they asked and
answered the Question : —

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 43

*'What dost thou chiefly learn in these
articles of thy belief?

''Answer: First, I learn to beheve in
God the Father, who hath made me and all
the world.

''Secondly, in God the Son, who hath re-
deemed me and all mankind.

"Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who
sanctifieth me and all people of God."

There is here a distinction between the articles
of the Creed : some are primary and essential,
others are subordinate in importance. It was
the mission of the Reformers to give prominence
to the being of God and His activity in the
world of human affairs. Inspired by this con-
viction they gained the courage to resist the evils
bred in the unreformed church which preceded
them, where the devotion to the Virgin Mary and
the saints had thrown God and Christ and the
Holy Spirit into the background of the human
consciousness. Any one familiar with the litera-
ture of the sixteenth century knows how the age
rejoiced in the sense of the Divine Presence in all
hfe and especially in contemporaneous events, —
in the coming back, as it were, of God to His
church and to His world.

In one of the formularies of the EngHsh

44 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

Church, set forth before the religious reconstruc-
tion (1543), known as ''The King's Book" or
''The Erudition of a Christian Man," is found
a similar statement to that in the later Catechism.
It is attached to a comment on the first article
of the Creed, — "I believe in God, the Father
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth," and the
comment reads: "This manner of belief we
ought to have in no creature of God, be it never
so excellent, but in God only; and therefore
in this Creed, the said manner of speaking is
used only in the three articles which concern
the three persons in Trinity, that is, the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost." ^ The passage
is plainly an attempt to inject into a document,
otherwise mediaeval and even reactionary, the
spirit of the coming reform.

For this distinction between the articles of
the Creed there was a precedent in an ancient
commentary on the Creed by Rufinus in the
fourth century.

"We say that we believe 'in God the
Father,' so also we say 'in Christ,' so also
'/w the Holy Ghost.' . . . It is not said ' m

^ "A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man,"
p. 229, in " Formularies " of Faith put forth by authority during the
reign of Henry VIII, Oxford, 1856.

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 45

the Holy Church/ nor 'in the forgiveness
of sins/ nor 'in the resurrection of the
flesh/ For if the preposition ^in' had
been added, it would have had the same
force as in the preceding articles. But now
in those clauses in which the faith concern-
ing the Godhead is declared, we say 'in
God the Father,' and 'in Jesus Christ,
His Son,' and 'in the Holy Ghost.' But
in the rest where we speak not of the God-
head, but of creatures and mysteries, the
preposition 'in' is not added. We do not
say 'we beheve in the Holy Church,' but we
beheve the Holy Church not as God but as
the Church gathered together to God ; and
*we beheve that there is forgiveness of sins,'
and 'we beheve that there will be a resur-
rection of the flesh.' By this monosyllabic
preposition, therefore, the Creator is distin-
guished from the creatures, and things divine
are separated from things human." ^

In the Nicene Creed this important distinction
has been in some details of the Creed preserved.
Thus, —

^ "Expos. Sym. Apost.," 36.

46 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

" I believe in the Holy Ghost . . . and I
believe one CathoHc and ApostoHc Church,
I acknowledge one baptism, . . . and I
look for the resurrection of the dead." ^

The Apostles' Creed, as has already been
said, was in its origin an expansion of the for-
mula of baptism, — ''the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." And
this distinction between what was given by di-
vine revelation and the comment added by the
Church has never wholly disappeared from the
liturgical or other offices. During the Middle
Ages, in the Western Church, the distinction is
preserved between the catechetical and the
baptismal Creed : and the latter was short and
did not go much beyond the Divine Name.^
In the present Roman office for Baptism is found
the same distinction. At the opening of the
office the full Apostles' Creed is recited htur-
gically, but when it comes to Baptism the shorter
creed is adopted, which runs as follows in inter-
rogatory manner : —

^ In a translation of the Creed made by Cranmer, with great
care, is the reading: "I believe in the Holy Ghost; and that there
is an Holy Catholic Church; . . . and that there shall be resur-
rection of the body."

^Cf. Swainson, "The Creeds of the Church," 179 ff., for the
prevalence of other and shorter creeds and their use at baptism.

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 47

''Credis in Deum, patrem omnipotentem,
creatorem coeli et terrae ?

*'Credis in Jesum Christum, Filium ejus
unicum, Dominum nostrum, natum et pas-
sum ?

''Credis et in Spiritum Sanctum, sanctam
ecclesiam Catholicam, Sanctorum com-
munionem, remissionem peccatorum, carnis
resurrectionem, et vitam aeternam ? ''

''It would appear," says Swainson, "that,
before the Reformation, the Apostles' Creed, as
we have it now, was never used at baptism,
either as a declaratory, or as an interrogatory
Creed." The baptismal creed or confession in
the time of Cyprian (f 258) read as follows :
''Dost thou beheve in God the Father, in (His)
Son Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit ? Dost
thou beheve in remission of sins and eternal hfe
through the Church?" The Cathohc Church
could not depart so widely, as in the Roman
Creed, from the simple confessions in the Apos-
tolic Age, without an echo down through the
centuries reminding of the earher simphcity of
the Christian faith. Thus in the fourth century,
in the book "De Sacramentis," ascribed to St.
Ambrose: "Thou wast asked. Dost thou believe
in God the Father Almighty ? Thou didst an-

48 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

swer, I believe; and thou wast baptized, i.e.
thou wast buried. Again thou wast asked, Dost
thou beheve also in our Lord Jesus Christ and
in His cross ? Thou saidst, I beheve ; and thou
wast baptized, i.e. together with Christ thou
wast buried. Again thou wast asked, Dost
thou beheve also in the Holy Ghost ? Thou
saidst, I beheve ; and a third time thou wast im-
mersed, that the triple confession should re-
move the multiplied lapse of thy earlier hfe."
In the Middle Ages the same echo was heard, as
in the reference by Facundus of Hermiane
(c. 550) to this short form of baptismal pro-
fession: — ''they believe in God the Father
Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His Son, and in
the Holy Spirit." '

The Anglican Church has only made the

^ Cf. Swainson, "The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds," pp. 20,
22, 24. Swainson has given several specimens of these shorter
creeds, used at baptism, down to the ninth century. Thus in the
Gelasian Sacramentary used by Thomasius, belonging apparently
to the eighth century, the baptismal creed ran as follows: "Dost
thou believe in God the Father Almighty .? I believe. Dost thou
believe also in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, born and
suffered .? I believe. And dost thou believe in the Holy Ghost,
the Holy Church, Remission of Sins, the Resurrection of the Flesh .?
I believe." In this creed are omitted the words "Creator of
heaven and earth," "conceived by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin
Mary," "under Pontius Pilate," and so to the end of the part
relating to our Lord, were omitted and so were the clauses or words
"Catholic," "the Communion of Saints, Life everlasting."

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 49

ancient distinction more emphatic by requiring
every child to learn that what the Creed teaches
chiefly is the Divine Name, — the Father who
creates, the Son who redeems, and the Holy
Ghost who sanctifies. Whenever the Creed is
recited, this reduction to its essential purpose
is to be borne in mind.

In the seventeenth century, which may be
called the age of Protestant Scholasticism,
following so closely the greater age of creative
activity and reconstruction, we meet an exag-
gerated intellectualism, which may be seen not
only in the famous Westminster Confession,
but infected almost every important theological
writer, whether in England or on the Continent.
Under the spell of this over intellectualism, the
important distinction made by the Prayer Book
was overlooked as if it did not exist or were no
longer tenable. Thus Bishop Pearson (f 1686)
in opening his ''Exposition of the Creed" re-
marks : —

"As the first word Credo, I believe, giveth
a denomination to the whole Confession of
Faith, from thence commonly called the
Creed, so is the same word to be imagined
not to stand only where it is expressed but
to be carried through the whole body of the

50 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

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

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

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

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 51

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

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

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

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

52 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

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

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

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 53

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

The variations confront us at the very opening
words.

GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY, MAKER OF
HEAVEN AND EARTH

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

CONCEIVED BY THE HOLY GHOST

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

54 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

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

BORN OF THE VIRGIN MARY

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

HE DESCENDED INTO HELL {Descendit ad itl-
jerna or ad inferos)

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

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 55

century, but it had gained currency in the
ancient church from an early period. It was
in the Creed of Acquileja from the fourth cen-
tury, and is interpreted by Rufinus as meaning
a descent into the place of punishment. On this
point there was no difference of opinion in the
ancient church — Christ had descended into
hell, for the purpose of meeting and overcom-
ing Satan, and also of delivering the souls of
those who trusted in Him. This was the pre-
vailing interpretation still in the sixteenth cen-
tury, both before and after the reign of Henry
VHI.

**He descended immediately in his soul
down into hell . . . and at his said entry
into hell first he conquered and oppressed
both the devil and hell and also death
itself. . . . The devil with all his power,
craft and subtilty and mahce is now sub-
dued and made captive, not only unto me
but unto all the other faithful people.

**He spoiled hell and dehvered and
brought with him from thence all the souls
of those righteous and good men which from
the fall of Adam died in the favor of God,"
etc. ('*The Institution of a Christian
Man," 1537, p. 41, Oxford ed., 1856.)

56 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

In the ''Catechism of Faith," by Thomas
Becon, who was prebendary of Canterbury and
chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer, in the reign
of Edward VI, is a similar statement, given in
answer to the question, — ''What profit have we
by Christ's descension and going down into
hell ? "

"By this means we are well assured that
Christ hath overcome the devil, broken the
serpent's head, destroyed the gates of hell,
vanquished the infernal army, and utterly
dehvered us from everlasting damnation."
("Works," Parker Soc. ed., p. 93.)

To the same conclusion, though with some
apparent reluctance, came Bishop Pearson, who
criticises, however, and rejects patristic interpre-
tation, such as that of St. Jerome, St. Athanasius,
and others, who taught the triumph of Christ
over Satan and His spoiHng of hell — a teaching,
in Pearson's view, not confirmed by Scripture.
But the descent into hell he seems to admit as
the true interpretation : —

"He passed to those habitations where
Satan had taken up his possession and
exerciseth his dominion. . . . And being

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 57

he died in the simihtude of a sinner, his soul
went to the place where are the souls of
men who died for their sins and so did
wholly undergo the law of death." (''Ex-
position of the Creed," Oxford ed., pp.

449> 450-)

Pearson broke the long uniform catena of
opinion in regard to the descent into hell. It
was no longer part of the triumphal march of
the victorious Christ in the supernatural sphere,
which had included the under world, with its
victory over Satan and hell, as well as the upper
world of hght and glory, and the session at the
right hand of the Father. The way was thus
prepared for other modifications of that impos-
ing process which the original structure of the
Creed involved; for these later changes, Pear-
son's innovation was a precedent and justifica-
tion. When the American Prayer Book was
put forth in 1789, permission was given to omit
the words, ''He descended into hell," or to sub-
stitute for them the words, "He went into the
place of departed spirits."

"And any churches may omit the words,
*He descendedlinto hell,' or may instead of
them use the words, 'He went into the

58 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

place of departed spirits,' which are con-
sidered as words of the same meaning in the
Creeds." (Rubric of American Prayer Book,

1789-)

The popular interpretation now placed on the
phrase, *'He descended into hell," is that Christ
went to Paradise, in accordance with His words
to the thief on the cross, — ''This day shalt thou
be with me in Paradise." ^

THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN FROM THE

DEAD

Opinion has been divided in regard to the na-
ture of the resurrection, as it is approached, on
the one hand, from the physical point of view;
according to which matter in its essence is so
endowed with potency that it may be considered
capable of spiritual transformation; or, on the
other hand, from a spiritual point of view, when
it becomes the adaptation of spirit to the require-
ments of the material senses of touch and vision.
Either a material body spiritualized or a spiritual
body materialized.

* Cf. E. H. Plumtre, "The Spirits in Prison and other Studies
of the Life after Death," for a discussion of this clause, "He de-
scended into hell."

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 59

HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN

The literal sense would imply that He went
upwards before the eyes of His disciples, taking
with him His body, — flesh and bones. But
the Copernican theory has made it evident that
there is no up or down in space. It is only a
way of speaking.

Hence the spiritual interpretation that the
ascension is the final transition from the sphere
of the visible and tangible into the realm of
invisible and spiritual activity.^

AND SITTETH ON THE RIGHT HAND OF THE
FATHER

Again there are two interpretations. If God
is conceived as outside the world and located
in space, the session of Christ is construed liter-
ally as at the right hand of anthropomorphic
Deity. This view has been amply illustrated in
ecclesiastical art.

The spiritual view, which regards Deity as

^ In the larger Catechism of the Eastern Church this explanation
of the statement, "He came down from heaven," is offered: "It is
true that He is everywhere; and so He is always in heaven and
always on earth ; but on earth, he was before invisible; afterwards
He appeared in the flesh. In this sense it is said that He came
down from heaven.^*

6o FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

immanent, implies that the right hand of God
is a symbol of His omnipresence and omnipo-
tence, and that Christ is everywhere, in the midst
of the conflict against evil, and His session at the
right hand of the Father becomes the symbol of
victory.

FROM THENCE HE SHALL COME TO JUDGE THE
QUICK AND THE DEAD

Either He shall return in human form at the
end of the world, when the judgment, conceived
as a future event, shall begin; or. He comes
perpetually in every event or movement which
furthers the growth of His Kingdom, and the
judgment is continuous and culminating — the
discrimination between good and evil and the
condemnation of the evil. (This latter view
is urged in Robertson's Sermons, in the writings
of F. D. Maurice, and eloquently presented in
Mulford's ^^Repubhc of God.")

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH

On this point the Anglican Church has offered
an interpretation in the *' Prayer for all sorts and
conditions of men," where ''all those who pro-
fess and call themselves Christians" is given as

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 6i

its equivalent. In the American version of this
prayer '* Universal" is substituted for Catholic,
and this reading may be carried into the Creed —
''the holy universal Church." In the Bidding
Prayer of the Church of England (Canons of
1604, Canon 55) it reads, ''Christ's holy CathoHc
Church, that is, the whole congregation of
Christian people dispersed throughout the
world."

On the other hand, especially since the Ox-
ford Movement (1833), there has been received
another interpretation, — the CathoHc Church
exists in three branches, Greek, Roman, and
AngHcan; an interpretation which excludes the
Lutheran Church and the various branches of
the Reformed Church; in a word, the Protes-
tant world is shut out from the Catholic Church
of the creeds.^

^The Greek Church practically identifies "Catholic" with
"Orthodox," and gives the preference to Orthodox in its title.
Among the definitions of "Catholic" the most prominent is in the
Edict of Theodosius (380 a.d.), where those alone are to enjoy
the privilege of being known as "Catholic" who accept the Nicene
Creed. According to Vincentius of Lerins, that is Catholic
which has been always, everywhere, and by all received: Quod
semper^ quod uhtque^ et quod ah omnibus. The Roman Church has
steadfastly maintained that union with the bishop of Rome is
necessary in order to union with the Catholic Church, or that
papacy is essential to Catholicity.

62 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

Was not in the original form of the Creed,
but was added in Southern Gaul in the fifth
century, and became a part of the Roman
Creed after its final shape was assumed in
the eighth century. There has never been
certainty about the meaning of the phrase.
It has often been interpreted as in apposition
to the preceding phrase and as thus defining the
Cathohc Church to be the communion of saints
or of holy persons. This was the view of Niceta
in a homily attributed to him, where the Church
as the communion of saints includes the Hving
and the dead: ''What is the Church but the
congregation of all saints ^ Patriarchs, prophets,
apostles, martyrs, all the just who have been,
are, or shall be, are one Church, because sanc-
tified by one faith and Hfe, marked by One Spirit,
they constitute one body. Beheve then that in
this one Church you will attain the communion
of saints." ^

Others have interpreted the clause as de-
signed to exclude heretics, with whom there
should be no communion — a view which finds

^ Cf. Caspari, "Anedota i," p. 355, cited in Swete," The Apostles'
Creed," p. 84. A similar view is found in Sermon 241, attributed
to Augustine and published in appendix to his works.

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 63

support in ancient comments.^ Again it has been
maintained that the purpose of its insertion in
the Creed was to sanction the worship of saints,
which in the fourth century was opposed by
Vigilantius and his followers, but became the
later custom of the Church, — a view maintained
by Harnack in his short treatise on the Creed.^
Still another interpretation, and quite as probable
as any, refers it to an anti-Donatist purpose, —
a disclaimer against the Donatist accusation
that the Catholic Church embraced alike the
evil and the good, whereas the Church should be
the body of the pure.

THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS

Would seem to stand forth distinctly as a
supreme principle of the Christian faith were
it not for inevitable inferences which either
illumine or darken its meaning : —

I. That the forgiveness comes directly to the

^ Cf. John of Damascus, "De Fide Orthodoxa," 13; where in
speaking of the Eucharist, he warns against communion with here-
tics. In the "Catechism of the Council of Trent," Ch. 9, Quest.
22, "Communion of Saints" is regarded as explanatory of the
Catholic Church and as implying communion in the Eucharist
from which heretics are excluded. There was an effort to restore
this meaning to the phrase in the Anglican Church in the last
century.

^"Das Apostolische Glaubensbekenntniss," p. ^3*

64 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

soul from God, on condition of faith and repent-
ance, without the interposition of any human
media; and with the forgiveness comes the
sense of assurance that sins are forgiven ;

2. The forgiveness can only be obtained
through the Sacraments, and by the mediation
of the priesthood ; and even so, the absolute as-
surance of forgiveness cannot be imparted in this
life.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY

The resurrection of the flesh {resurrectionem
carnis) was the original meaning; and from
the second century down to this modern day it
was the prevailing view that the particles of the
body laid in the grave would constitute the
body which should rise again. Tertullian and
Augustine, among many others, met the scoffers
of their time who could not believe such teach-
ing, with what must then have appeared con-
clusive argument.

This meaning now seems by almost common
consent to have been abandoned, and for it is
substituted a meaning more in accord with sci-
entific teaching, — that ''resurrection of the
body" implies a spiritual body different from
the body laid in the grave and not composed of
the same particles, — an interpretation defended

HISTORICAL VARIATIONS 65

by appealing to the Pauline teaching in i
Cor. 15.

THE LIFE EVERLASTING

Is a Statement about which there would be
Httle difference of opinion were it not that it in-
volves the question of everlasting punishment,
and the issue at once is made whether this latter
doctrine is part of the teaching of the Creed.

In his ''Exposition of the Creed" it is note-
worthy that Pearson comments at length on the
resurrection to endless condemnation as no less
impHed in the phrase ''everlasting hfe," than
the resurrection to endless happiness.

On the other hand, according to the decision
of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
(1864):-

"The hope that the punishment of the
wicked may not endure to all eternity is cer-
tainly not at variance with anything that is
found in the Apostles' Creed.'' ^

^ Cf. "Six Judgments of the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council," p. loi, London, 1872. No opinion is here expressed as
to the authority of the Privy Council; but as bearing witness to the
variety of interpretations of the Creed its judgment has quite as
much significance as the opinion of Bishop Pearson, in the seven-
teenth century. Among those who acted as judges in this case were
the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Longley), the Archbishop of
York (Dr. Thomson), the Bishop of London (Dr. Tait).

66 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

It is well known that in the original Forty-
two Articles from which our ''Thirty-nine Arti-
cles" were derived, there was one article, the
Forty-second, which imphed the endless punish-
ment of the wicked. The rejection of this ar-
ticle is not without significance for the inter-
pretation of this phrase in the Creed.

CHAPTER III

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY AND CLERICAL
HONESTY

In considering the vows of the clergy at their
ordination, the question arises whether the Re-
formers took any steps to prevent a reversion to
that traditional interpretation of the faith which
they discarded; or whether they provided for
the growth of the Church into ever higher and
fuller knowledge of Christian truth. The study
of the Ordinal shows that they had no soHcitude
for the creeds, that they were chiefly concerned
with maintaining the supremacy of Scripture,
in the study of which lay the safeguards against
the erroneous and strange doctrines they sought
to banish.

It must be borne in mind that the Anglican
Church has provided no authoritative commen-
tary on the Creed specifying what interpretation
shall be given of its separate clauses, with the
exception of the important authoritative state-

67

68 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

ment in the Church Catechism, as to what is
to be *' chiefly learned'' from the Creed; or, in
other words, that its supreme object is to set
forth the name of God, as Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost.

*' First, I learn to believe in God the Father,
who hath made me and all the world.

'* Secondly, in God the Son, who hath re-
deemed me and all mankind.

''Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who
sanctifieth me and all the people of God."

The inference seems just and inevitable that
if any one learns this much from the Creed, he
has gained what the Church holds to be essential ;
the other details of the Creed are left to his in-
dividual judgment, guided by Scripture, to de-
termine. As a matter of fact, this has been the
usage since the Reformation and so continues
to this day. Everywhere a variety of belief has
existed on these subordinate details.

This absence of any authoritative commentary
on the Creed, explaining in elaborate fashion and
demonstrating the meaning of every and all its
separate statements, gains the greater signifi-
cance, when we compare the attitude of the An-
ghcan Church, in its one brief statement, as to
what we are chiefly to learn from the Creed, with

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 69

the expansive, voluminous, and definite expo-
sitions of other churches — the '* Catechism of
the Council of Trent," the ''Longer Catechism of
the Eastern Church" — or the elaborate West-
minster Confession and Catechisms.

It was from these very things that the Anglican
Church in an impressive hour of the world's
history was seeking to escape. The moment
was a brief one, but it sufficed for the work to be
done, — to reduce Christianity to its simplest
terms, as it was known in the apostolic age or
in the generation that folUowed. It was no
haphazard work they were doing. To this
result the longing aspirations of men for cen-
turies had been turning. The best, most spirit-
ual men for more than two centuries had seen
this as their goal. In the Providence of God, it
was accomplished in the Church of England.

But already the ecclesiastical reaction had
begun, and what was to be done must be done
quickly. Already the reactionary influence had
invaded England, and under the fear that reli-
gion and the Church were in danger, expositions
of the Apostles' Creed had been set forth in the
latter years of Henry VIII, which imposed on
it definite and binding interpretation, involving
at every point the mediaeval or traditional sense
of the faith. Let any one read the two treatises,

70 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

**The Institution of a Christian Man, contain-
ing the exposition or interpretation of the
Common Creed," etc. (1537), or ''A Necessary
Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man"
(1543), and then turn to the Book of Common
Prayer, and he will need no other commentary
on the purpose of the reformers in the matter
of the Apostles' Creed. The *' Freedom " of the
Christian man was their aim, not his '* Institu-
tion" or ''Erudition." It was the ancient as-
piration— Libera sit ecclesia Anglicana, that
was at last to be fulfilled.

It is a misapprehension of the Anghcan Church,
including our own, which has somehow come
to be widely prevalent, that she enforces upon
her clergy, however it may be with the laity,
an oath to receive the Apostles' Creed and to
believe it and recite it with some authoritative
sense attached to each phrase, under penalty
of incurring the stigma of dishonesty and
perjury. And the burden has grown the heavier
because a school in the Church, dating from the
last century, insists that the Creed shall be taken
in what is now called its *'CathoHc" sense. And
it has come about that those who should rejoice
in the Church in the hberty wherewith Christ
hath made us free are sensitive and uncertain,
and even doubt whether they are truly called

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 71

according to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ,
to serve in the sacred ministry of His Church.

In the Hterature of the Church of England,
there is a book rarely if ever referred to, an
almost forgotten book, known as the **HomiHes."
It is the only book ever set forth by authority, of
which it is said in the Thirty-fifth of the Articles
of Religion that it *'doth contain a godly
and wholesome doctrine and necessary for these
times;'' and to this statement the American
Episcopal Church has added that it is *'an
expKcation of Christian doctrine, and instruc-
tive in piety and morals." It is referred to
here, because, in its origin, it is contemporary
with the Prayer Book — those who drew up the
Ordinal and the Articles being among its com-
pilers. To understand the vows which the
clergy assume at ordination, it is indispensable.
It is, however, chiefly a book for the laity —
instructing them as to the doctrine of this
Church, with special insistence on the source
from which the doctrine is derived.

It is characteristic of the book of the Homi-
lies that it nowhere recommends ecclesiastical
tradition as an authority in this Church; it
contains no exposition of the Creed. It has
discourses on the Nativity, on the Passion, and
Resurrection of our Lord. The first of these

72 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

is noticeable for the absence of any effort to
urge the Mediaeval conception of the Incarnation,
which had become the source of confusion and
weakness. The virgin birth is assumed, but no
dogmatic importance is attached to it, and Mary
is not alluded to as ''ever Virgin and Mother of
God." There is no dwelhng upon the Gospel
of the Infancy, but rather on the character and
work and teaching of the mature Christ, Son of
God and Son also of Man ; and if there is any
insistence it is on His perfect humanity, which
in the preceding ages had been obscured and
practically lost.

There is much in the HomiHes that in tone is
antiquated, but its spirit is fresh and strong as
in the day of its birth. Its keynote is the im-
portance of ''the reading and knowledge of
Holy Scripture " and not familiarity with Church
traditions. If men are in doubt, whether clergy
or laity, it is to Scripture they must turn for
relief. It is assumed that the laity are capable
by this method for themselves to reach the
truth. There is not one source for the clergy
and another for the people, but Scripture is
imposed on both ahke. The laity are not urged
to turn to the clergy for light and satisfaction
in the resolution of difficulties, but to go for
themselves to the Word of God. The book

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 73

opens with words like these addressed to the
people in the congregation : —

*'Unto a Christian man there can be
nothing either more necessary or profitable
than the knowledge of holy Scripture, foras-
much as in it is contained God's true word,
setting forth his glory and also man's duty.
And there is no truth nor doctrine necessary
for our justification and everlasting salva-
tion but that is or may be drawn out of
that fountain and well of truth. Therefore
as many as be desirous to enter into the
right and perfect way unto God, must apply
their minds to know holy Scripture; with-
out the which, they can neither sufficiently
know God and his will, neither their office
and duty. And as drink is pleasant to them
that be dry and meat to them that be
hungry, so is the reading, hearing, search-
ing of holy Scripture to them that be de-
sirous to know God, or themselves, and to
do his will. . . . Let us reverently study
and read holy Scriptures, which is the food
of the soul. Let us diligently search for
the well of Hfe in the books of the Old and
New Testament, and not run to the stinking
puddles of men's traditions, devised by men's

74 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

imaginations for our justification and sal-
vation. For in Holy Scripture is fully con-
tained what we ought to do, and what to
eschew, what to believe, what to love, and
what to look for at God's hand at length.
In these books we shall find the Father
from whom, the Son by whom, and the
Holy Ghost in whom all things have their
being and keeping up ; and these three per-
sons to be but one God and one sub-
stance." ^

The object of the reformers as achieved in
the Book of Common Prayer was to get away
from the commandments of men, which had
been substituted for Christ's commandment, to
get back again to Christ, and to His will, to
banish and drive away from the Church *'the
manifold enormities" and ''the ungodly doc-
trine" which had crept into the existing Church
''unto the utter destruction of innumerable
souls, if God's mercy were not."

The articles of the faith were given a promi-
nent place. The Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and
the Ten Commandments were to be read openly
unto the people, that '^ they may learn how to
invocate and call upon the name of God, and

^ "The First Homily," pp. i, 2.

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 75

know what duty they owe to God and man, so
that they may pray, beheve, and work accord-
ing to knowledge." But first and foremost and
above all was '*the Word of God, which is the
only food of the soul, and that most excellent
light that we must walk by in this our most
dangerous pilgrimage;" and it is at all times to
be preached to the people, as a means of learn-
ing their duty and to avoid ''the false doctrine
which has crept into the Church of God."

''Calhng to remembrance that the next
and most ready way to expel and avoid as
well all corrupt, vicious, and ungodly living,
as also erroneous doctrine tending toward
superstition and idolatry; and clearly to
put away all contention, which hath hereto-
fore risen through diversity of preaching, is
the true setting forth and pure declaring of
God's Word." '

*'God grant all us ... to feed of the
sweet and savoury bread of God's own Word,
and (as Christ commanded) to eschew all our
Pharisaical and papistical leaven of man's
feigned religion; which although it were
before God most abominable and contrary
to God's commandments and Christ's pure

^ Preface to the " Homilies," 1547.

76 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

religion, yet it was praised to be a most godly-
life and highest state of perfection; as
though a man might be more godly and more
perfect, by keeping the rules, traditions, and
professions of men than by keeping the holy
commandments of God."^

In recent years, with the revival of the *' Catho-
lic tradition" within the Church, an undue im-
portance has been assigned to the creeds. There
are many upon whose conscience and intellect
the details of the creeds do not press heavily.
They are aware in reciting them that part of
their content makes no appeal to their spiritual
nature. They take them in a large and general,
undogmatic way, as a whole, rather than part
by part. They have imbibed the teaching of
the Church Catechism that the creeds present
God's fatherhood, Christ's leadership by which
he delivers humanity, and the inward presence
of a Holy Spirit with His sanctifying influence.
They would fain escape from the suggestion of
controversy which the creeds carry as an at-
mosphere, into the undogmatic, the purer air
of Holy Scripture, before the baleful contro-
versies began. They are aware that interpre-

^" Third part of the Sermon of Good Works," in "Homilies/*
p. 52, Am. ed., Philadelphia, 1844.

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 77

tations and inferences connected by tradition
with the creeds are ahen to their higher spiritual
instincts and tend to lessen the freedom where-
with Christ hath made us free.

Such as these, and they are many, are closer to
the purpose of our formularies than those who
seek to rivet the chains of the "Cathohc sense"
upon the freer spirit of AngHcan piety; they
hear with a curious surprise that if they do not
take each separate phrase in a fixed meaning,
as the ''CathoHc sense" has determined, that
they are recreant to their vows, perjurers, dis-
honest, eating the Church's bread while denying
its faith. But they have not so learned the An-
glican Church. Nor were they aware that such
dangers lay in their path, when as children,
being now come to the years of discretion, they
professed the Christian faith at Confirmation.

In their unconscious infancy the question was
asked of their sponsors in baptism, *'Dost thou
beheve all the articles of the Christian faith as
they are contained in the Apostles' Creed?"
And at Confirmation they were called upon to
''renew the solemn vow and promise made in
their name at baptism, ratifying and confirming
the same, and acknowledging themselves bound
to believe and to do all those things which their
sponsors then undertook for them."

yS FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

The preliminary to Confirmation was a knowl-
edge of the Church Catechism, where the Creed
was reduced to its essential contents, — the Divine
name in its threefoldness, the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, with the distinctive work of
each. For the rest, the Church Catechism had
laid strong emphasis on the moral duties of Hfe
and on the elements of Christian character.
Nowhere does the purpose of the Reformers
appear more clearly than in the two concluding
exhortations of the Baptismal office, where it is
not the Creed that is made prominent, but Chris-
tian character; and baptism is set forth as repre-
senting unto us our profession — to follow the
example of our Saviour Christ and be made like
unto Him. At Confirmation the Creed was not
recited,^ but at that solemn moment the mind
was centred on the resolution by God's grace
"obediently to keep God's holy will and com-
mandment and walk in the same all the days of
their hfe."

But if this constitutes subscription to the Creed,
it is binding upon the laity ; and upon the clergy,
so far as they share with the laity a common
obligation. For at their ordination, the clergy,

^ In the American Prayer Book the Apostles' Creed is not re-
cited at baptism; in the EngHsh book is is given in full, in the
interrogative form.

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 79

as has been said earlier, do not profess the Creed
as part of their ordination vow. What could
the Anglican Church have meant when she de-
hberately rejected from the reformed Ordinal
that most sensitive act of the Roman Ordinal,
where the candidate for the priesthood solemnly,
in the presence of the bishop and before the altar,
repeats the Apostles' Creed as his profession of
faith, the condition as it were of his admission
to holy orders ? When acts Hke this are omitted
does it mean that the mind of the Church is to
enforce them more rigidly by its silence and by
abstention from all allusion ? When a bishop is
consecrated according to the Roman, or un-
reformed, Ordinal, all the emphasis and im-
pressiveness of the rite is concentrated on his
examination in the Nicene Creed, which is
applied interrogatively with a searching rigidity.
That, too, the AngKcan Church omitted from
the office of making a bishop.

It would, indeed, have been most strange
and inconsistent, if the authors of our formu-
laries, having provided no explicit exposition
of the creeds, beyond the simple comment in the
Church Catechism, should have demanded such
subscription, and such an oath of obedience from
the candidates for her ministry. There is a
deeper meaning here and a profounder purpose

8o FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

in the Anglican Church, a more thoroughgoing
reformation, than we have dared allow ourselves
to beheve was possible. It has been covered up
and glossed over, but it remains a potent influ-
ence within the Church which cannot be over-
come.

The method would have been a most simple
and feasible one had it been the aim of the Or-
dinal to secure a cast-iron oath of subscription
to the Creed on the part of the clergy, which no
subtlety of interpretation could have evaded.
Such a result is attained in the Roman Church.
It was just this result which the Anglican re-
formers apparently sought to avoid. A new light
had dawned on them by the study of God's Word,
and in that light they saw that the full conception
of Christ and His work could never be obtained
by formal subscription to a creed. A new
conception of the Incarnation and its meaning
to the world had been gained. The Church
had reached its maturity. The Gospel of the
Infancy which satisfied the Middle Ages was
no longer adequate, with the revelation of Christ
in the open book confronting them. They were
departing from that view of the Incarnation
which had prevailed from the fifth century, and
which justified itself by inferences from the
creeds, till by long association it had become

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 8i

identified with them. They were under no delu-
sion regarding the value of the Creed when com-
pared with the Scripture. Their emphasis was
withdrawn from creeds and placed on Scripture,
to which the candidate for the ministry of this
Church was called to give his entire and unre-
served allegiance.

What vows then has the Anglican Church
substituted for the subscription to the Creeds
which was the fundamental vow of the Ordinal
before the Reformation ?

"Are you persuaded that the Holy Scrip-
tures contain all doctrine required as neces-
sary for eternal salvation through faith in
Jesus Christ ? And are you determined out
of said Scriptures to instruct the people com-
mitted to your charge : and to teach nothing
as necessary to eternal salvation, but that
which you shall be persuaded may be con-
cluded and proved by the Scripture ?

** Will you then give your faithful diligence
so to minister the Doctrine and the Sacra-
ments and the Discipline of Christ as the
Lord hath commanded and as this Church
hath received the same, according to the
commandments of God?

*'Will you be ready with all faithful dili-

82 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

genet to banish and drive away from the
Church all erroneous and strange doctrine
contrary to God's Word ? . . .

"Will you be diligent in prayers and in
reading Holy Scriptures, and in such studies
as help to the knowledge of the same ? '' ^

No one of these vows was in the Ordinal
before the Reformation. They must be taken
together. In reality they form but one vow,
whose purpose is to elevate Scripture above
tradition and by so doing to make the Church
of England free.

It has somehow come to be taken for granted
by many that there is a conflict here, — that the
first vow which calls for private or individual
judgment and persuasion as to the teaching of
Scripture is one horn of a dilemma, and that the
other horn on which we are in danger of being
impaled is ''the doctrine as this Church hath
received the same"; and that if there is any
reconcihation possible of this contradiction, it

* In the Ordering of Deacons is contained the question, "Do
you unfeignedly beheve all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old
and New Testament ?" Here the purpose is clear not to exclude
from the Bible, as "the Word of God, containing all things necessary
to salvation," any of the books recognized in the Articles (Art. VI)
as canonical. Equally clear is the purpose which shuts out the
Apocryphal books from the Canon.

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 83

must be attained by subordinating one's conclu-
sions about truth drawn from the Scripture to
"'the doctrine as this Church hath received the
same." And those who rest upon this second
vow as the more important keep a vigilant eye
upon those who think their primal duty is to
preach from the depth of their inward conviction.
But there is no conflict between the vows.
They have the same common aim. It is a super-
ficial and unhistorical view, and does grave in-
justice to the authors of the Ordinal, to think
that they could hamper the clergy by such a
dilemma or entangle them on such a snag.
The moment was too critical, the danger too
great ; the fortunes of the realm and of the Re-
formed Church of England were at stake when
the Ordinal was put forth. There is deep sin-
cerity and painstaking unity of purpose in the
various forms of what really is but one vow of
the clergy in the reformed Ordinal. To minister
the doctrine as this Church hath received the
same, does not mean as it hath received it from
tradition, thus identifying the Reformed Church
with the Church of the past ; but the doctrine
as set forth in the Articles of Religion, whose
object at every turn is to protest against the
errors involved in the commandments of men,
which Rome had added to the Christian faith, —

84 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

its gross anthropomorphism, its inadequate con-
ception of the Incarnation, its elevation of tra-
dition to an equaUty with Scripture, its neglect
of the study of Scripture, its perversion of the
Lord's Supper into a sacrificial mass, its irrational
and unscriptural doctrine of transubstantiation,
its mutilated administration of the holy com-
munion, its injury done to the discipHne of
Christ by the practice of compulsory confession,
and by monastic vows of celibacy. To guard
against these things is one object in requiring of
the clergy that they shall minister the doctrine
as this Church hath received the same.

The purport of this vow becomes clearer, if
all the phraseology, which accompanies it, is
taken into consideration. A closer study shows
where the emphasis hes. It is the *' doctrine
(of Christ) and sacraments (of Christ) and dis-
cipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded
and as this Church hath received the same
according to the commandments of God/'

A good commentary on these words may be
found by turning again to that contemporaneous
treatise, **The Homilies," which has much to
say about the commandments of God as over
against the commandments of the Church or
of men. Speaking of the previous age and of
the ecclesiastical conditions from which the

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 85

Reformation was liberating men, the homily
'* Of good works" remarks: —

''Such hath been the corrupt incHnation of
man, ever superstitiously given to make new
honouring of God of his own head, and then
to have more affection and devotion to keep
that than to search out God's holy command-
ments and to keep them. And furthermore,
to take God's commandments for men's
commandments, and men's commandments
for God's commandments, yea, and for the
highest and most perfect and holy of all
God's commandments. And so was all
confused, that scant well learned men, and
but a small number of them knew, or at the
least would know, and durst affirm the truth,
to separate or sever God's commandments from
the commandments of men. Wherefore did
grow much error, superstition, idolatry,
vain religion, overthwart {preposterous)
judgment, great contention with all ungodly
living.'' (''The Homilies," p. 53.)

Passages of this kind abound in ''The Homi-
lies." Another may be cited: —

''Nowhere can we more certainly search
for the knowledge of this will of God but in

86 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

the Holy Scriptures, for they be they that
testify of him, saith our Saviour Christ. . . .
We see what vanity the school-doctrine is
mixed with, for that in this Word they
sought not the will of God, but rather the will
of reason, the trade of custom, the path of
the fathers^ the practice of the Church: let
us therefore read and revolve the Holy Scrip-
tures both day and night, for blessed is he
who hath his whole meditation therein/'
("Homihes," p. 435.)

The phrases, then, so often omitted, when
reference is made to the vow of the clergy, are
of supreme importance to its correct interpreta-
tion. It is not merely the ''doctrine as this
Church hath received the same" but ''the doc-
trine of Christy as the Lord hath commanded, and
as this Church hath received the same according
to the commandments of God/' If this qualifica-
tion be kept in view there is no conflict, but
entire harmony with the preceeding vow, "to
teach nothing but what you shall be persuaded
may be concluded and proved by the Scripture."

The connection between the vows, which
identifies them as having one common end and
meaning, is further evidenced by the word
"then;'' ''will you /^^«," or will you therefore,

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 87

seeing that you have already grasped the essen-
tial truth, that all doctrine must come from
the teaching of Christ contained in Scripture,
with an inward persuasion of its truth — will
you then minister the doctrine of Christ, as
Christ hath commanded, and as this Church
hath received it from Him, and proclaims it,
holding it according to God's commandments,
and not from tradition, or the commandments
of men. And lest there should be a danger of
falling into conventional ways and stereotyped
opinions, as to what Scripture teaches, another
vow is exacted calling for its continual study, as
the Hfe work of the ministry. No allusion is
here to the study of tradition or to decisions of
synods, however imposing, or to the voice of the
fathers in ancient times; but *'will you be dili-
gent * * * in reading the Holy Scriptures and in
such studies as help to the knowledge of the
same V One must turn to the Greek and Ro-
man Ordinals to measure the significance of
this impressive vow by the contrast they offer.
In the Greek office is a special question to the
candidate for episcopal consecration, — which
is answered at very great length, — *' Ex-
plain how thou boldest the Canons of the Holy
Apostles and the Holy Fathers." And indeed
in both Greek and Latin Ordinals, the bishop

88 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

elect (of the presbyter, little account is taken)
seems to be called upon mainly to fight over
again the theological issues of the ancient
Church in the fourth and fifth centuries.

There is then no evidence to be drawn, from
the vows which the clergy assume in ordination,
that the Creed was, as in some feeling of emer-
gency, an object of solicitude, or that it was re-
garded as binding upon the clergy and not
equally binding on the laity. The vow of the
clergy to maintain the doctrine of Christ as this
Church hath received it sends them back to
Christ, — as the Lord hath commanded, — in
order to learn the doctrine received by the Church
according to the commandments of God and
not according to the traditions of men.

Further evidence for the truth of this position
is seen in the circumstance that from the Refor-
mation down to our own day the oath of sub-
scription in the Church of England has been
taken to the Thirty-nine Articles and not to
creeds as such. Incumbents of parishes and
students admitted to the universities were re-
quired to make this subscription. Of the Creeds
it is said in the Vlllth Article that they ought
"thoroughly to be received and believed," but
the reason added is significant, *' because they
may be proved by most certain warrant of Holy

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 89

Scripture. Testing the creeds by Scripture may
lead to a larger and truer interpretation of
their meaning than when they are interpreted
by tradition dating from the fifth century and
received on the authority of such tradition.
The Vlllth Article is further quahfied by the
comment on the primary intent of the Creed as
given in the Church Catechism. Another quali-
fication will be noted in the following chapter.

In reference to the subject of subscription
any allusion to it would be incomplete without
mention of the present *' relaxed" form of sub-
cription, which in the English Church has been
substituted for the earher more stringent form.
For two centuries, or since 1662, the form was,
**I hereby declare my unfeigned assent and con-
sent to all and everything prescribed in and by
the Book of Common Prayer."^ In 1865 the

^According to the Canons of the Church of England, 1604, it
reads (Canon xxxvi): "No one shall hereafter be received into the
ministry, ... or admitted to any ecclesiastical living, nor suffered
to preach, etc., unless he shall subscribe to these three articles
following : —

" I . (As this article relates to the King's supremacy it is sufficient
only to allude to it here.)

" 2. That the Book of Common Prayer and of ordering bishops,
priests, and deacons, containeth in it nothing contrary to the Word
of God, and that it may be lawfully so used; and that he himself
will use the form in the said book prescribed, in public prayer,
and administration of the Sacraments, and none other.

90 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

form was changed to read, "I assent to the
Thirty-nine Articles and to the Book of Com-
mon Prayer." The first of these forms of sub-
scription dates from 1662, when the object of
the Act of Uniformity was to eject Nonconform-
ists from the Church. After any danger in this
direction had ceased, there began an agitation,
continued through the eighteenth century, for a
more relaxed and general form of subscription.
In the American Episcopal Church, which in-
herited a strong tendency toward relaxation at
the time when the Prayer Book was put forth
in 1789, the relaxed form of subscription reads,
*'I do solemnly engage to conform to the doc-
trines and worship of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in the United States." This form of
subscription was regarded as a great advantage
gained over the Enghsh form. In the present
form of the Enghsh subscription oath, the drop-
ping of consent, and retaining only assent, points

" 3. That he alloweth the Book of Articles of ReHgion, agreed
upon by the archbishops and bishops of both provinces and the
whole clergy, in the year of our Lord God 1562; and that he
acknowledgeth all and every the articles therein contained ... to
be agreeable to the word of God.

" To these three articles whoever will subscribe, he shall for the
avoiding of ambiguities subscribe in this order and form of words,
setting down both his Christian and surname : I, N. N., do willingly
and ex animo subscribe to these three articles above mentioned,
and to all things contained in them."

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 91

strongly in the direction of relaxation, and of
relief for '* troubled consciences." But Maurice
may have been right when he maintained in
1834 that subscription to the Articles was a
''defence of Hberty." And in 1852, although he
had in some respects changed his mind in regard
to their subscription, he could still write, ''I
am more convinced than ever that the Articles
are more comprehensive (being also less loose
and capricious) than the dogmas of our dif-
ferent parties, and that we should be far more
at the mercy of the most intolerant private judg-
ments and pubHc opinion if we lost them." ^
These words sound hke a prophecy of what
would be attempted in our own generation.
But it must be admitted and maintained if
possible, that when the Church after long deUb-
eration ''relaxes" the form of subscription, it
does not intend that advantage shall be taken
of the relaxation to make the oath more stringent
and inclusive than before, or that any party in
the Church shall be thereby enabled to fasten on
the clergy its own rigid conception of what the
subscription oath involves.

It is not wise, and certainly it is not the spirit of
Christian charity, to fling the accusation of dis-

^ "Life of Maurice," vol. i, p. 168, and vol. ii, p. 154.

92 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

honesty against the clergy. And if it is brought
against the clergy, it must be laid with equal
justice against the laity. The AngHcan Church
makes no discrimination between them in the
matter of reciting or professing the Creed.

But surely the appeal, when the interpreta-
tion of the Creed is at issue, should not be car-
ried to the man on the street. Commercial tests
are not the standard for judging religious con-
victions or deciding on their accordance with
theological formularies. It is rather to human
documents that we must go, if we would make
comparison, such as written constitutions of the
State, capable of diverse and even interpreta-
tions absolutely contradicting each other; or
to legal formulas or statutes which have been
stretched to cover cases never originally con-
templated. Human preference and usage in
these departments of Hfe has shown itself reluc-
tant to make new constitutions or new statutes
when the old can be so construed as to include
the new experience. In this way jurisprudence
has grown. For it seems to shake the sanctions
of law, if it should appear that the old statutes
did not cover the whole range of human interests.
This has been called '* legal fiction," but it repre-
sents a process by which law has been developed.
In his ''Ancient Law," Sir Henry Maine has

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 93

made some important remarks, which are not
without their bearing on the history of creeds.

*^ Legal fiction signifies any assumption,
which conceals or affects to conceal, the
fact that a rule of law has undergone altera-
tion, its letter remaining unchanged, its
operation being modified. . . . The law
has been wholly changed; the * fiction' is
that it remains what it always was. . . .
Fictions in all their forms are particularly
congenial to the infancy of society. They
satisfy the desire for improvement, which is
not quite wanting, at the same time that
they do not offend the superstitious dis-
relish for change which is always present.
At a particular stage of social progress,
they are invaluable expedients for over-
coming the rigidity of law. ... To revile
them as merely fraudulent is to betray
ignorance of their pecuHar office in the his-
torical development of law. . . . There are
several fictions still exercising a powerful
influence on English jurisprudence, which
could not be discarded without a severe
shock to the ideas, and considerable change
in the language of English practitioners. . . .
Nothing is more distasteful to men, either

94 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

as individuals or as masses, than the ad-
mission of their moral progress as a sub-
stantive reahty. This unw^iUingness shows
itself, as regards individuals, in the exagger-
ated respect which is ordinarily paid to the
doubtful virtue of consistency. The move-
ment of the collective opinion of a whole
society is too palpable to be ignored and is
generally too visibly for the better to be de-
cried ; but there is the greatest disincHnation
to accept it as a primary phenomenon, and
it is commonly explained as the recovery of
a lost perfection — the gradual return to a
state from which the race had lapsed. This
tendency to look backward instead of
forward produced anciently, as we have seen,
on Roman jurisprudence effects the most
serious and permanent." (Pp. 26, 32, ^^y

67.)

If the same distinction be carried into the
sphere of theology, then there would be theo-
logical ''fictions," such as maintaining that the
Creeds are immutable in their meaning, while
in such clauses as the ''descent into hell," or the
"Cathohc Church," or the "resurrection of the
flesh," not to mention others, their meaning has
been revolutionized. But to stigmatize this

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 95

process as dishonest would involve bringing an
indictment against the whole process of religious
development.

The opinion, then, of the man on the street has
but Httle value on the question of the interpre-
tation of the Creeds. The subject is too subtle,
too compHcated; it involves also the possibility
of real meanings, and apparent meanings, of un-
conscious modifications, under the influence of
the spirit of the age, which is forever changing.
To ask a Roman Cathohc what his judgment
would be on the inversion of meaning in the
phrase,*' the Holy Catholic Church," would bring
an answer condemning the Anglican Church to
the guilt of dishonest subterfuge and evasion.
But such a verdict would have httle significance,
although to his mind it would be a question of
simple honesty — professing to believe in the
Holy Catholic Church when the historic sense of
the phrase had been abandoned.

There is no universally recognized court of
appeal in organized Christianity to which these
questions can be submitted, in the confidence of
an intelligent, impartial, and satisfactory judg-
ment. And certainly, least of all, can the
judgment of those have any value, who, having
discarded creeds, insist that honesty in others
who retain them calls for rigid adherence to their

96 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

face meaning and in the most literal fashion,
regardless of the variety of interpretation which
history has sanctioned. The object of those who
seek in this way to impugn the honesty of the
clergy is clear enough; they are performing a
double duty, not only advocating honesty and
sincerity in general, but making it so disagreeable
a task where creeds are concerned as to lead to
the abandonment of creeds altogether. Which
of these two motives predominates, it is not
necessary here to determine. But any one who
looks a little closely into the matter may be ex-
cused for thinking that this unattainable ethical
standard for creed subscription, urged by those
who have rejected creeds, involves a primary
purpose in controversial theology, or sectarian
rivalry.

There are other illustrations in history which
show that the accusation of dishonesty against
the clergy must be taken at least with some
qualifications. In the ecclesiastical as in the
poHtical sphere, it may be possible that the use
of such strong terms, as dishonesty, perjury,
treachery, too often repeated, and against per-
sons of otherwise upright character, will lose
their force and come to have a merely par-
tisan meaning. Thus the charge of breaking
the solemn vows of consecration to the epis-

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 97

copate was brought against Archbishop Cran-
mer and other EngUsh bishops — to say nothing
of the large number of EngHsh clergy — and
against professed monks in the Reformation
who broke their monastic vows. The mind of
Cathohc Europe was aghast at Martin Luther,
who threw his ordination and monastic vows to
the winds, as having no obhgation whatever on
a free Christian man who had rediscovered the
true Gospel of Christ. Another illustration may
be cited as bearing on the question of clerical
honesty in more recent times.

In the Autobiography of Isaac WiUiams, who
was a friend of the late Cardinal Newman, is
this statement (p. 125): ''Newman said to
Copeland, 'Could you sign the Thirty-nine
Articles? I could not.'" But this was in
Newman's Anglican days, and he had already
made his subscription to the Articles. His
mind was undergoing a change, he had really
repudiated the Articles, but he did not propose
in consequence to leave the Church of England.
His thought was moving Romewards, some of
his disciples had already left the Church of
England for Rome and others were preparing
to follow. The Thirty-nine Articles, taken in
the sense of their compilers, made it impossible
for them to remain. Then Newman was moved

98 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

to assault the citadel of Anglican liberty, not from
without but from within. He wrote a treatise,
the famous Tract XC, in which he aimed
to show that the Articles had been so loosely or
inadvertently drawn that they might be gram-
matically construed into a sense opposite to
their original purport. By the aid of his un-
rivalled dialectic, he traversed the Articles and
reversed their meaning, till it almost seemed as
if the object of the Protestant reformers had
been to reunite the Anglican Church with the
Church of Rome. The Thirty-nine Articles were
made to seem patient of an interpretation which
harmonized them with the definitions of the
Council of Trent. It is a familiar story — the
consternation into which England was thrown,
which finds its only parallel in the ancient
church, in the time of the Arian controversy.
From that moment Newman's days in the Angli-
can Church were numbered. But nothing that
he ever wrote or confessed showed that the
attempt to undo the Thirty-nine Articles rested
upon his conscience. His devoted friend and
admirer, Dr. Pusey, who refused to follow him,
defended the effort to *' reinterpret" the Articles.
On the basis of this reinterpretation, which re-
versed their original purport, many were enabled
to remain in the Church of England who must

THE VOWS OF THE CLERGY 99

Otherwise have left. From this time a '' CathoHc "
sense was imposed on the formularies of the
Book of Common Prayer, and apparently with
a clear conscience. A new school arose who
appropriated as their own the Anghcan Church,
making it over to suit their own convenience,
till at last those who sought to stand on the
foundations of the Reformation appeared as no
better than traitors to God and humanity.

In questions about the interpretation of the
Creed, the judgment of the ''man on the street'*
has no value, even though it find vigorous and
severe expression in the utterances of the secular
press. For the ''man on the street does not care
a rap about dogmatic formularies and subtle-
ties," and it is just these very things which are
at issue. In the matter of religion, no amount
of business training or skill in journalism or
knowledge of affairs is of any avail. Religion
has its own laws, it is guided by deep motives,
which only those interested or, as it were, ob-
sessed by them can understand.

Let us take an example. In Old Testament
history we read how the brethren of Joseph sold
him a captive to traders going down into Egypt.
They acted with a definite purpose and for this
very end. They were responsible for their deed.
But when, years afterward, they themselves were

100 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

forced to go to Egypt because of the famine, they
encountered their brother in a high official
position, and they were afraid in consequence
of their evil act. And Joseph said unto them,
'^ Now it was not you that brought me hither, but
God." What would the verdict of the ''man on
the street" be, when, knowing the circumstances,
he was confronted with this statement ^ To his
mind it would seem as plain as daylight that
Joseph was guilty of falsehood in denying what
was a simple matter of fact. But in Joseph's
mind, the matter of fact had faded away into
legend or myth or unreahty, and only the spirit-
ual reality behind the fact remained.

CHAPTER IV

INTERPRETATION OF THE VIRGIN-BIRTH IN
THE ANCIENT CHURCH

''The truth of a Creed," said Coleridge,
''must be tried by the Holy Scripture; but the
sense of the Creed by the known sentiments and
inferred intentions of its compilers." It is not
with its truth, then, as tested by Holy Scripture,
but with its sense, that we are concerned, as
we come to the clause "born of the Virgin
Mary." The apparent meaning may not have
been the original purpose and intention. There
is evidence tending to show that the primary
object in alluding to the birth of Christ was to
maintain the reality of His human birth. His birth
of a woman whose name is given, just as in the
case of His death the name of Pontius Pilate is
mentioned in order to verify the fact. The Creed
is chiefly concerned at this point with the asser-
tion of the full humanity of Christ, not of His
divinity. In a later age when the controver-
sies of the second century had been forgotten,
another interpretation was placed upon this

lOI

102 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

clause, which put the stress upon the Virgin-
birth. But meantime great changes had passed
over the Church, and in consequence of them
the original sense of the Creed had been lost.

In the earliest form of the Apostles' Creed,^
which is known among students of the creeds
as the Old Roman Creed, originating in Rome,
it is thought, about the middle of the second
century, the clause had not yet been inserted —
''conceived by the Holy Ghost." That may
have been added a generation or more later.
The related clauses of the Creed then ran in
the earliest form : —

''Born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, and buried, rose again from
the dead on the third day."

Birth, death, and resurrection as actual and
historic facts are thus grouped together. Here

^ The best book of reference for the ancient creeds and rules of
faith is Hahn, "Bibliothek der Symbole," 1897. As it is not in-
tended here to make any special study of the creeds, the reader
may be referred for the bibliography to Dr. McGifFert, "The
Apostles' Creed," pp. 3-5. Caspari's exhaustive studies, covering
many years, have been succeeded by the very important work of
Kattenbusch, "Das Apostolische Symbol," Bd. i, 1894; Bd. ii,
1900. Among works from the Anglican point of view may be
mentioned: Heurtley, "Harmonia Symbolica" and " De fide et
Symbolo"; Swainson, "The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds"; also
SchaflF's "Creeds of Christendom."

INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 103

may be noted the position of the early Catholic
Church as compared with the preaching of the
ApostoHc Age, that it added the birth of Christ
to His passion and resurrection, giving to it an
equal place. According to the emphatic decla-
ration of St. Paul, the ''rule of faith" included
only the passion and the resurrection: —

*'For I delivered unto you first of all that
which I also received, how that Christ died
for our sins according to the Scriptures, and
that he was buried, and that he rose again
according to the Scriptures.'

'> 1

The early apostolic preaching was chiefly
concerned with the significance of the death of
Christ. But in the old Roman Creed it is the
fact of the death that is important, and no inter-
pretation is offered. And to the fact of the death
is added the fact of the birth of Christ, as
together constituting the assertion of His actual
humanity, and the reality of His earthly life.
The outlook had changed for the Church when
it began to take possession of the Roman Em-
pire. The emphasis of St. Paul was no longer

^ Cf. also 2 Tim. ii, 8, for what Zahn thinks belonged to a
formula of St. Paul : "Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of
David was raised from the dead according to my gospel."

104 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

the emphasis required by the Church for the
successful prosecution of its work. The CathoHc
Church was encountering dreams and imagina-
tions, fantasies of rehgious creation, myths, a
whole world of unrealities. The religious faith
of the heathens reposed in beings who were
fictions only, and had never existed; the reli-
gious imagination of the time was most prolific ;
but what the world needed and wanted was
reality. Of none of these deities whom men were
vainly worshipping could it be said they had
actually existed.

Here lay the opportunity and motive of the
Church as it began its conquest of the empire —
to assert that the Son of God had actually and
truly been born into the world of human life
as a man, and had actually suffered and died on
the cross. The interpretation of these facts
was simple and intelligible enough, if the facts
only were established and accepted.

But not only was the need of reality the most
urgent need of the heathen world, but within the
Church itself there was a pressing demand for the
actual historic fact, in order to overcome the
vicious tendency of the religious imagination,
taken over from the heathen world, to get rid
of facts, in order to give the imagination a chance
to soar. Hence the chief danger to the Church

INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 105

in the second century was from within, from
those who denied the fact of Christ's humanity,
who ideahzed away His birth or His death ; who
made Him a phantom or a vision, by which new
thought had been imparted and a new stimulus
given to hfe. To this way of looking at Christ
as humanity personified or idealized, there was
added another tendency more dangerous still
to true religion — that human life was a low,
unworthy thing, that no divine being could de-
scend so low as to take a human body, that
humian desires and passions were evil. If we
should say that in the various forms of Gnosti-
cism, Oriental religion, and particularly Bud-
dhism, was seeking an entrance into the empire
through the Christian Church, we should not be
far from the truth ; or if we were grateful to the
old Roman Creed, because it made an emphatic
and successful protest against Buddhism and
saved the world from the calamity of its gospel
of despair, our gratitude would not be misplaced.
The chief error against which the Roman
Creed was protesting is known as Docetism —
the doctrine that Christ did not have a body or a
human birth or an actual death. The Doce-
tists were not averse to the gospel of the infancy
or to the miraculous conception and birth of
Christ, for they could easily in ways of their

io6 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

own adjust a miraculous birth to their own pur-
pose, as no real birth, and they were willing to
admit that Jesus might in some transcendent
way have passed through the body of Mary in
order to His manifestation in the world or the im-
partation of His message. But He was not actu-
ally born, and He did not actually suffer or die.
Ignatius, bishop of Antioch (110-117 a.d.) is
the writer to whom we turn for evidence as to
the original sense of the Creed, in its affirmation,
*'born of the Virgin Mary." Interesting ques-
tions must be passed over here, as irrelevant,
whether Ignatius knew the Roman Creed, or
whether that Creed originated in Asia Minor
and was carried thence to Rome. The tendency
of scholars at present is to maintain that it
originated at Rome, and was carried from there
to Asia Minor. But so early as the time of
Ignatius, there were formulas in use, which are
striking reminders of the Roman formulas, which
couple the birth and the passion in organic con-
nection. The following passage from Ignatius
shows how close was the resemblance, but also,
which is more important, what was the earliest
interpretation : —

*' Jesus Christ, who was descended from
David, and was also of Mary ; who was truly

INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 107

born, and did eat and drink ; He was truly
persecuted under Pontius Pilate; He was
truly crucified and (truly) died, in the sight
of beings in heaven, and on earth, and
under the earth ; He was truly raised from
the dead. C'Ad. Trail," ix.)

Ignatius had heard of the Virgin-birth ; he
was the first writer to allude to it after its presen-
tation in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew;
and he lived not far from the time when those
Gospels were published. He liked the miracu-
lous element. The story of the Magi and of
the star he retells in his own impressive way.
His comment is characteristic, with that tone
of mystic exaltation found so often in his
writings.

''Now the virginity of Mary was hidden
from the prince of this world, as was also her
offspring, and the death of the Lord ; three
mysteries of renown, which were wrought in
silence by God." ("Ad Eph.," xix.)

But in dealing with the rule of faith, it is not
the Virgin-birth to which he attaches importance,
but the actual, human birth of Christ as a real
man, with flesh and blood and born of a human
mother. These are the references : —

io8 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

** There is one physician who is possessed
both of flesh and spirit; both made and
not made; God existing in flesh; true Hfe
in death; bothof Mary andof God." C'Ad
Ephes.," vii.)

''Jesus Christ was, according to the
appointment of God, conceived in the womb
by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the
Holy Ghost." C'Ad Ephes.," xviii.)

*'I desire to guard you beforehand . . .
that ye attain to full assurance in regard to
the birth and passion and resurrection, which
took place in the time of the government of
Pontius Pilate, being truly and certainly ac-
complished by Jesus Christ who is our hope.
C'Ad Mag," xi.)

''He was truly of the seed of David ac-
cording to the flesh, and the Son of God
according to the will and power of God;
that He was truly born of a virgin, was bap-
tized by John . . . and was truly, under
Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch,
nailed (to the cross) for us in His flesh.

"Now, He suffered all these things for our
sakes,that we might be saved. And He suf-
fered truly, even as also He truly raised up
Himself, not as certain unbelievers maintain,
that He only seemed to suffer ... for I

INTERPRETATION OF VIRG RTH 109

know that after His resurrectk , He was

still possessed of flesh, and I ". 'e that He
is now." (^'Ad Smyr.," ii, '

Out of such phrases and e^ ^ sions and out
of the mood which begot t'. • . arose the old
Roman Creed, more terse jondensed and

perhaps more emphatic r omission of

adjectives intended to inct^'(C.\?< the meaning.
That the purpose of IghaiK'^s was to make
emphatic the actual hurp%tx "^r^^th, and not the
birth from a virgin, is f^^^ n by a spurious
epistle, attributed to hi v. /- ich not only imi-
tates his style, but h ^ht his spirit, and
may have been writter middle of the third
century or earlier. ]i: ^4.^ -/led an Epistle to the
Tarsians, and is con'J&«i^'^, later forms of heresy,
such as the denial AY^^^me of the humanity of
Christ (Patripas^ ; '1^ ftad Sabellians), and by
others of His di .^^^-^^1 asserting that He is mere
man. Against ^l,5nch he urges the true doc-
trine of St. Pa I .

*' Mindful of nim, do ye by all means
know the: : ; the Lord, was truly born of
Mary, b'r " ide of a woman, and was as
truly c ... And he really suffered

and dJeoL ot-x^ n again.''

no FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

The testimony of Origen (f 254) may also be
added. He had learned of the Roman Creed,
possibly during his visit in Italy, and had gath-
ered its primary import to be the assertion of
Christ's actual human birth, and His actual
death : —

''He assumed a body like to our own,
differing in this respect only, that it was born
of a Virgin and of the Holy Spirit; that this
Jesus Christ was truly born, and did truly
suffer, and did not endure this death com-
mon (to man) in appearance only, but did
truly die," etc/

These passages show that the original purport
of the clause — born of the Virgin Mary — was
not primarily to assert the Virgin-birth but the
actual human birth ; and that the name Virgin
Mary is given for some other reason, either
because it identified Christ with the house of
David, from which Mary was supposed to be
descended, and thus asserted His Messiahship;
or, as in the case of Pontius Pilate for the pur-
pose of identification and exactness, the name
Virgin Mary having come to be the famihar
designation of our Lord's mother. Although

^ "De Principiis," i, c. 3.

INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH iii

Ignatius had heard of the Virgin-birth, and
twice refers to it, he did not attach to the vir-
ginity of Mary any special importance, such as
came to be attached to it in the fourth century,
when the monastic spirit invading the Church
was assigning to virginity a value beyond every
other virtue, and some even were inclined to
make it a condition of salvation. Thus there
is a suggestive expression at the close of the
epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans which
reads: "I salute the famihes of my brethren,
with their wives and children, and the virgins who
are called widows^' (/cat ra? irapdivov^ tols \eyoix4va<;
XV P^"^)' It has been thought that such unusual
language could be explained only on the
ground that the virgins whom Ignatius speaks
of as '^called widows" were deaconesses,
who in ecclesiastical order might have been
grouped under the class of widows. Bishop
Lightfoot after showing that this explanation
is untenable gives his own explanation as
follows : —

*'This then I suppose to be the meaning
of the words: I salute those women, who
though by name and in outward condition
they are widows, I prefer to call virgins,
for such they are in God's sight by their

112 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

purity and devotion." (''Apostolic Fathers,"
iv, 324.) '

That the original purport of the clause ''born
of the Virgin Mary" was to assert the reality of
Christ's birth, and not its unique or miraculous
character, is further made evident by other fea-
tures of the Creed. Originally an expansion
of the baptismal formula, it had at first in view
in its enlargements a thoroughgoing protest
against Gnostic heresies. It proclaimed God,
the almighty ruler of the universe, in opposition
to the many rulers whom the Gnostics presented,
who acted as a check on the Divine omnipo-
tence. When this first article of the Creed was
completed in accordance with its primary in-
tent, we have the fuller exposition of the Church's
faith in contrast with Gnostic aberrations:
God, the " Father,'' not an indescribable, ineffa-
ble abyss of being; "Almighty,'' not limited by
conditions of matter which He could not control ;

^ That a similar mode of thinking and of speaking was charac-
teristic of the early Church so late as the third century is evident
from its more influential writers, such as Tertullian, "De Exhort.
Castit.," i; "De Virg. Vel.," c. 10; "ad Uxor.," c. 4; also C/^m.
Alex.y "Strom.," viii, 12: "Such are the Gnostic souls which the
Gospels likened to the consecrated virgins who wait for their Lord.
For they are virgins, in respect of their abstaining from what is
evil."

INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 113

^^ Maker of Heaven,'' in contrast with the vague
conceptions of Gnosticism about an emanation
of the heavens (pleroma) ; " and earth,'' whose
origin the Gnostics with singular uniformity
denied to have been the work of the supreme
God. The emphasis on His " only Son our
Lord " contradicts the Gnostic teaching of many
supernatural beings in a graded order, of whom
Christ was one, and the highest. Then comes
the affirmation of His perfect humanity and His
possession of a human body, which stood promi-
nent among Gnostic negations, — He was ''horn"
of a human mother, the Virgin Mary. The
Gnostics denied that He was horn; He emerged
from the body of Mary in some way different
from human parturition. They also denied
that He suffered — He seemed to suffer; or that
He actually died on the cross. Here the em-
phasis of the Creed is intensified, "He suffered
under Pontius Pilate, he was crucified, dead, and
hurled." Other clauses follow to assert the
fact of the resurrection, which formed no part
of Gnostic teaching.

Gnosticism originated for the most part in
Asia Minor, but its chief teachers gravitated to
Rome, and the Church in Rome felt more
heavily than was felt elsewhere the burden and
the responsibility of resistance. Marcion, a

114 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

Gnostic teacher, who in some respects was more
true to the Pauhne doctrine, gave the Roman
Church much trouble. Against his special teach-
ing may have been levelled the clause which
asserts the coming again of Christ to judgment:
He shall come again to judge both the quick and
dead.'' For judgment and condemnation were
alien to Marcion's conception of the Divine
goodness and love/

Other parts of the Church met this dangerous
invasion of Oriental religion in various ways.
Irenaeus, in Gaul, wrote his treatise against
heresies; Tertullian, in North Africa, produced
controversial books against Marcion and the
Valentinians ; while Clement of Alexandria and
Origen sought by an appeal to the higher reason
and by a more spiritual interpretation of the
Christian faith to accomplish the same end.
But Rome produced a creed whose formulas
had long been in use, gathering them up into a
composite whole. It was not done at once.
The Roman Creed was a growth, and a slow
one. Clauses continued to be inserted, and by
the fourth century it was certainly fuller than it
had been when we discern it in the middle of

^ Cf. Dr. McGifFert's dissertation on "The Apostles' Creed "
(N.Y., 1902, Charles Scribner's Sons), for an admirable state-
ment of this view of the Creed as a protest against Gnosticism.

INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 115

the second century. Not until the eighth cen-
tury had it taken on its final form as it is recited
to-day.

It does not cover the whole purport of this
Creed to speak of it as a protest against Oriental
religion. It does, indeed, include this purpose,
nor can the Creed be understood without keep-
ing this purpose in view. But when the stress
of the conflict with Gnosticism was over, other
objects of a rule of faith for catechumens came
in view. On this point there are still differences
of opinion, whether it was a baptismal creed
recited as part of the baptismal vow, or a creed
imparted to catechumens as part of their train-
ing, or whether it was a compendium of the
points in Christian behef on which the Church
laid emphasis.^

Among the additions to the Creed, not in its
earlier form, is the clause, "conceived by the Holy
Ghost.'' When this addition was made, by the
end of the second or the beginning of the third
century,^ the clause which follows was detached
from the clauses which speak of the passion
and death. Thus the Creed ultimately read.

^ Cf. Kattenbusch, "Das ApostoHsche Symbol.," i, 59 fF.

^ Cf. McGiffert, pp. 91-92, for the evidence, which seems con-
clusive. The same view is taken by Harnack, but is critised by
Kattenbusch, Bd. ii, 619.

ii6 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

^^ conceived by the Holy Ghost ^ born of the Vir-
gin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate,^' etc.,
becoming a separate article. At this point we
touch the most difficult question in the interpre-
tation of the Creed. The various readings indi-
cate that some difficulty was felt from an early
period. In the old Roman Creed it ran at
first, ''who was born of the Holy Spirit, and
Mary the Virgin'^ (qui natus est de Spiritu
Sancto et Maria Firgine). In the Creed as
known to St. Augustine, it was, who was born
through the Holy Spirit from Mary the Virgin"
(qui natus est per Spiritum Sanctum ex Virgine
Maria). Still another reading in an ancient
creed of the fourth century, qui natus est de
Spiritu Sancto et ex Maria Virgine,'^ In the
fourth century conceptus was substituted for
natus (359, council of Ariminum), and this
change was adopted in the revision of the old
Roman Creed in Gaul, and thence has come
down to us in our so-called Apostles' Creed.
Changes of meaning, which may seem slight,
were involved in this use of prepositions, de or
per or ex, or the simple conjunction et. They
seem slight, but they involved no less an issue
than the nature of the Incarnation; and the
exact question at issue was, ''What part in the
transaction did Mary have ? Was she an equal

INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 117

partner with the Holy Spirit {et)^ or was her
function a subordinate one, as the body is
subordinate to the soul, the necessary, earthly
agency for the human birth? — the work of
the Incarnation being solely of God.

St. Augustine felt the difficulty. In his
''Enchiridion" he remarks: —

**The puzzle is, in what sense it is said,
*born of the Holy Ghost' when He [Christ]
is in no sense the Son of the Holy Ghost.
. . . When we make confession that Christ
was born of the Holy Ghost and of the
Virgin Mary, it is difficult to explain how it
is that He is not the Son of the Holy Ghost
and is the Son of the Virgin Mary when He
was born both of Him and of her. It is
clear beyond a doubt that He was not born
of the Holy Spirit as His Father, in the
same sense that he was born of the Virgin
as His mother." C'Enchir.," 38. )

Augustine's answer is admirable, and covers
more than one point in the doctrine of the
Incarnation. The substance of his solution of
the problem is that the Incarnation is a manifes-
tation of the grace of God, by which grace Christ
was purified from the womb by the Holy Spirit

ii8 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

in such a way as to leave no entrance for sin.
The passage containing his answer is given in
full, and will be referred to again.

"As not every one who is called a son, was
born of him whose son he is called, it is clear
that this arrangement by which Christ was
born of the Holy Spirit, but not as His Son,
and of the Virgin Mary as her son, is in-
tended as a manifestation of the grace of
God. For it was by this grace that a man,
without any antecedent merit, was at the
very commencement of his existence as man,
so united in one person with the Word of
God, that the very person who was Son of
man was at the very same time the Son
of God, and the very person who was Son
of God was at the same time Son of Man ;
and in the adoption of his human nature
into the divine, the grace itself became in
a way so natural to the man, as to leave no
room for the entrance of sin. Wherefore
this grace is signified by the Holy Spirit;
for He, though in his own nature God, may
also be called the gift of God. And to ex-
plain all this sufficiently, if indeed it could
be done at all, would require a very length-
ened discussion." C' Enchir.," 40.)

INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 119

From this discussion the conclusion is drawn
that in reciting the Creed, the original sense may
still be retained, as quite in harmony with the
original design of the Creed, with Holy Scrip-
ture, and with sound learning. The clause
^^ born of the Virgin Mary'' would then be con-
nected with the clauses that follow — ''suffered
under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and
buried.'' Taken thus together they assert the
reality of the human birth of Christ, as if it
read *'born of a woman, the Virgin Mary," and
the reality also of His death and passion. *' Con-
ceived by the Holy Ghost" then stands as a
distinct clause, as it also had a distinct and
separate origin,^ nor can any better interpreta-
tion of this clause be found than that given
above from St. Augustine.

But there are difficulties connected with the
clause, ''conceived by the Holy Ghost," however
we may interpret. It is the reminder of a cer-
tain type of theology which was never developed
in the ancient church, and never quite recon-
ciled with the prevailing theology of the Eastern
Church. If it is taken literally, and coupled
with ''born of the Virgin Mary" as forming

^ The words conceptus est were not added until after the middle
of the fourth century, finding their way into the creed of Southern
Gaul, in the fifth and sixth centuries. Cf. McGiflPert, p. 189.

120 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

one article, it seems to indicate, as Augustine
remarked, that Jesus had for His parents the
Holy Spirit and Mary. Nor was it an unreal
or fanciful possibility, against which Augustine
was contending. There was danger at this
point.

Augustine held that the Incarnation was ac-
complished by the influence of the Holy Spirit
acting in and from the conception of Jesus, but
acting also on the personality of Jesus through-
out His life. He laid the stress upon the Divine
activity, not upon the human contribution of
Mary. So also Athanasius, who ranks with
Augustine as the other of the two greatest Church
fathers, asserts the Incarnation as the work of
Deity alone. He differs, however, from Augus-
tine, in that he does not attribute the Divine
agency to the Holy Spirit, but to the Eternal Son
Himself, the second distinction in the Godhead,
who from His preexistent state came down and
was made man. This thought of the preex-
istence of Christ, to which no allusion is made
in the Apostles' Creed, was uppermost in the
consciousness of religious and theological teach-
ers in the East, and is the badge of Eastern
creeds as compared with Western. And so
Athanasius speaks, as representing another way
of looking at the Incarnation, when he says : —

INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 121

"For this purpose, then, the incorporeal
and incorruptible and immaterial Word of
God comes to our realm, howbeit He was not
far from us before. For no part of creation
is left void of Him : He has filled all things
everywhere, remaining present with His
own Father. But He comes in condescen-
sion to show loving kindness upon us and
to visit us. . . . He takes unto Himself a
body and that of no different sort from
ours. . . . Being Himself mighty, and Ar-
tificer of everything, He prepares the body
in the Virgin, as a temple unto Himself, and
makes it His very own." C'De Incar.," 8.)

''When He was descending to us. He
fashioned His body for Himself from a
Virgin, thus to afford to all no small proof
of His Godhead, in that He who formed this
is also Maker of everything else as well."
C'De Incar.," 17. Robertson's ed.)

But not to dwell on this divergence, which
would require too much space for its develop-
ment, and is irrelevant here, it is to be noted
that both Athanasius and Augustine, as men
filled with the God consciousness, attribute the
Incarnation to God alone; and the human
agent, the Mother of Christ, stands in the back-

122 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

ground of their thought. But they Hved at a
time when changes were impending, were indeed
already in process, and were revolutionizing the
old Catholic Church, of the first three centuries,
into the Church of the later Byzantine type, or
in the West, of the Middle Ages. And the issue
turned on the Virgin-birth. These two Church
fathers stood on the dividing Hne; Athanasius
died in 373 and Augustine in 430. Both felt
some effect of the coming change. Athanasius
uses language in speaking of Mary which an-
ticipates the later usage, but the use was rare
and exceptional, and may be taken as incidental.
And Augustine, that stern man and most rigid
of theologians, makes Mary an exception to the
working of the all-prevailing law and curse of
original sin. His opponent Pelagius would have
exempted many others. In making the sole
exception of Mary, Augustine seems to be
governed rather by motives of courtesy and
dehcacy than of strict theology. His language
has always been noted as somewhat pecuUar.
But even so, he more than once asserts that
Mary was born in original sin. She was con-
ceived in iniquity, for she sinned in Adam. But
in the matter of actual transgression Augustine
makes a concession in her favor. **Of the Holy
Virgin Mary, of whom out of honor to the

INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 123

Lord, I wish no question to be made where sins
are treated of, — for how do we know what mode
of grace wholly to conquer sin may have been
bestowed upon her who was found meet to con-
ceive and bear Him of whom it is certain that
He had no sin ? "

The writers in the first three centuries who
have most to say about the Virgin-birth belong
to the Western, or Latin Church. Justin Martyr
defends it against Trypho the Jew; with Justin
also originated the famous comparison of Eve
and Mary. He lived at Rome, and had come
there from Asia Minor, and may have brought
with him from thence a tendency to the exalta-
tion of Mary. Justin was followed by Irenaeus,
who had also felt the influence of Asia Minor
and who expanded the famous illustration —
how Eve had brought sin and Mary redemption
to the world. The comparison was an unfortu-
nate one, but it struck the popular imagination,
and it was given greater vogue by Tertullian.
That some difficulty was experienced in present-
ing evidence for the Virgin-birth is seen in the
great weight attached to the prophecy in Isaiah
vii. 14. The Jews, who were familiar with
Hebrew and with their own history, refused to
accept it. Justin and Irenaeus and Tertullian
and others rested upon it, despite the objections.

124 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

Origen recognized the difficulty; he had in-
corporated in the parallel columns of his *'Hex-
apla" three Greek versions of the Old Testa-
ment, which were intended as improvements
on the Septuagint translation. These versions
by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, sub-
stituted peapL<; for 7rap0€po<;, making the fa-
mous passage read ''a young woman" instead
of a 'Virgin." But when Origen was engaged
in meeting the objections of Celsus, and among
them the objection to the Virgin-birth, he re-
marks on this passage: ''Now if a Jew should
split words and say that the words are not, ' Lo,
a virgin,' but 'Lo, a young woman,' we reply
that the word 'Olmah' — which the Septuagint
have rendered by 'a virgin,' and others by 'a
young woman ' — occurs, as they say, in Deu-
teronomy as appHed to a virgin " ^ (Deut.
xxii, 23, 24). Other arguments were sought
from the sphere of animal hfe, where cases of
parthenogenesis were cited,^ to show creative
skill and power. Nor was it thought an un-

^ "Contra Celsum," i, 36.

^ The fable of the Phoenix was often used as an illustration. Cf.
Rufinus, "Expos. Sym. Apost.," c. ii, who also mentions the case
of bees. Cf. also Cyril of Jerusalem, who enlarges on the subject
in his "Catechetical Lectures," xii, 22 fF. ; but by his time the
tendency to make the Virgin-birth an essential condition for the
Incarnation was the most potent argument (ob. 386).

INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 125

worthy argument to remind the pagans how in
their mythology, as well as in the case of some
of their famous men, reputed instances of super-
natural birth were not uncommon. On the
whole it may be said that no additional evidence
was alleged in confirmation of the narratives of
Matthew and of Luke. There was another line
of argument, but that remained yet to be worked
out to its rigid conclusion, — that the Virgin-
birth was essential to the Incarnation. There are
hints of it, but it was not yet made prominent,
as it was afterward to become. It is implied
in the contrast between Eve and Mary. Ter-
tullian, from whom so many germs of Latin
theology proceed, was the first to rationalize on
this point and to connect the Incarnation in dog-
matic fashion with the Virgin-birth C'De Carne
Christi," c. 18).

On the other hand, in the Church of the East,
with the exception of Asia Minor, no disposition
was seen to urge the Virgin-birth as an essential
content of the Christian faith. Clement of
Alexandria makes no use of it, even in speaking
of the birth of Christ, where the customary allu-
sion would be in order. Origen builds up his
argument for the Incarnation in his important
treatise ''On First Principles," without depend-
ence on it. The Eastern Church attached more

126 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

importance to the baptism of Christ than to His
birth, to the moment when He began to teach
and to preach the Kingdom of God. The best
Eastern theologians were more under the in-
fluence of the writer of the Fourth Gospel, where
no reference is made to the Virgin-birth, but
where the Incarnation is the central theme and
the teaching of Christ is more amply illustrated
than in the synoptics. In general, it may be said
that the prologue of the Gospel according to
St. John was preferred in the East; while in
the Roman Church the preference was given to
the prologues of Matthew and Luke. It is a
striking circumstance that in the Creed of the
Church in Jerusalem, down to the middle of
the fourth century, no reference to the Virgin-
birth is included. It was also absent from the
Creed of the Church in Caesarea. But what is
more striking still, is its absence from the Creed
of the Council of Nicaea, which met for the pur-
pose of determining the doctrine of the Incar-
nation. It is not a question here, whether the
fathers assembled at Nicaea accepted the Virgin-
birth; for any reason we know to the contrary
they did accept it, but they did not include it in
their Creed, from which the inference is they did
not rest the doctrines of the Incarnation and the
Trinity upon it. So late as 431 a.d., at the

INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIN-BIRTH 127

Third General Council, ''the Synod gave order
under pain of excommunication and deposition,
that no other than the Nicene Creed . . . should
be used." ^ The Nicene Creed, set forth at
Nicaea in 325 a.d., ran as follows: —

"We believe in one God, the Father Al-
mighty, maker of all things both visible and
invisible.

*'And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, begotten
of the Father, only begotten, that is, of the
substance of the Father, God out of God,
Light out of Light, very God out of very
God, begotten, not made, of the same sub-
stance with the Father; by whom all things
were made, both those in heaven and on the
earth ; who for us men and for our salvation
came down and was incarnate and was made
man, and suffered and rose again the third
day, and ascended into the heavens and will
come to judge the living and the dead.

''And in the Holy Spirit.'' '

^ Hefele, "History of the Councils," Eng. Tr., ii, 71.
^ The anathemas appended to the Creed are omitted as having
no bearing in this connection.

CHAPTER V

THE VIRGIN-BIRTH AND THE INCARNATION
AFTER THE FOURTH CENTURY

The Gospel of the Infancy in the Church of
the first centuries and later contributed no im-
portant motive to the conversion of the Roman
Empire. So far as we know, it was generally
received that Christ was born of the Virgin
Mary; but no connection had yet been estab-
lished between the circumstance of His birth
and the doctrine of the Incarnation. There were
some who denied His supernatural conception
and birth. Thus Justin Martyr tells us there
were those ''who admit that He is Christ, while
holding Him to be man of men ; with whom I
do not agree, nor would I, even though most of
those who have the same opinions as myself
should say so" (''Dial, cum Tryph.," 48).
Cerinthus, the heretic, denied it, as did also the
Ebionites. But the Gnostics for the most part
accepted the Virgin-birth, they could make use
of it in various ways to further their imaginative
schemes; substituting ''in" or "through" for

128

THE INCARNATION 129

''of " a virgin. The Arians also believed in the
Virgin-birth, for it quite suited their denial of
Christ's complete humanity. The Virgin-birth
therefore was no badge of orthodoxy or test of
Catholicity.

But the main point is that it formed no vital
part of the Church's message, as it had in the
beginning no place in the apostolic preaching.
The first sermons of Peter (Acts i. 15; ii. 14)
omitted its mention, as also St. John and St.
Paul w^ere silent regarding it. The work of the
apostles and of their successors was to present
the mature Christ, the strong Christ, the man
who had grown to perfection tested by tempta-
tion (Heb. V. 8), the captain of our salvation who
learned obedience by the things He suffered. It
was not the infant in His mother's arms who
made the effective appeal to the old Roman
world. The ancient Catholic Church was think-
ing of other things, preoccupied with the reality
of God's existence and His control of the world,
and with the mission of Christ to reveal the
nature of God, and to establish His Kingdom in
the world. Apologetic writers do not occupy
themselves with defending the Virgin-birth;
some allude to it, others do not, but all alike are
supremely absorbed with the issues of the moral
life which Christ embodied. In making Christ

130 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

known to the men of their age, as a man among
men, while yet the incarnation of God, they
accomphshed that mightiest of tasks, — the con-
version of the Roman Empire.

In the course of the fourth century a change
set in — a change so great as to amount to a
revolution when its results became finally ap-
parent. There are many elements in the pro-
cess which wrought this revolution which can-
not be even alluded to here; only the barest
outlines can be mentioned. To put the situa-
tion in the largest, most general, way, the causes
leading to the deterioration in Church life as
well as in thought and in worship were the
necessary evils involved in so great a victory
as the Church had achieved, when, out of dire
persecution, it emerged victorious and became
the established religion of the empire under
Constantine. A reaction immediately began
against the worldliness wherein the Church
was now involved, and more particularly
a reaction from the vices which stained and
defaced the pagan character. This led to the
growing and ever more widely prevailing con-
viction that celibacy (virginity) was the one
highest virtue, constituting the angelic life, the
imitation of God. The effect of the great
Council of Nicaea, which had proclaimed the

THE INCARNATION

131

co-equality of Christ with the Father, induced a
tendency to dwell more exclusively on the
divinity of Christ than on His humanity. An
able and distinguished bishop, Apolhnaris of
Laodicea, denied the complete humanity of
Christ, holding that He possessed only a human
body {(Tcofxa with \pvxr) aXoyo?) and that the
Divine mind had taken the place of the human
mind or reason (6 pov<s). He was condemned as
a heretic (a.d. 381), but, as the subsequent
history showed. He was not forgotten, His argu-
ment carried weight, in reality He had only
given expression to the tendency of His own
and the following generations. His exact
statement was avoided, but approximation was
made to His teaching as far as words would
allow.

Under these circumstances the Virgin Mary
came to the forefront in the popular mind and
in the writings of professed theologians. She
now became known in common parlance as
the Mother of God (OeoroKo^) and as *'ever
Virgin." ^ It became a matter of faith to main-

^ For the definition of the phrase "ever Virgin" (detTrap^eVos :
semper vtrgo), which the Greek and Roman churches invariably
add as a gloss to the clause in the Creed, "born of the Virgin
Mary," cf. Augustine, "Ep. (137) ad Volus.," c. 8 : "The body of
the infant Jesus was brought forth from the womb of His mother,
still a virgin, by the same power which afterwards introduced His

132 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

tain that she had no other children, reversing
the opinion of the eadier Church, thenceforth
designated as the Helvidian heresy. The Vir-
gin-birth passed from an incident into a sacro-
sanct doctrine, to be held as essentially related
to the doctrines of the Incarnation and the
Trinity, and without which they could not be
maintained.

But all this could not have been apart
from the strange concurrence with that feature
of old heathen religion, which shows peoples
as yearning after female deities. The worship
of Isis, which had achieved wide popularity in
the empire, was now transferred to Mary, and
the transition of the heathens into the Church
became easy and natural. Other female deities
there were, popular in the East, — Demeter,
Ceres, or great Diana of the Ephesians, —
and from these the worship now fell away
to a better, more attractive substitute. Mary
was now supplanting her Son; the Father
and the Son retreat into the background of
the people's consciousness; Mary reigns as

body, when He was a man, through the closed doors into the upper
chamber." How rigidly Augustine connected this notion of the
virginity in partu with the clause in the Creed, "born of the Virgin
Mary," is evident from "Enchir.," c. 34, and also is it evident
how v/ide his departure from the original sense of the Creed.

THE INCARNATION 133

the Queen of heaven; the great truth of
the fatherhood of God, which Christ pro-
claimed as the mission of His Kfe, became
inoperative.

Asia Minor seems to have been the place where
the transition was accomplished. It was a
famous workshop of religions, from whence the
influence spread into other countries. Here, as
is probable, the materials were worked over, of
which other lands contributed the germs. From
the Western Church was imported into the East
the festival of the birth of Christ (360-386 a.d.)
on the twenty-fifth of December. How early
it was observed in the West is not known, the
first allusion to it being as late as 336 a.d.^
Another contemporaneous change was the com-
bination or fusion of what was characteristic
of the Roman Creed (Apostles') with the essen-
tial features of the Creed of Nicaea. Under
what circumstances this notable result was
accomphshed is still a question which needs
elucidation,^ but the fact remains that the Creed

^ Cf. Duchesne, "Origines du Culte Chretienne," pp. 247 ff.
Augustine does not mention Christmas among the festivals uni-
versally observed on the authority of the apostles or plenary
councils — "the Lord's passion, resurrection and ascension, and
the descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven," Ep. 54 (400 a.d.).

^ Cf. Swainson, "The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds," pp. 85 flp.
and 155 fF. See also Hort, "Tv^o Dissertations" on the creeds.

134 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

now designated and recited as the Nicene Creed
was probably the work of Epiphanius, in whose
treatise, **The Anchored One" (c. 374 a.d.), it
first appears. Cyril, the bishop of Jerusalem,
who was suspected of heresy, presented this
Creed to the so-called second General Council
in 381 A.D., and on the ground of this con-
fession was acquitted. This new creed grew in
popular use, till it supplanted the Nicene
Creed ; and it gained the approval of the Council
of Chalcedon (451 a.d.), under the misapprehen-
sion that it was the work of the Council of
Constantinople. The new Creed, as Dr. Hort
has remarked, had ''sung itself" into the heart
of the Church, before it received conciliar sanc-
tion. From the East it travelled back into the
West and supplanted for generations the old
Roman (Apostles') Creed.

These facts are mentioned here because of
their relation to the process going on in Asia
Minor during the fourth century, which was
revolutionizing the thought and belief of the
Church. Germs, when they are transplanted,
may change their character or gain a new vitality.
Enough remains in the way of literary debris
to show the process of the transformation.
Thus, for example, the pseudo Ignatius (c. 340
A.D.), revised the Ignatian Epistles, and brought

THE INCARNATION 135

it up to date as a text-book. Wherever the
genuine Ignatius had mentioned Mary, as he
was wont to do without the title Virgin, that
designation was inserted, and generally, where-
ever she was mentioned in the original, or the
birth of Christ, there was expansion on the Vir-
gin-birth, whether Ignatius had mentioned it or
not. The error into which Ignatius had fallen
when he saluted **the virgins who are called
widows," was corrected to read, ** those that
are ever virgins and the widows."

The air was full of forgeries. As the interest
in Mary grew, information was needed about
her life which the Gospels did not give, and,
indeed, regarding her they are most reticent.
But the information for which the age was crav-
ing was forthcoming in abundance. The story
was given of her father and mother (Joachim
and Anna), of her own miraculous birth, and
her sinless purity, and many details of her
betrothal; the birth of Jesus was magnified by
many incidents, and the lack of knowledge about
His early years was supplemented with miracu-
lous events. No check was placed on the imagi-
nation as it now unfolded to the wondering world
the Gospel of the Infancy. What impressed the
imagination most was the contrast to which
words were unequal, of the infant Jesus in His

136 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

mother's arms, carrying on the superintendence
and control of the universe/

We are now a long way from the original pur-
pose of the old Roman Creed, in its simple
affirmation that Christ was horn^ and of the
Virgin Mary. The first step in the process of
departure followed in consequence of the ad-
dition of the clause, '^conceived by the Holy
Ghost." The miraculous conception was then
interpreted as implying the miraculous birth,
which meant that He was not actually born by
the mode of human birth, but in some super-
natural way, with the inevitable inference to
follow, that His body was not in all respects like
a human body, and that His flesh had some super-
natural and life-giving quality. Another infer-
ence next read into the Creed carries us still
further from the reality and historicity of His
earthly life. It began to be asserted that in
the Incarnation, the Word, or Eternal Son, did
not unite with an individual man, but with

^ Cf. article in "Diet. Chris. Biog." on "Gospels Apocryphal,"
by Lipsius, for a description of these writings, influential in the
Church despite their origin. The Roman dogma of the Immacu-
late Conception of Mary is derived from this source. For the in-
fluence of the "Protevangelium" of James and kindred writings
upon the most eminent Church fathers, cf. Ambrose, "De Virgini-
tate," ii, 2, who draws the portrait of Mary with many details,
as to her character, her mode of life, etc., from these sources.

THE INCARNATION 137

humanity. Christ it was said was not ''a man"
but *'man." This was practically equivalent,
however strenuously it might be denied, to the
Apollinarian opinion, that Christ was not a com-
plete or perfect man. For ''man" without in-
dividuality may answer for a theological
abstraction, but is inconceivable in the concrete
world of human life.

It is too large a question to be discussed here,
whether the usage of the earlier Church in
any approved writer sanctioned this view of
the imperfect humanity of Christ. It probably
arose as a way of thinking in the Eastern
Church during or after the fourth century. At
any rate we have the testimony of Augustine
(f43o) to the thought and mode of expression
in the West, to which all the more importance
attaches, because of his influence, and also
because he was sensitive to his reputation for
orthodoxy. No one would have known sooner
than he, if any change were impending in theo-
logical circles on so vital a point. But Augus-
tine spoke of Christ as an individual man in
organic union with the Godhead. He did so
in the ''Confessions," and more dogmatically in
his treatise on the Creed. It is sometimes said
that Augustine's doctrine of predestination in-
fluenced his manner of speaking on this feature

138 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

of the Incarnation ; but, however that may be,
he was not the man to go counter to what he
knew to be the prevaiHng mode of speech, or
even apprehended might become such. After
having maintained, then, that Christ is the only
Son of God, and that He is both God and man,
Augustine proceeds : —

*'Now here the grace of God is displayed
with the greatest power and clearness.
For what merit had the human nature in
the man Christ earned, that it should in this
unparalleled way be taken up into the unity
of the person of the only Son of God .? What
goodness of will, what goodness of desire
and intention, what good works had gone
before, which made this man worthy to be-
come one person with God ? Had he been a
man previously to this and had He earned
this unprecedented reward, that He should
be thought worthy to become God .? Assur-
edly nay : from the very moment that He
began to be man. He was nothing else than
the Son of God, the only Son of God, the
Word who was made flesh, and therefore
He was God ; so that just as each individual
man unites in one person a body and a
rational soul, so Christ in one person unites

THE INCARNATION 139

the Word and man. Now wherefore was
this unheard-of glory conferred on human
nature, a glory which, as there was no ante-
cedent merit, was of course wholly of grace —
except that here those who looked at the
matter soberly and honestly might behold a
clear manifestation of the power of God's
grace, and might understand that they are
justified from their sins by the same grace,
which made the man Christ Jesus free from
the possibihty of sin ? " ^

Augustine's doctrine of the Incarnation, which
had represented an important tendency of the
Latin Church, soon after came to be regarded in
the Eastern Church, and especially from the
point of view of Cyril of Alexandria, as the rank-
est heresy. No words, however bitter or :^curril-
ous, were deemed too strong for its condemna-
tion, when it was reproduced, in substance, by

^ "Enchir.," c. 36, also c. 40, cited ante, p. y^- ^^- ^^^^ "Con-
fess.," vii, 19, and "De Correp, et Grat.," c, 30. The exposition
of the attitude of Augustine cannot be attempted here, but it may
be said that it involves the question whether the personality of an
individual man is capable of growth and expansion under the in-
fluence of the Holy Spirit till it includes the universal range of
human experience, and so becomes the equivalent of humanity in
itself and as a whole. The point is discussed in Slattery's "The
Master of the World," pp. 275 fF., and by Briggs, North Am. Rev.,
June, 1906.

140 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

the Antiochian school in the East. But the op-
posite view, the doctrine of the incomplete hu-
manity, the denial of individuality to the human
nature of Christ, cannot be said to have gained
the sanction of General Councils. Certainly the
Council of Chalcedon did not teach it, nor does
anything in its acts necessarily warrant the in-
ference that Christ was ''man," and not *'a
man," or that individuality did not of necessity
inhere in His human nature. The decision of
Chalcedon was that in Christ there were two
natures and one person. Beyond that the
council did not go. But others did go beyond
this statement, reading into it what it did not
originally contain. For the Council of Chalce-
don, in which the influence of the Western
Church was strong, had rendered a decision not
acceptable to the Church as a whole in the East.
It had also, while adopting the Western view of
the Incarnation, neutralized it to some extent in
approving the term ''Mother of God" {0€ot6kos)
as the designation of Mary.

It therefore became necessary in the East to
work over the decision of Chalcedon, in order to
bring it into harmony with the prevailing popu-
lar theology. This was done first by Leontius
of Byzantium (c. 485-543 a.d.). What New-
man undertook to do for the Articles of the

THE INCARNATION 141

Anglican Church, in the nineteenth century,
Leontius accompHshed in the sixth century for
the decrees of Chalcedon, giving them a sense
which reversed their original purport, and by
means of which he accommodated himself to
their statements. ''He was the first definitely
to maintain that the human nature of Christ
has its personality in the Logos." ^ ''A devout
disciple of Apollinaris," says Harnack, ''might
properly have said, in reference to the phrase of
Leontius, *the personality of the human nature
is in the Logos' {vTroo-rrivai iv rw \6y(o), that
Apollinaris said about the same thing, but said
it in plainer words." ^

From this time, and in consequence of this
view of the Person of Christ, no further interest

* Cf. Harnack, "Dogmengesch.," ii, 383 fF., Eng. tr., v. 232 fF.
Also Loofs, "Leitfaden," 175, 185.

^ See ante, p. 131. The consequence of the doctrine of the
impersonahty of the human nature — a doctrine, says Dorner,
" sanctioned by no QEcumenical Council " — is this, "Instead of our
seeing God in Christ, who is also the veritable Son of man, full of
grace and truth, the humanity of Christ must, logically, be lowered
to the position of a mere selfless opyavov of God, or even
to that of a mere temple or garment." It was a further conse-
quence, that the Church "made such a use of the doctrine of the
impersonality of the human nature, that the tendency toward the
magical view of the operations of grace and toward transubstan-
tiation, which was characteristic of the Middle Ages, found ever
increased satisfaction." Dorner, "Person of Christ," vol. iii,
pp. 116, 119.

142 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

was felt in the study of the life of Christ, nor any
effort made to get deeper insight into His con-
sciousness, or His teaching. ''The Exposition
of the Orthodox Faith,'' by John of Damascus
(754-787), is an illustration of the mechanical
method of dealing with the life of Jesus, after
separating Him from humanity and nullifying His
human nature, no matter how strongly in mere
formulas that humanity may be asserted. Nor is
there any hope for the Orthodox Church of the
East so long as the Damascene remains its most
authoritative theologian. Since Christ, as the
Damascene affirms, ''is not an individual,"
and since the Incarnation was complete from the
moment of His conception, actual growth in
"wisdom" or "in favor with God and man"
cannot be predicated without qualification. " He
receives no addition to these attributes," but
rather manifests, as the occasion demands, the
wisdom already possessed, adapting it to the
moment as the years increase, and simulating
these for human growth ("Expos.," 32). The
Gospel narrative tells us that He feared, and
these are His own words, ''Now is my soul
troubled." John admits the fear was real, and
not apparent, but ''now means just when He
willed" to be troubled ("Expos.," 23). He
prayed, but not because He felt any "need of

THE INCARNATION

143

uprising toward God," but because it was the
action appropriate to the moment, and in order
to become an example to us. And so when He
said, Father, if it be possible let this cup pass
from me; yet, not as I will but as thou wilt, *'Is it
not clear to all," so runs the comment, **that He
said this as a lesson to us to ask help in our trials
only from God, and to prefer God's will to
our own, and as a proof that He did actually
appropriate to Himself the attributes of our
nature?'' (34,35)/

The view of the Incarnation maintained by
John of Damascus met with clear-sighted op-
position for the first time in the teaching of
Luther, who, according to Dorner,

''insisted on the reality of the humanity of
Christ, even in the matter of growth. He
earnestly and distinctly repudiates all those
mythical elements which the legends of the
Church had introduced into the life of the
child Jesus. Not merely as to the physical,
but also as to the spiritual aspects of Christ's

^ Cf. Dorner, "Person of Christ," iii, 205 fF., for a critical
study and estimate of John of Damascus. His "Exposition" was
translated into Latin, and from its use by Peter the Lombard, his
teaching on the Incarnation passed over into scholastic mediaeval
theology and held its own until the Reformation brought a change,
and Augustine came again to his own.

144 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

humanity, does he maintain that He under-
went an actual development. He was in all
respects like other children, with the single
exception of sin. Though he decidedly
represents the life of Jesus as at once divine
and human from the very commencement,
he is equally sincere in teaching that He
increased, as in years, so also in wisdom and
in favor with God and men. His humanity
was not omniscient but was under the ne-
cessity of learning, though perhaps not from
men. Although the Spirit did dwell in Him
from the beginning, but as His body grew,
and His reason grew in a natural way like
that of other men, so did the Spirit penetrate
into and pervade Him even more fully and
moved Him the longer the more. It is,
therefore, no pretence when Luke says : He
became strong in the Spirit. The older He
grew, the greater He grew; the greater,
the more rational; the more rational, the
stronger in Spirit and the fuller of wisdom
before God, in Himself, and before the
people. These words need no gloss. Such
a view too is attended with no danger, and is
Christian ; whether it contradicts the articles
of faith invented by them or not, is of no
consequence. Although Jesus continued

THE INCARNATION 145

invariably obedient, He was, notwithstand-
ing, compelled to learn obedience. The tra-
ditional expedient of saying that Christ
merely played our part, Luther refused to
employ."^

It may not be inappropriate to introduce here
a similar representative utterance of Anglican
theology. It is taken from a sermon by the
late Archer Butler, on the text, *'If any man will
come after me, let him deny himself and take
up his cross and follow me " ; and it is chosen
for citation here because of its beautiful and
felicitous expression of a great truth : —

"I speak then of the daily self-denial of
the Son of God which is here set forth as
the model of ours, for it is only as we under-
stand the model that we can expect to under-
stand the copy. ... I bring before you this
divine person visiting the regions of pain in
such a sense as to be our example; for so
the text represents Him. I exhibit Him, as
it does, suffering as He would have us suffer,
suffering, therefore, that He may accomplish
a refining and exalting change upon Himself;

^ Cf. Dorner, "Person of Christ," Eng. tr., div. ii, vol. ii, pp.
91 fF., from whose presentation the above is sHghtly abridged.

146 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

not then upon Himself simply as God, for as
such change and exaltation are alike impos-
sible, but upon Himself as man, and, there-
fore, susceptible of all the improvement
which the original principles of that part of
the creation will allow. It is of the fiery
trial I would speak, through which He bore
our nature, till He had. Himself the sufferer,
made it fit to be the shrine of a God, the
temple in which He has chosen to dwell for
everlasting. Christ the Atoner we acknowl-
edge and adore ; but it is before Christ the
Purifier we bend to-day.

''That this purifying purpose in the suf-
ferings of Christ is recognized in the Scrip-
tural accounts of His redemption of our race,
I suppose I need not remind you. The 're-
finer's fire' was itself refined; Himself He
perfected to perfect us. He is everywhere
described as being ever tempted, just as we
are, though ever victorious, as — alas ! — we
are not ; nor can we doubt the disciplinary
character of this constant and painful
struggle, when we are told that, 'though a
Son, He learned obedience by the things
which He suffered,' that He was 'made per-
fect through sufferings,' and by that means
* became the author of eternal salvation to

THE INCARNATION 147

all them that obey Him.' Everywhere His
trial is made accurately to answer to our
own. Nor surely can we, with any reason,
doubt that its result upon His own human-
ity must have been similar to that which we
know the same processes produce, and are in-
tended to produce, amongourselves. We find
Him immersed in the same difficulties, sup-
ported by the same faith, acting in view of
the same reward, 'in all things made like
unto His brethren'; and we know that His
human nature was capable of the natural
course of advancement, that He could
'grow in wisdom,' and in years; we may
well believe that even in Christ Himself
those vigils of prayer so often recorded, those
weary wanderings, those patient 'endurances
of contradictions,' the agonies of the garden,
the final struggle of the cross, had power to
raise and refine the human element of His
being beyond the simple purity of its original
innocence; that though ever and equally
* without sin,' the dying Christ was some-
thing more consummate still than the Christ
baptized in Jordan." ^

^"Sermons," First Series, Philadelphia, 1856, 57-58. The
publication of these sermons was an event, both in England and
America. The lamented author, a divine of the Church of Eng-

148 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

This quotation does not exhaust the argu-
ment. The writer goes on to say that the prin-
ciple at issue in the Incarnation is that virtue
tried and triumphant ranks above innocence.
If Christ were to possess the utmost perfection
of our nature in the humanity aUied to His God-
head, He must possess it in the state of victorious
trial. Such a state might have been wrought by
some sudden and supernatural illapse of grace.
*'But such a perfection thus struck out at a beat
by the instantaneous omnipotence of miracle,
would have formed a manhood so utterly re-
moved from our own, that it would have neu-
tralized nearly every discernible purpose of
Him, who in the fulness of an all-pervading
sympathy with man as such, *took not on Him
the nature of angels but the seed of Abraham.'"
Nor is it *'any more a derogation to the dignity
of Christ to suppose him capable of moral ad-
vancement," or that '*as a man he should have
been capable of improvement," than it is to hold
that *'as a man He should not be infinite." ^

But it was just this view of the person of Christ
which John of Damascus held in abhorrence,

land, died at the age of thirty-three. At the time of his death he
was professor of philosophy in the University of Dublin. After
his death was published his "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy."
^ "Sermons," iii, 58, 59.

THE INCARNATION 149

and for which he reserved his strongest epithets
of condemnation. To his mind it undid the
Incarnation; it was an insuh to Christ, for He
was not **a man" nor an ^'individual man";
and by the instantaneous omnipotence of a
miracle in the womb of the Virgin, He had been
made pure and stainless and His moral perfec-
tion was complete from His birth.

The word which includes and sums up the
doctrine of John of Damascus, is ^eoro/co?,
^^the Mother of God,^' as applied to Mary.
About that word the whole long controversy
turned in the ancient Church, from the fifth to
the end of the seventh century, until the weary
struggle was over. Its use originated in the
East, in the fourth century, and it stimulated, as
well as justified, the worship of Mary, whatever
may have been its source. The word was un-
heard of in the first three centuries. Nor did
the Western or Latin Church take kindly to it
at first. In commenting on the actual birth
of Christ, in connection with the words,
''Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine
hour is not yet come," Augustine remarks : —

''He rather admonishes us to understand
that, in respect of His being God, there was no
mother for Him^ the part of whose personal

ISO FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

majesty He was preparing to show forth in
the turning of water into wine. But as re-
gards being crucified, He was crucified in
respect of His being man, and that was the
hour which had not come as yet, at the time
when this word was spoken, 'What have I
to do with thee ? Mine hour is not yet come ' ;
that is, the hour at which I shall recognize
thee. For at that period, when He was cru-
cified as man. He recognized his human
mother and committed her most humanely
to the care of the best-beloved disciple."

Pope Celestine (f 432) first used the word Oeo-
roK09 in the West, during the Pelagian controversy.
Leo the Great (t46i) used it, but sparingly.
In his time the fierce controversy had begun in
the course of which deoroKo^ was sanctioned
as the highest and final test of orthodoxy.
That controversy had been precipitated by Nes-
torius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who did
not realize that the word stood not only for a
theory of the Incarnation, but also expressed the
ground for the worship of Mary as the highest
of all celestial beings, who stood close to the
throne of the Eternal Trinity. His rejection of
the term '* Mother of God" produced, says Soc-
rates, the historian, **a discussion which agitated

THE INCARNATION 151

the whole Church, resembling the struggle of
combatants in the dark, all parties uttering the
most confused and contradictory assertions." ^
When the Council of Ephesus (431 a.d.) gave its
approval to the word ^eord/co?, the great crowd
of people filling the city ''burst forth into ex-
clamations of joy, and escorted the judges who
had deposed and excommunicated Nestorius
with torches and incense to their homes, cele-
brating the occasion by a general illumination."

^ By Nestorianism is generally understood such a separation of
the two natures in Christ as to amount virtually to a double per-
sonality. At the time of the controversy he was charged with
denying the divinity of Christ. On this point the words of a con-
temporary, Socrates, the ecclesiastical historian, are worthy of
being recalled: "Then indeed the discussion which agitated the
whole Church resembled the struggle of combatants in the dark,
all parties uttering the most confused and contradictory assertions.
The general impression was that Nestorius was tinctured with the
errors of Paul of Samosata and Photinus, and was desirous of
foisting on the Church the blasphemous dogma that the Lord was
a mere man; and so great a clamor was raised by the contention
that it was deemed requisite to convene a general council to take
cognizance of the matter in dispute. Having myself perused the
writings of Nestorius, I shall candidly express the conviction of my
own mind concerning him; and as, in entire freedom from per-
sonal antipathies, I have already alluded to his faults, I shall in
hke manner be unbiassed by the criminations of his adversaries
to derogate from his merits. I cannot then concede that he was
either a follower of the heretics with whom he was classed, or that
he denied the Divinity of Christ : but he seemed scared at the term
theotokos, as though it were some terrible phantom." (" H. E.,"
vii, 32.)

152 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

There is an ancient ''Oration, concerning
Simeon and Anna," wrongly attributed to Me-
thodius, whose exact date is unknown, but it
expresses the mood of the hour, when, after the
victory of Ephesus, Mary was enthroned as a
deity to be worshipped.

''What shall I say to thee, O mother virgin
and virgin-mother. For the praise even of
her, who is not man's work, exceeds the
power of man. . . . Receive, O Lady
most benignant, gifts precious, and such as
are fitted to thee alone, O thou who art ex-
alted above all generations, and who among
all created things both visible and invisible
shinest forth as the most honorable. . . .
God is in the midst of thee, and thou shalt
not be moved, for the Most High hath made
holy the place of His tabernacle. ... By
thee the Lord hath appeared, the God of
hosts with us. . . . Blessed of the Lord
is thy name, full of divine grace, and grateful
exceedingly to God, mother of God, thou
that givest light to the faithful, . . . the
mother of the Creator, . . . the upholder of
Him who upholds all things by His word
. . . the spotless robe of Him who clothes
Himself with light as with a garment. Thou

THE INCARNATION 153

hast lent to God, who stands in need of
nothing, that flesh which he had not, in or-
der that the omnipotent might become that
which it was His good pleasure to be. What
is more splendid than this ? What than this
is more sublime ? He who fills earth and
heaven, whose are all things, has become
in need of thee, for thou hast lent to God
that flesh which He had not. Thou hast
clad the mighty one with that beauteous
panoply of the body, by which it has become
possible for Him to be seen by mine eyes.
Hail ! Hail ! Mother and handmaid of God.
Hail ! Hail ! thou to whom the great Creator
of all is a debtor," etc.^

In the '^Dialogues" of Theodoret (1457),
— the ''Blessed" Theodoret, as his title runs, —
bishop of Cyrus, may be found the argument

* Among the prayers offered to the Virgin Mary, these are cited
in the writings of the English Reformers, as involving blasphemy : —

"Our hope and trust are put in thee, O Virgin Mary; defend us
everlastingly."

"O happy mother which dost purge us from our sins."

"Thou art the mediator between God and Man, the advocate
of the poor, the refuge of all sinners."

"Thou art the Lady of Angels. Thou art the Queen of Heaven.
Command thy Son. Show thyself to be a mother. He is thy Son;
thou art His mother; the mother may command; the child must
obey."

"Come unto her all ye that travail and are heavy laden."

154 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

of a great thinker, who disputed the term
*' Mother of God " as defective and inaccurate,
and dangerous, since it suppressed the humanity
of Christ, and gave one-sided expression to His
divinity. But it was for just that reason, that
the term was welcome. It made the humanity
illusory and unreal, in order to establish the
unity of the personality. The humanity was
absorbed in the divinity. All that remained
of the humanity was the pneumatic flesh, the
garb of deity, the flesh with its life-giving power,
which Mary contributed. It is not without a
sense of pathos one reads the protest of The-
odoret, now that fifteen centuries have gone by
since he wrote. The tide was against him;
his protest was in vain. What Newman wrote,
when he became aware that the doctrine of papal
infallibihty would be decreed, we may take as
the language Theodoret might have used as he
witnessed the revolution in the ancient Church.
'*If it is God's will that the phrase 'Mother of
God' shall be confirmed, then it is God's will
to throw back the times and moments of that
triumph which He has destined for His King-
dom, and I shall feel I have but to bow my head
to His adorable, inscrutable Providence."

Most inscrutable was the Providence brood-
ing over that ancient Eastern world while these

THE INCARNATION 155

things were transacting. Heroic efforts had
not been wanting, and many sacrifices had been
made to overcome the tendency which was dis-
sipating the humanity of Christ into an illusory
dream, and these efforts may not have been
wholly in vain, for future ages, even though at
the time they were futile. Nothing could stem
the tide which was sweeping over the imagina-
tion of the people and carrying the Church to
the enthusiastic worship of the Mother of God.
The strength of a people lies in its consciousness
of God ; and just in proportion as it knows God
and worships Him is a people strong. But God
was disappearing from the thought and life.
And Christ also, the strong Christ of the Gos-
pels, the leader of humanity, who had come to
reveal God, He had been reduced to an in-
fant in His mother's arms, and it was the Christ-
child who could appeal to His mother's love
and sympathy, which also appealed to the de-
teriorating religious instincts of the age. When
the Providence of God was fully revealed, it
broke upon the world in the invasion of the Sar-
acens, who easily took possession of the territory
of the Eastern Church. Asia Minor, nursing
mother of so many religions, where the cult of
the Virgin Mary had also found most fertile
soil, succumbed to the invasion of the followers

156 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

of the prophet, whose war-cry and religion were
the same, ''There is one God." That had been
also the original war-cry of the Christian Church
as it entered the Roman Empire to begin its
unparalleled career of conquest. Turn to the
Christian apologists of the age before Constan-
tine for the impressive contrast. Very little
had they to say about the Virgin-birth and
nothing about the Mother of God. They were
preoccupied with God the Father, the Being
spiritual and invisible, whose providence over
all the world was most real and powerful, and
extended to each individual man, who ruled the
world in righteousness and was calling it to
judgment. This conviction of God had been
raised to the highest degree of motive power
by the coming of Christ, His only Son our Lord,
and it was not the glories of Mary, nor the
winning arts of the Christ-child that broke the
power of the Roman Empire, but the strong Lord
Christ, whom the apologists drew as a real man,
in the historic reality of his earthly life. God
was then in Christ reconciling the world unto
Himself and fulfilling the promise and potency
of the Incarnation. But when the Eastern
Church entered on the way of decline and
degeneracy — it was about the middle of the fifth
century that the decline began to be apparent,

THE INCARNATION 157

which is also the date of the great Council of
Chalcedon — then it is not God they are talking
and thinking about, but the relation of Christ
to Mary, and how the Virgin-birth is related to
Christ's divinity and to the salvation of man-
kind. In the earlier age when the Church was
winning its stupendous victory over the Roman
Empire, the divinity of Christ and his Godhood
had been set forth as most manifest in His life
and character. His deeds. His words. In the
age that followed, of decHne and weakness. His
divinity had come to be dependent on the exact
nature of the incident of His birth. In the ear-
lier period they were fighting to the death the
corrupt mythology of the old world, which
concealed God or denied Him. In the later age
the mythological tendency revived, with the
Virgin-mother for its centre, and God was
smothered in the mazy labyrinth where the
consciousness of the Church was wandering.

How was it in Western or Latin Christendom ?
We cannot tell what Augustine might have done,
had he lived to confront the Council of Ephesus
or the Council of Chalcedon, as they gave their
sanction to the expression *' Mother of God,''
wherein was wrapped up, as in a germ, that
theory of the Incarnation which he rejected. He
was taken away from the evil to come. The

158 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

West was fast sinking into barbarism, in the
year 430 when he died, and in that very year
the Vandals were knocking for entrance at the
gates of Hippo. It was no longer a time for
theologizing. Dialectic gave way to organiza-
tion and to action. No one arose after him who
was his equal in the West. He was read and
studied, and his name carried great influence
both in the earlier and later Middle Ages. But
so far as the doctrine of the Incarnation and the
Eucharist were concerned. Western theologians
followed other lights. They finally yielded to
the prestige of the East on these issues, and not
Augustine, but John of Damascus became their
teacher. They were aware as they made their
departure in this direction that Augustine
no longer served them. When his name and
authority were appealed to in behalf of doctrines
the Church was rejecting, the answer was made
that *'the holy doctor of Hippo, fatigued by the
labors of composition, had not always made his
thought sufficiently clear ; and thus was explained
how, for the ignorant, he was a source of error ;
but if, what was impossible should be the
case, he had erred upon so great a mystery, it
would be, indeed, an occasion for repeating the
words of St. Paul, 'If an angel from heaven
preach any other Gospel unto you than that

THE INCARNATION 159

which we have preached unto you, let him be
accursed.' " ^ So John of Damascus superseded
Augustine on the Incarnation, as Dionysius the
Areopagite on the doctrine of the Eucharist.
The Eastern, or Oriental, interpretation of the
Christian mysteries dominated the West. From
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the worship
of the Virgin-mother made rapid strides. Al-
ready indeed the Latin Church was adding
another element to the Marian mythology, —
the immaculate conception of Mary, which the
Eastern Church had not known. But this
was thought necessary in order to make more
secure the sinlessness of Christ and the purity
of His life-giving flesh. It did not become a
formal dogma till a later age (1854), but it was
a belief widely prevalent from the twelfth cen-
tury and earlier.^

And the outcome of it all in Western Chris-

^ "Durandus Troarnen," cited by BatifFol, in **L*Eucharistie,"

P- 379-

^ Roman Catholic theologians defend the recent Latin dogma
(1854) that Mary herself was immaculately conceived, on the
ground that it is contained implicitly in the action of the Third
General Council which canonized Mary as the Mother of God.
The Roman Church, says Duchesne, received the cult of the Virgin
Mary from the Greek Church {d' importation byzantine), and Latin
theologians are surprised when Episcopal voices in the Greek
Church now protest against the new honors which the Roman
Church has decreed to the Mother of God. (" Eglises Separees,"
p. no.)

i6o FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

tendom. The consciousness of the Latin Medi-
aeval Church found most rare and wonderful
expression in the ecclesiastical art of the Renais-
sance. There it was unmistakably evident, even
if it were not in so many other ways, that it was
the Virgin Mary, not God, not Christ, whom
Christendom was worshipping, to whom it
looked for aid and protection. Once more the
conviction is borne in upon us by the teaching
of history that it is the consciousness of God
which makes a people strong. That conscious-
ness had well-nigh died out in Italy, where the
Renaissance had its birth. As the contents of
the mediaeval religious life were exhibited on
the canvas with the skill of a matchless art, the
proportions of faith became apparent. The land
was covered with Madonnas ; the people fed upon
them to satiety. The few efforts to represent God
the Father resulted in a venerable head, weak and
inefficient and lacking even the power of Jupi-
ter Capitolinus, who seems to have been taken
for a model. It may have been the limits of art
that were at fault. None the less striking is the
result. And as for Italy, alone among the
nations she was unable to take the first steps
toward national independence and freedom, but
fell under the thraldom of a foreign power,
going down into the sleep of death for ages before
her resurrection came.

CHAPTER VI

THE CHANGE IN THE DOCTRINE OF THE INCAR-
NATION AT THE REFORMATION

The most characteristic feature of the Eng-
lish people, of the English Church and the Eng-
lish nation in the sixteenth century is the pre-
vailing sense of the presence of God. It may
be discerned in the literature of the age, which,
in its ephemeral products even, assumes a reli-
gious tone, because of the consciousness that
the will of God is manifested in the nation's
experience. Only this deep, widespread con-
viction, that God was acting, leading, and pro-
tecting the nation, would have sufficed to carry
it through the perils of the great transition. The
state took on a divine character, the king's will
was regarded as divine, because it was in har-
mony with the people's will, and the will of the
people was reflecting the will of God. The
majesty of the Divine supremacy dwarfed all
minor considerations and relegated them to a
subordinate position. This feeling grew from
the time when England, first of the nations,

M l6l

i62 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

stepped forth from the fold of mediaeval Chris-
tendom, declaring the state to be independent,
and, under God, competent to rule its own affairs.
From this time (1534) the belief grew stronger
that God was leading, and in Him was protec-
tion and safety; till it culminated, at the moment
when Latin Christendom, under the leadership
of the Pope, concentrated its energies for the
conquest of the rebellious nation. Then, at
the Armada, it became the national conviction
that the victory was not due to human agencies.
**God blew" with His winds, and the fleet of the
enemy was scattered or went down like lead in
the mighty waters, and England was free. From
that time England's greatness began to be felt.
She advanced to the leadership amongthe nations,
and has developed into a world power, in com-
parison with which the civilization that grew up
around the Mediterranean Sea, with Rome as
its centre, seems small and insignificant.^
In this great hour of her history, the English

^ There are many histories of England and of the Reformation,
but in none of them have the issues at stake been more clearly
apprehended than by Froude. The criticism his work encoun-
tered was inspired to a large degree by religious and political
prejudices. "He held strong views," says Pollard, "and he made
some mistakes; but his mistakes were no greater than those of
other historians, and there are not half a dozen histories in the
English language which have been based on so exhaustive a survey
of original materials." "Life of Cranmer," p. viii.

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 163

Church was not engaged in an attempt to shore
up the tottering Christianity of the Middle Ages
or even of the ancient cathoHc Church in so
far as it had influenced perversely mediaeval
dogmatic forms. To get back to the will of
Christ and to the commandments of God was
the deliberate intention. At such moments in
history it is given to see more plainly the issues
that are vital to national prosperity. The Eng-
lish Reformation had in it the elements of revo-
lution. It was not the letter and the text of
creeds, but Scripture as the Word of God, to
which the Church gave the highest place. And
the doctrine which the Church received was
received from Scripture, not from tradition; as
Christ had commanded and not as men had taught.

The chief evil to be overcome was not, as in
the case of Germany, the system of indulgences,
for from that evil England had not so greatly
suffered ; but rather the worship of man, which
had been substituted for the worship of God.
Mary worship, saint worship, image worship,
against these the protest was made; and the
steps taken to secure their abolition were radical
and thoroughgoing, quite as much so as in any
other country where the Reformation prevailed.

It is apparent that the primary object was to
give Christ an opportunity once more to be known

i64 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

in Himself, apart from His mother, — to be
heard and seen, as when He once Hved among
men. For this reason Scripture was made
supreme, because it contained the record of His
life and the comment on that life by inspired
evangelists, apostles, and teachers. The Church
before the Reformation had lost the clew to the
meaning of the New Testament, and for that
reason did not find it so edifying as extracts from
the fathers. A higher conception of the Incar-
nation, which made the life of Christ historic
and real, instead of illusory and perfunctory,
was the first consideration, — in accordance
with the words of St. Augustine: —

"It behoveth us, to take great heed, lest
while we go about to maintain the glorious
Deity of Him which is man, we leave Him
not the true bodily substance of a man."
(Ep., 187.)

To insist upon His glorious Deity, but also to
regain the humanity which had been lost, was
the aim. The Church of England redefined the
doctrine of the Incarnation, and as General Coun-
cils stood in the way, or their wrong interpreta-
tion, she cleared the ground for action by de-
claring that they not only *' might err," but ''had

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 165

erred

in things pertaining to God."
came to defining the Incarnation,

When it
the term

''Mother of God," which the councils had sanc-
tioned, was rejected. With that exception, the
second of the Thirty-nine Articles is in substan-
tial harmony with the definition of the Council
of Chalcedon, but that exception is an impor-
tant and vital one.

Church of England

Article II

The Son which is the Word
of the Father, begotten from
everlasting of the Father, the
very and eternal God, and of
one substance with the Father,
took Man's nature in the womb
of the blessed Virgin, of her
substance : so that two whole
and perfect natures, that is to
say, the Godhead and Manhood,
were joined together in one Per-
son never to be divided, whereof
is one Christ, very God, and
very Man.

The Symbol of Chalcedon,
451

We, then, following the holy
Father, all with one consent,
teach men to confess one and
the same Son, our Lord Jesus
Christ, the same perfect in God-
head and also perfect in man-
hood; truly God and truly
man, of a reasonable (rational)
soul and body; consubstantial
(coessential) with the Father
according to the Godhead, and
consubstantial w^ith us accord-
ing to the manhood; in all
things like unto us, without
sin; begotten before all ages
of the Father according to the
Godhead, and in these latter
days, for us and for our sal-
vation, born of the Virgin
Mary, the Mother of God^ ac-
cording to the manhood; one
and the same Christ, Son, Lord,
Only begotten, to be acknowl-

i66 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

Church of England The Symbol of Chalcedon,

Continued 451 — Continued

edged in two natures, incon-
fusedly, unchangeably, indivis-
ibly, inseparably ; the distinction
of natures being by no means
taken away by the union, but
rather the property of each na-
ture being preserved, and con-
curring in one Person and one
subsistence, not parted or di-
vided into two persons, but one
and the same Son and only
begotten, God the Word, the
Lord Jesus Christ.

No one can measure the significance of this
action of the Church without full knowledge
of the history of the fifth century. Two things
were involved in it. One was the removal of the
curse which had lain upon theAntiochican School,
because they spoke against the term, Theotokos :
''Nestorius hated of God, and Diodorus, and
Theodorus of Mopsuestia and their diabohcal
tribe," says the theologian John of Damascus;
and the other result was the freedom gained for
theological advance by emancipation from the
prescription of tradition. The word theo-
tokos was mischievous and misleading. It jars
upon the reader of the definition of Chalcedon
as not in harmony with its real purpose, — a com-

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 167

promise or concession made in the interest of
peace, and not in the interest of truth. At the
time when the term was first introduced, Augus-
tine had said that *'as God, Christ had no
mother." The Church of England now ehmi-
nated the word from her formularies as well as
from her definition of the faith.^ The word
which had abounded in ancient theologies and
liturgies passed out of use and was well-nigh
forgotten, except as a theological curiosity or
historical reference. As such Coleridge en-
countered it and made this comment : —

^ Neither Newman, in Tract xc, nor Pusey, in his defence of it
("The Articles treated on in Tract xc," London, 1 841), has alluded
to the rejection of ^eoro/cos. Both overlook the fact, in their
explanation of Article xxi, that the decisions of the Third and
Fourth General Councils have been curtailed and in part cast
aside. But that these Councils have erred, even in things pertain-
ing to God, does not and ought not to destroy the veneration in
which General Councils are to be held. Cranmer has given the
true judgment in the " Reformatio Legum," " de Summa Trinitate,"
c. 14, where, after stating that we pay the greatest deference to the
oecumenical councils (ingentem honorem libenter deferimus), he
proceeds : Quibus tamen non aliter fidem nostram obligandam esse
censemus, nisi quatenus ex Scripturis Sanctis confirmari possint.
Nam concilia non nulla interdum errasse, et contraria inter sese
definivisse, partem in actionibus juris, partim etiam in fide, mani-
festum est." Cf. Hardwick, "His. of the Articles," p. 409. The
same qualification is found in the Canon of 1871, — the doctrine
must be gathered from Scripture. Cf. Cardwell, Synodaliaj i.
p. 126.

i68 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

*'Nestorius was perfectly justifiable in his
rejection of the epithet deoroKo^, as ap-
plied to the mother of Jesus. The Church
was even then only too ripe for the idola-
trous hyper-dulia of the Virgin. . . . For
an epithet, which conceals half of a truth,
the power and concerningness of which
relatively to our redemption by Christ
depends on our knowledge of the whole, is
a deceptive, and dangerously deceptive,
epithet." (Op. cit., v, p. 60.)

In this connection there was one obvious
passage which occurs often in the writings of
the Reformers, — the words of Jesus, when they
told Him that His mother and His brethren
stood without desiring to speak to Him. *'And
He said unto them. Who is my mother and who
are my brethren ? He that doeth the will of my
Father which is in heaven, the same is my
mother and sister and brother."

If it be said, as of late it has been said, that
only the Universal Church, united in all its
branches, can speak with authority in defining
Christian doctrine, the answer is that the Church
of England has spoken for herself, and without
consultation with the rest of Christendom, nay,
even, in opposition to it. The fact remains,

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 169

however it may fare with the theory. And
surely the Church of England had as much
right to reject a dogmatic statement of the
Council of Chalcedon as the Pope had to reject
its twenty-eighth canon, which limited his ec-
clesiastical prerogative, as the former limited
theological freedom and advance. And the
National Church of England was standing on
the same ground, when in the Articles it re-
defined the faith, as was the group of National
Churches assembled at Trent, when they put
forth their dogmatic decisions. In the sixteenth
century this principle was recognized and ac-
cepted as valid.^

The word theotokos may now be dismissed. It
has been dwelt upon, because it was the hinge
of the controversy in the fifth century, when the
ancient Church was making its departure from
the earlier conception of the Incarnation ; when
it was renouncing the individuality of the human
nature of Christ, and attributing to His Mother

^ Also the Eastern or Greek Church put forth in 1643 '^^
"Orthodox Confession," without consultation with other branches
of the Church Universal. Deep and important as the differences
are between the historic branches of the Church of Christ, there
does run beneath them all a common element, sometimes known
as "undenominational Christianity," which means, in other words,
devotion to the person of Christ, however inadequately apprehended.
Therein lies the hope of a common Christendom, something always
to be spoken of with respect and reverence.

170 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

the inheritance of sanctity and purity which
marked His human nature, instead of to the grace
of God, or the action upon Him of the Holy Spirit.
At the Reformation all the Protestant churches
alike rejected, without discussion, the designa-
tion of Mary as the ''Mother of God." In
England neither Cranmer nor any of the Reform-
ers attempted to work out a theory of the Incar-
nation. It was not the English way. They
were content with the freedom gained by the
excision of the objectionable phrase, whose
results, as they had been manifested in the his-
tory of the Church, were a better commentary on
its tendency than any abstract reasoning. That
they appreciated the importance of regaining the
full humanity of Christ may be inferred from a
passage in the Homily on the Nativity and also
from places in the Book of Common Prayer
where the Manhood is associated with the
Godhood in emphatic manner. Thus in the
exhortation of the communion office the reference
to *'the death and passion of our Saviour Christ
both God and man;'' or in the Second Article,
''whereof is one Christ, very God and very man ;"
or again in Article VII, "Christ the only media-
tor between God and man, being both God and
man.''

Reference has already been made to the theo-

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 171

logical views of the Reformers in the sixteenth
century, who gave to the Church the Book of
Common Prayer. We return to the subject
again, for the purpose of learning more definitely
the meaning of those formularies, — the vows
of the ordinal, the interpretation of the creeds,
the ''doctrine of Christ, as Christ hath com-
manded, and as this Church hath received the
same, according to the commandments of God."
It might naturally be objected that no body
of men in any one age should have the authority
to determine the interpretation of the doctrine
of this Church for subsequent ages. But we
are concerned with the fact; and the fact re-
mains that the Reformers did devise the vows
of the ordinal, which were substituted for the
vows of the old order. If the question of clerical
honesty is at issue, there is no other way than to
get back to the original purport of our formula-
ries, and this can only be done by ascertaining
the mind of those who wrote them. Whether
they ought to be in the Prayer Book or not is
another question. They are there. And such is
the subtle force of the written word, that an in-
fluence constantly emanates from the action of
the Reformers, and must always continue to do
so, no matter how far we may have wandered
from the original sense. In a church constituted

172 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

on such a basis, the spirit of the Reformation
will never be without its witnesses, more espe-
cially as that spirit meant the freedom where-
with Christ hath made us free.

But again, in further reply to the possible ob-
jection which may question the equity of tying
a church to the standards of the sixteenth cen-
tury, it must be said that the age of the Refor-
mation stands out in history with a singular and
unparalleled preeminence. It was a great re-
vealing epoch in the history of religion, as well as
of the human mind, to be compared only with
the age of the advent of Christ, or of that earlier
moment in history when the prophets arose in
Israel. The greatness of the Reformation age
was illustrated in the coming to the birth of
the modern nations, when the freedom of hu-
manity was secured in its essential principle, and
the world entered upon a new career of prog-
ress; when for the first time a real and genuine
cathohcity became possible, and the old con-
ventional catholicity, which hovered around an
inland sea, gave way to a universality, of which
oceans were the highway and the whole area
of the globe the theatre of action.

The greatness of the age of the Reformation,
which entitles it to speak with authority to
subsequent ages, was the mighty, all-controlling

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 173

sense of the power and the presence of God.
In the power of that presence, the humanita-
rianism of the Middle Ages, which gave birth
to institutions and customs, shelters, places of
refuge, penitential methods with indulgences
annexed, shielding men from the consciousness
of the immediate relationship with God, — these
things grew weak and God alone was exalted
in that day. Hence the Reformers gained the
supreme confidence, the amazing boldness to
speak, so that they did not need to take thought
beforehand, for it was not so much they that
spoke, as the Holy Spirit that was speaking
through them. To get back again to the reality
was the predominant aim, and in so doing to get
rid of all the lower worships of Mary and of the
saints, which had hidden God from view. Since
tradition stood in the way of this return, they
made war upon tradition, no matter how long
established or lofty its prestige. No human
authority intimidated. No church was infalli-
ble, only God was that. To the Bible they
turned, as the Word of God, and as containing
all things necessary to salvation. From the
Bible, they learned the way to the true doctrine
of the Incarnation, from which the Church of
the fifth century or earlier had departed.
And the true doctrine of the Incarnation re-

174 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

quired that the glory should be attributed to God
and not to Mary. To Mary as ''the Mother
of our Saviour," ^ — such was the designation
of the Reformers, they gave becoming, but no
undue, reverence. It was the common belief
of all the reformers alike, whether in England
or on the Continent : —

''We do not hold Christ to be free from all
taint merely because He was born of a
woman unconnected with a man, but be-
cause he was sanctified by the Spirit, so that
the generation was pure and spotless."
(Calvin, ''Instit.," ii, c. 13.)

The Reformers challenged the whole mass of
subtle speculation, which attributed to the
Virgin-birth as such, the breaking of the entail
of sin. They did not deny the Virgin-birth, they
affirmed it when the occasion of their subject
demanded. But their criticism, their comment,
must have almost seemed to their adversaries as
tantamount to denial, for they made little or no
effort to explain or justify, they attached for the
most part slight importance to the circumstance,
they put at times such an interpretation on the

^ "Mother to our Saviour Jesus Christ" is also the formula of
the Homilies.

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 175

clause in the Creed, "'born of the Virgin Mary,"
as to make it seem a matter of indifferencewhether
or no the Virgin-birth were true. In the writings
of Bishop Jewell (fi57i), whose Apology
(** Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae") is '*the most
complete expression of the distinctive position
of the English Church," these are among the
comments : —

''The nearness of mother's blood should
have profited Christ's mother nothing at all,
unless she had more blessedly carried Christ
in her heart than in her body." (''Works,"

ii, 757-)

"Verily, Mr. Harding, to be the child of

God is a great deal greater grace than to be

the Mother of God."

" Mary was more blessed or fuller of grace,

in that she received the faith of Christ, than

in that she conceived the flesh of Christ."

(iii, 578.)

Bishop Latimer, the hero of the English Refor-
mation, came near getting into trouble, in the
reign of Henry VIII, before the Reformation
had begun, by his plain speech about the Virgin
Mary, — her perpetual virginity, and also the
virginity in partUy which he condemned as

176 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

amounting to a rejection of the humanity of
Christ. Since the days of Augustine, who from
a sense of deHcacy and courtesy had been wilhng
to admit that Mary was sinless, this concession
had hardened into a dogma, which it was peril-
ous to deny. Bishop Latimer was still in
bondage to the unreformed faith, but his mind
had begun to move, and this was one of the start-
ing points of his departure. His enemies were
vindictive and fierce. He qualified his language
somewhat, but was able to make an issue,
that, whether or no Mary ever sinned, like all
others she was saved, and needed to be saved
by Christ.

*'And to that [question] 'What need you
to speak of this ? ' I answered, ' Great need :
when men cannot be content that she was a
creature saved, but as it were a Saviouress,
not needing salvation, it is necessary to set
her in her degree to the glory of Christ, Crea-
tor and Saviour of all that be or shall be
saved. Good authors have written that
she was not a sinner but good authors
never wrote that she was not saved. . . .
There was difference betwixt her and Christ :
and I will give as little to her as I can,
rather than Christ her Son and Saviour shall

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 177

lack any parcel of his glory.' " ('* Remains,"
p. 227.)'

There was httle incHnation among the reform-
ers to magnify virginity as a virtue. Monas-
teries had been suppressed throughout the king-
dom, and monks and nuns had been turned
adrift. The state was consoHdating itself on the
basis of the family, as the sacred ultimate foun-
dation of national prosperity. On this point the
Reformers spoke, somewhat in the vein of the
early fathers before monasticism arose. Among
them was Becon, an influential writer, chaplain
to Archbishop Cranmer, and a canon of Canter-
bury. He escaped the martyrdom reserved for
Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, and others, but he
suffered much for his adherence to the Refor-
mation, and in the language of the time was **a
man mightily tossed about." In his treatise on
*'The Demands of Holy Scripture/' is given this
question and answer: —

''What is a Virgin ? In Scripture it signi-
fies any honest, faithful woman; or the
spouse of Christ. Which spouse is either

^ Latimer may have been overawed by the fierceness of his
opponents. VV^hat he really thought and would have said, but
refrained from saying, was accomplished in Article XV, entitled
0/ Christ alone without sin.

178 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

any soul believing in Christ, and living
honestly according to His word ; or else the
whole congregation and Church of the faith-
ful." '

In their comment on the clause '*Born of the
Virgin Mary," the Reformers were to a certain
extent influenced by the necessity of opposition to
the mystic utterances of Anabaptists, as Luther
had also been roused by the teaching of the
Zwickau prophets. It was the opinion of Joan
of Kent, or Joan Bocher, that **our blessed
Saviour did not take His body from the Virgin
Mary, but passed through her as hght through
glass. '* The burning of this unfortunate woman
for heresy (1550) is a blot upon the Reformation,
to be compared with the burning of Servetus
by Calvin, or the treatment accorded to Anne
Hutchinson by the New England Puritans. She
was a woman of an ultra-spiritual temperament,
somewhat hke the Quakers in her tendency to
emphasize spirit in opposition to letter. When
she was questioned by the Reformers, many of
whom visited her in prison, in order to move her
from the error of her ways, she answered, '*I
deny not that Christ is Mary's seed, or the

^ " British Reformers," Becon, p. 423, London, Religious Tract
Society.

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 179

woman's seed ; but Mary had two seeds, one
seed of her faith and another seed of her flesh
and in her body. There is a natural and cor-
poral seed and there is a spiritual and an heav-
enly seed, as we may gather of St. John, where he
saith, *The seed of God remaineth in him, and
he cannot sin.' And Christ is her seed ; but he is
become man of the seed of her faith and belief;
of spiritual, not of natural seed; for her seed
and flesh was sinful, as the flesh and seed of
others."^

That the Reformers were a little confused by
this utterance is apparent, for it had a double
tendency, and left them as it were in a strait
betwixt two. But it had the effect of leading
them to assert more strongly the actual birth of
Christ from Mary, and it afforded another argu-
ment against the virginity in partu which was
the popular belief. '*How can we warrant
Christ's humanity," writes Hutchinson, ''if we
make it uncertain whence he took it .f* . . . If
he had any humanity or manhood, he had it
undoubtedly of his mother." It is not necessary
to cite the opinion expressed alike by the Re-
formers on this point. Latimer spoke for them,
in resisting the opinion that the body of Christ
was fantastical, but he associated with the

^Hutchinson, "Works," Parker Soc. ed., 146.

i8o FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

teaching of Joan, the current ecclesiastical tra-
dition, as having a like fantastical tendency.
Of the doctrine known as the semper virginitas
he says: *'They that will go about and say that
she brought Him forth without pain, not after
the manner of other women, they seem to do
more hurt than good : for so we might come in
doubt whether He had a very body or not."^
The situation of the Reformers almost repro-
duces that of the moment when the Creed took
its rise, when the Gnostics were maintaining that
Christ was not actually born, but passed from
heaven through the body of His mother in a
supernatural way. Against this the Creed was
originally a protest — He was ''born of the Vir-
gin Mary."

The sensitiveness now felt about the Virgin-
birth has its roots in a divergence regarding the
Incarnation. In the Anglican Church there
has been developed, since the Reformation, a
doctrine of the Incarnation which, while it
accepts the Virgin-birth and recognizes the
miraculous element in the entrance of Christ
into the world, as well as in His departure from
it, yet does not regard it as an essential condi-
tion for the incarnation of God in Christ or
dogmatically determine that God could have

1 "Works," ii, 115.

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION i8i

become incarnate in no other way. It places
the stress not upon the Gospel of the Infancy,
but upon the character and teaching of the
mature Christ, upon His life and passion.
For this view of the Incarnation, the Reformers
prepared the way, by removing the obstacles
which stood as a hinderance to its assertion
and had so stood for ages. They laid the
foundation for a more spiritual and effective
conviction of the truth that God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto Himself, but for the
fuller presentation of the truth they had neither
leisure nor opportunity. The generations that
followed were preoccupied with other issues, —
the conflict with Puritanism in the seventeenth
century, the Deistic movement in the eighteenth.
Not until the last century did there come the
full moment when this central doctrine of the
Christian faith could be adequately presented,
as in the writings of Maurice, Hutton, Kingsley,
Robertson, and the American Bushnell; and
to this list may be added the name of Phillips
Brooks, who was at the height of his power
when elucidating the life and teaching and
character of Christ. Never before has the
meaning of the Incarnation been so powerfully
illumined or with such triumphant success.
But contemporaneously with this movement

i82 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

in religious thought, which made the Incar-
nation the central truth of the Christian faith,
and called attention to the life of Christ
portrayed in the Gospels, as the evidence of
His divine Sonship, there came also a revival
of the pre-reformation doctrine of the Incar-
nation, which not only made the Virgin-birth
so essential that the Incarnation could not be
conceived or held without it, but sought to
restore the terminology associated with the
worship of the Virgin, which the Church of
England has rejected. The issues and fortunes
of theology are therefore involved at this point
in the Creed, — "Born of the Virgin Mary."
The insistence on the mediaeval view of the
Incarnation, which, as has been shown, goes
back in its origin to the fifth century, tends to
beget a reactionary mood which leads to the
denial of the Virgin-birth altogether. At this
point the theological motive which springs from
repugnance to the restoration of the pre-
reformation theology may combine with another
motive, derived from modern science, — the
assertion of the uniformity of law and the im-
possibility of the miracle. The increased at-
tention given to the study of the New Testament
has also disclosed hitherto unsuspected difficul-
ties connected with the Virgin-birth, which of

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 183

themselves would have begotten doubt, had
there been no other cause.

The modern sensitiveness on the subject of the
Virgin-birth goes back to Coleridge (f 1834),
the most influential personage, for Enghsh
thought, whether in literature, philosophy, or
theology, that the nineteenth century produced.
Neither Bushnell, nor Maurice, nor Robertson
could have done their work without him; all
acknowledged their indebtedness to him. Cole-
ridge had turned his attention in his theological
reading to the writers of the English Church in
the seventeenth century, as having greater force
and attraction than those of later generations,
of whom the world was then getting tired. He
went back therefore as a preparation for a for-
ward step. He studied writers, like Hooker,
Field, Donne, Jeremy Taylor, Richard Baxter,
Leighton, Bull, and many others, especially
those who had contributed anything to the doc-
trine of the Trinity or the Incarnation. He
fastened on the doctrine of the Trinity as the
primary, fundamental, and all-inclusive doctrine
of the Christian Church. He embraced with
enthusiasm the church doctrine as set forth at
the Council of Nicaea. He was not only fa-
miliar with the nomenclature, but he rather
gloried in its exact use to express the fact of the

i84 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

Incarnation — how the Logos, the Eternal Son,
the second person in the Godhead, came down
and was made man, how the Word became
flesh and dwelt amongst us.

But as Coleridge studied these writers of the
seventeenth century, who in their aversion to
Puritanism had resorted to the teachers of the
ancient church for relief, he was led to ani-
madvert upon many of their opinions as incom-
patible with Scripture, with reason, or with the
dictates of true religion. Dr. Donne, the dean
of St. Paul's, and a friend of George Herbert,
himself also a poet and a man of fanciful, im-
aginative turn of mind, who revelled in quaint
conceits, was pressing a view of the Incarnation
and its connection with the Virgin-birth, against
which Coleridge made his protest: —

"The fear of giving offence, especially to
good men of whose faith in all essential points
we are partakers, may reasonably induce us
to be slow and cautious in making up our
minds finally on a religious question, and
may, and ought to, influence us to submit
our conviction to repeated revisals and re-
hearings. But there may arrive a time of
such perfect clearness of view respecting
the particular point, as to supersede all

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 185

fear of man by the higher duty of declaring
the whole truth in Jesus. Therefore, hav-
ing now passed six-sevenths of the ordinary
period allotted to human life — resting my
whole and sole hope of salvation and immor-
tality on the divinity of Christ, and the
redemption by His cross and passion, and
holding the doctrine of the Triune God as
the very ground and foundation of the
Gospel faith — I feel myself enforced by
conscience to declare and avow, that, in my
deliberate judgment, the 'Christopaedia'
prefixed to the third Gospel, and incorpo-
rated with the first, but according to my
belief the latest of the four, was unknown
to, or not recognized by, the Apostles Paul
and John ; and that instead of supporting
the doctrine of the Trinity and the Filial
Godhead of the Incarnate Word, as set
forth by John i. i, and by Paul, it, if not
altogether irreconcilable with this faith,
doth yet greatly weaken and bedim its evi-
dence ; and that by the too palpable contra-
dictions between the narrative in the first
Gospel and that in the third, it has been a
fruitful magazine of doubts respecting the
historic character of the Gospels themselves.
I have read most of the criticisms on this

i86 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

text, and my impression is, that no learned
Jew can be expected to receive the common
interpretation as the true primary sense
of the words. The severely literal Aquila
renders the Hebrew word veavL<; a young
woman, girl, maiden. But were it asked of
me : Do you then believe our Lord to have
been the son of Mary by Joseph ? I reply:
It is a point of religion with me to have no
belief one way or the other. I am in this
way Hke St. Paul, more than content not
to know Christ Himself /cam o-dpKa. It is
enough for me to know that the Son of
God became flesh, crap^ eyeuero yevofxevo^ e/c
yvvaiKo<;y and more than that, it appears
to me, was unknown to the Apostles,
or, if known, not taught by them as apper-
taining to a saving faith in Christ. —
October, 1831."^

^ "Works," Shedd's ed., v. 79. Commenting on one of
Donne's sermons, where he is dealing with the Virginity in partu,
which is the authorized interpretation by the Greek and Roman
churches of the clause, " Born of the Virgin Mary," Coleridge
remarked : " I think I might safely put the question to any
serious, spiritual-minded Christian : what one inference tending
to edification, in the discipline of will, mind, or affections, he can
draw from the speculations of the last two or three pages of this
sermon, respecting Mary's pregnancy and parturition ? Can —
I write it emphatically — can such points appertain to our faith
as Christians, which every parent would decline speaking of
before a family, and which, if the questions were propounded by

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 187

Dr. Donne thought it was the wish of Christ
that the Virgin-birth should not be taught or
mentioned.

"Very ingenious," says Coleridge, '*but
likewise very presumptuous, this arbitrary
attribution of St. Paul's silence and pre-
sumable ignorance of the virginity of Mary,
to Christ's own determination to have the
fact passed over." The further expression
of Coleridge's thought is given in the fol-
lowing citations from his writings :

'*0, what a tangle of impure whimsies
has this notion of an immaculate concep-
tion, an Ebionite tradition, as I think,
brought into the Christian Church. I have
sometimes suspected that the Apostle John
had a particular view to this point in the first
half of the first chapter of his Gospel . . .
and met it by the true solution, the Eternal
Fihation of the Word." (p. 276.)

''Non nude hominem — not a mere man
do I hold Jesus to have been and to be; but
a perfect man, and by personal union with
the Logos, perfect God. That His having

another in the presence of my daughter, aye, or even of my, no
less in mind and imagination, innocent v/ife, I should resent as
as an indecency?" (p. 80.)

i88 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

an earthly father might be requisite to His
being a perfect man, I can readily suppose ;
but why the having an earthly father should
be more incompatible with His perfect
divinity, than His having an earthly mother,
I cannot comprehend. All that John and
Paul believed, God forbid that I should
not." (P. 436.)

**It may deserve attention from the zealous
advocates of the authenticity of the Evan-
gehum Infantiae, prefixed to the Gospel of
Luke and concorporated with the canonical
revision of Matthew's — whether the im-
maculate conception of the Virgin is not a
legitimate corollary of the miraculous con-
ception of our Lord, so far at least that the
same reason, that rendered it impossible
for Him to have an immaculate father, is
equally cogent for the necessity of an
immaculate mother.

*' But alas ! in subjects of this sort, we can
only stave off the difficulty. It is a point in
a circle, on whichever side we remove from
it, we are sure to come round to it again.
So here, either the Virgin's ancestors, pater-
nal and maternal, from Adam and Eve down-
ward, were all sinless ; or her immediate
father and mother were not so, but like the

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 189

rest of mankind involved in original sin.
But if a sin-stained father and mother could
produce an immaculate offspring in one
instance, why not in the other ? That the
union of the Divine Word with the seed
and nature of man should preclude the con-
tagion of sin in the Holy Child, is as much
to be expected on the one supposition of our
Lord's birth as on the other. So far from
being a greater miracle, it seems so neces-
sarily involved in the miracle of the Incarna-
tion, common to both, as scarcely to be
worthy of being called an additional miracle.
The accidental circumstance, that the Uni-
tarian party, most palpably to their own dis-
advantage, reject or question the chapter in
question, is the chief cause of the horror with
which our orthodox divines recoil from every
free investigation of the point." (P. 532.)

It was one of the ecclesiastical events in the
last century, which amazed all thoughtful men,
when the Roman Church, under the lead of
Pope Pius IX, proclaimed the new dogma of the
immaculate conception of Mary. It was to be
sure the necessary and logical sequence of the
belief that the birth from a virgin was essential
to the Incarnation; that the Incarnation could

190 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

not have been otherwise in the nature of the
case. God and Mary, so ran the argument,
were the parents of Jesus, the one furnishing the
divinity, the other the humanity. But since the
humanity of Jesus was exceptional and divine,
and the flesh of His body sacred and hfe-giving,
Mary must herself have been an exceptional
being, a quasi divine person, sinless, and in order
to sinlessness immaculately conceived. But to
glorify Mary was also an end in the mind of
Pius IX. In the famous painting in the Vati-
can, executed at the order of the Pope to com-
memorate the new dogma, Mary has taken her
place in the sacred Trinity, along with the Eter-
nal Father and the Eternal Son, as having an
equal share with Deity, in bringing to the world
the blessing of the Incarnation.

The nineteenth century was, by common con-
sent, the most enlightened, the most progressive,
in the world's history. No other century could
compare with it for great discoveries, for powerful
illumination in every department of life, in
science, in literature, in art, in philosophy. How,
then, could so retrogressive a step have been
taken, which outdid the dreams in the Middle
Ages ? Among those who wondered was the
late Frederick Robertson, who was preaching in
the fifties, and for whom the new dogma fur-

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 191

nished the subject of two of his most notable
sermons, '*The Glory of the Virgin Mother" and
*^The Glory of the Divine Son."

**How comes it to pass," he asks, "after
three hundred years of Reformation, we find
Virgin-worship restoring itself again in this
reformed England, where, least of all coun-
tries, we should expect it, and where the re-
membrance of Romish persecution might
have seemed to make its return impossible ?
... It is the doctrine to which the con-
verts to Romanism cHng most tenaciously."

Robertson had felt the force of that severe
reaction through which the last century passed,
when humanity, as it were, rose up in its might
to dethrone the deity. But he escaped its evil
effects, and his answer to the question is true.
Mary worship is ''idolatry, in modern Romanism,
a pernicious and most defihng one," where the
worship of the mother overshadows the worship
of the Son, and the love given to her is so much
taken from Him. The remedy for it is to get
back to the full humanity of Jesus. Because
the humanity of Christ had been lost sight of
or obscured, through inferences from a wrong
conception of the Incarnation, the world had

192 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

turned to Mary as a substitute. " The true
glory of the Virgin was the glory of true woman-
hood, . . . not immaculate origin, nor immacu-
late life, nor exaltation to divine honors . . .
the glory of motherhood; . . . not the Queen
of Heaven, but something nobler still, a crea-
ture content to be what God had made her."
C* Sermons," ii, 277 ff., first Am. ed.)

Robertson's prophetic call to return to the
humanity of Christ, as the way to overcome false
worship, has been fulfilled, but in larger and
different measure than he anticipated. The
ecclesiastical reaction, which was moving Rome-
ward, was checked by the rise of Biblical and
historical criticism, — by the ''higher criticism"
of the New Testament in particular, which has
brought back to the world the historical Christ,
till at last we are beginning to know what man-
ner of man He was. Through the contempla-
tion of His personality. He now begins to stand
revealed to the modern world, as never before,
in all the history of the Church, was He seen or
known. No greater boon was ever given to the
world than this. But as we study the records
of His life, the mystery of His person also grows.
Into the depths of His consciousness, no one can
ever hope fully to penetrate. But at least Christ
realizes to faith all that the religious imagination

DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 193

could ask for, if ''God was in Christ reconciling
the world unto Himself" (2 Cor. v. 19). We
can understand how St. Paul, from his knowledge
of Christ after the flesh, should have been led
to say, '^Wherefore God also hath highly exalted
Htm, and given Him a name which is above
every name, that in the name of Jesus every
knee should how, of things in heaven and things
in earth, and things under the earth, and that
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord to the glory of God the Father J'

CHAPTER VII

MODERN SENSITIVENESS ABOUT THE VIRGIN-
BIRTH

It is to have been devoutly wished that the
present controversy about the Virgin-birth had
not arisen to disturb the peace of the Church.
Many of those who feel keenly the modern diffi-
culties would have preferred to allow objections
to slumber, in the conviction that no serious issue
was involved. There will always be a large
number brought up from infancy within the
Church, who will continue to think and to talk
in the old way, however the critical questions
regarding the fact may be determined. There
are many subjects in the field of religion or
theology where the mind, the intellectual facul-
ties, remain willingly in suspense, and in such
an attitude may lie prudence and the highest
wisdom, even the possibility of the larger
growth. There is much to be said in behalf
of the Virgin-birth which should moderate or
conciliate those who oppose it. The first man,
who was of the earth earthy, came into the

194

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 195

world, according to the faith of ancient peoples,
in some supernatural way by a special divine
creative act. The conception of man's descent
after the modern evolutionary hypothesis will
never quite destroy the beautiful vision, as it has
been represented in art by Michael Angelo, of
the first man in his first act after the creation,
touching with his hand the hand of God. Poetry
and art are intimately associated with religion.
The primary religious question is, not whether a
certain doctrine is true, for we may have no
canons of determining truth ; but, what does it
mean, — a question we can always answer. If
the appearance of the first rnan is more truly
represented to the religious imagination, as
proceeding forth from the Divine will, after
special deliberation in the councils of heaven,
much more must the second man, who is the Lord
from heaven, have entered upon the scene of
His task on earth in some still more special and
supernatural way. Such is, and is likely to
remain, the working of the religious instinct as
it seeks to reproduce the actual fact, to cover with
a delicate veil the material process, to see only
the spiritual, that which transcends the earthly
and transfigures it. It is the very nature of
religion that it tends to cultivate good taste, as
well as a right heart and right living. The dig-

196 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

nity of the situation demands dignity in the
recognition. ''It was becoming" is a response
that can justify behef. We can understand
how, without controversy, Augustine should in
summary fashion announce that the question
was closed, in regard to the mother of our Lord.
Out of respect to Christ, as he said, let there be
no admission in her case of actual sin. Even
Martin Luther, who had the clearest anticipation
of the modern view of the Incarnation after
ages which had groaned in ignorance of the full
truth, even Luther could not escape from the en-
vironment of the religious imagination, where
poetry and art, and refined religious sensibility,
played about the person of Mary.^ The fol-
lowing exalted passage breathes the incense of
the religious spirit : —

''Behold thus did Christ take to Himself
from us our birth and insert it unto His birth,
and give in His own, in order that by it, we
may become pure and new, as though it
were our own. Every Christian, therefore,
may exult and boast in the birth of Christ,

* Cf. a very interesting passage in Dorner, " Person of Christ,"
Div. ii, vol. ii, p. 91 (Eng. tr.), where the thought of Luther about
Mary is given. But he also maintained, says Dorner, that Christ
took upon Him our fallen nature. "The roots of the idea of a puri-
fication of Mary from original sin were thus cut away," etc.

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 197

just as though he himself had been physically
born of Mary like Christ. Whoso doth not
beheve or doubteth this, is no Christian.
This is the sense of Isaiah ix. 6 : ''Unto us a
Child is born, unto us a Son is given." Us,
us, to us it is born, to us it is given. There-
fore see thou that thy delight in the Gospels
is derived not solely from the history itself;
for it exists not long: but make thou His
birth thine ovv^n; exchange with Christ, so
that thou mayest get quit of thy birth and
appropriate His. This takes place when
thou believest. Then wilt thou of a cer-
tainty lie in the womb of the Virgin Mary
and be her dear child." ^

It is a generalization from our knowledge of
history that all its greater epochs and moments
of revelation are represented as ushered in by the
miracle, or by an opening of the heavens which
gives us a glimpse of a higher, more blessed world
than that we see. At the creation the morning
stars sang together and the sons of God shouted
aloud for joy. When prophecy was born, there
came first as its heralds the prophets who were
greater in deed than in word : Elijah and Elisha,
who moved in an atmosphere of the miraculous,

^ Dorner, op. cit., p. 105.

198 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

a most unusual feature of Jewish history. Before
the inspired Word came the supernatural act,
and the way was prepared for the prophets with
whom God talked. That the Virgin-birth should
form one of the prologues of the Gospel of
Christ was inevitable, and its grandeur is unsur-
passed, not equalled, by the glories of the first
creation. The song of the angels, the heavenly
message of good-will to men, go with the ac-
count of the Annunciation and they constitute
an adequate setting of the event which redeems
the world. Once more it was to happen that
an event would take place calling for a voice
from heaven, as when peace came to the perse-
cuted Church and the triumph over the old world
of force and sense; when Constantine, it may
have been on Monte Mario, overlooking the
Eternal City on the eve of the decisive battle of
the Milvian Bridge, heard the words in a vision,
**By this sign conquer."

The world will cherish these things, scholars
and critics no less than the purely religious
mind, if only they be not turned into the form
of dogma to be accepted on the authority of
the Christian Church, as an infallible guide to
religious truth. It is this tendency to dogma-
tize about the Virgin-birth, and to make it
essential to the Incarnation, or as if a belief

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 199

necessary to salvation, which in turn begets a
reaction, tempting men to become ''martyrs of
disgust," to deny and reject as untrue the
external incident, whose misinterpretation it is
and not the incident itself, which is out of
harmony with Scripture and with the revelation
of modern life.

It is a relief, then, and it brings freedom, to
turn to Scripture as authority, and not to the
tradition of the Church as an infallible guide,
in matters of faith. For nowhere have we been
taught in Scripture or in our formularies that
the Christian Church is such a guide. On
the contrary, it is declared in the Articles that
the churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alex-
andria have erred, and that the Church of
Rome hath also erred, even in things pertain-
ing to the faith. If they have erred, and in
the happier ages of the Catholic Church,
what guarantee have we that the Anglican
Church may not err. Certainly the Church
of England does not claim for herself an
inerrancy which she refuses to the ancient
churches of Christendom. Nowhere in her for-
mularies does she show any solicitude for her
own infallibility. Nor does she show solicitude
for the creeds. Her sole solicitude is for the
maintenance of the Word of God, uncorrupted

200 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

by men's traditions or made of no efifect by the
commandments of men. This over-concern
about the creeds ^ indicates a weakening hold
upon the doctrine as Christ hath commanded
and as this Church hath received the same.
This ultra-devotion to the creeds has now gone so
far that those who draw their doctrine from Scrip-
ture, diligently studied and with such aids as
help to the knowledge of the same, and who are
inwardly persuaded of the truth they hold, are
accused of betraying the faith, or charged with
lacking any objective basis for their faith, and
their belief is counted as a vain thing, because
it rests on the shifting sands of subjectivity.
There is confusion here and grave misunderstand-
ing. It can only be overcome by taking the vows
of the Ordinal as meaning what they say, as carry-
ing the meaning which those who placed them in
the Prayer Book intended them to convey. We

^ The Catholic Church existed for four centuries, at its best and
doing its greatest work, without any creed in its offices, Hturgical or
other. Peter the Fuller, patriarch of Antioch, was the first to intro-
duce the Creed into the Liturgy, in the time of the Monophysite
controversy about 470. The precedent was adopted by Constanti-
nople about 510, and then by Spain 589; by the Gallican and
Anglican churches about the eighth century, and by Rome so late
as the eleventh. In the offices of the Breviary, the use of the Creed
was ordered in the ninth century. The Creed was neither sung
nor said during mass at Rome until the time of Benedict VIII
(loi 2-1024). Cf. "Ordo Romanus Primus," ed. by Atchley,
p. 80.

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 201

must revert again to that earlier position that
Scripture is above the creeds, and that the
creeds are to be interpreted by Scripture and
not the Scripture by the creeds. The vow which
the Church imposes on her clergy to be ''diligent
in reading of the Holy Scriptures, and in such
studies as help to the knowledge of the same,^'
makes progress possible, while to put the
creeds above Scripture, as the key to their inter-
pretation, makes it impossible. The Church of
England is in harmony with the spirit of those
memorable words of Robinson, the Puritan
minister, that God may yet have more light to
break forth from His Holy Word. But we need
not go outside of the Church for such reminders.
Our own Bishop Butler in the Analogy has
uttered the same conviction : —

*'And as it is owned the whole scheme of
Scripture is not yet understood, so if it ever
comes to be understood before the restitu-
tion of all things, and without miraculous
interpositions, it must be in the same way as
natural knowledge is come at: by the con-
tinuance and progress of learning and lib-
erty, and by particular persons attending
to, comparing, and pursuing intimations
scattered up and down it, which are over-

202 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

looked and disregarded by the generality of
the world. For this is the way in which all
improvements are made, by thoughtful
men's tracing on obscure hints, as it were,
dropped us by nature accidentally, or which
seem to come into our minds by chance.
Nor is it at all incredible that a hook, which
has been so long in the possession of man-
kind, should contain many truths as yet
undiscovered,'' (Pt. ii, chap, iii.)

To this test the creeds must be constantly
subjected, and through the process of this test
they are passing to-day. Whether we approve or
not, however great our regret or pain at seeing
things which we cherish become subjects of
doubt or controversy, the wiser course is to
accept an inevitable situation, and wait for the
conclusion equally inevitable. In the case of
the Virgin-birth the candid student in search
for the truth, will rightly dwell on its tendency
to prevent the person of Christ from being
regarded as an evolution from humanity by a
natural process; or to represent the subordina-
tion of man to the transcendent will of Deity,
the exaltation of God and not of man. These
considerations constitute a presumption in favor
of its truth, in addition to the weight of the

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 203

Gospel narratives. But there are also objections
and difficulties which create doubt and uncer-
tainty. It will not meet the case to say that
these objections are frivolous, captious, not
to be taken seriously, or that those who make
them are insincere, or seeking to discredit
Scripture. The Bible as the word of God con-
tains all things necessary to salvation. But all
that is written in Scripture is not in the fullest
or truest sense Scripture. Else should the speech
of Bildad the Shuhite be placed on the same foot-
ing as the utterances of great prophets. There
are parts of Scripture which are Hke the fixed
stars shining by their own light and centres of
vast systems, while other parts are subordinate
and inferior. The Virgin-birth is contained in
Scripture, but the question before the devout
scholar is whether it is such an essential integral
part of the Scripture as to be intimately bound
up with the things necessary to salvation. The
incident of the Virgin-birth is given in two only
of the four Gospels, and never alluded to again.
Christ Himself does not refer to it. The three
great apostles, Peter and John and Paul, are si-
lent about it. The attitude of Mary as given in
the evangelical narratives seems to many incon-
sistent with the knowledge or consciousness of
such a wonderful circumstance as the Annuncia-

204 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

tion. And further a suspicion has arisen that
in the New Testament itself there is another way
of referring to the birth of Christ/ which has been
overlooked under the influence of the convic-
tion of the Virgin-birth ; so that when it occurs
it has been interpreted as a way of speaking, a
concession, a suppression required by the occa-
sion. It may be so, but this is a question not
to be determined in any a priori way. There
is nothing in the Virgin-birth incompatible with
the teaching of St. John or of St. Paul; but the
circumstance of their silence would at least seem
to imply that it was not so essential, as that a
belief in the Incarnation depended on it.^

^ Cf. Luke iv. 22; John i. 45; vi. 42.

^ In his valuable treatise on the "Incarnation," Dr. Briggs has
remarked: "All that we have thus far learned of the incarnation
from the teaching of Jesus and the writings of St. Paul, St. John,
and the Epistle to the Hebrews, would stand firm if there had been
no Virgin-birth; if Jesus had been born of Joseph and Mary,
having father and mother, as any other child. Therefore the
Virgin-birth is only one of many statements of the mode of
the incarnation. It has no more documentary value, no more
intrinsic importance, than any other of the many we have thus far
studied. The doctrine of the incarnation does not depend upon
the Virgin-birth. Since all the other passages relating to the in-
carnation, except that of the Gospel of the Infancy, know nothing
of the Virgin-birth, it is only a minor matter connected with the
incarnation, and should have a subordinate place in the doctrine.
That which is unknown to the teachings of St. Peter and St.
Paul, St. John and St. James, and our Lord Himself, and is
absent from the earliest and latest Gospels cannot be so essential
as many people have supposed" (p. 217).

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 205

It is said that if the greater writers of the
New Testament are silent, as if they had not
heard of the Virgin-birth, yet its universal ac-
ceptance within the Church at the beginning
of the second century constitutes an argument
for its character as essential truth which can-
not be overcome. Here, too, qualification is
necessary lest we be misled by uncritical state-
ments. Ignatius (fiiy), it is true, had re-
ceived the report, but exactly in what spirit is
not quite so clear. He was an ecstatic soul,
and numbered it with the mysteries of the
passion and resurrection. But, on the other
hand, he stands alone among the writings
known as the Apostolic Fathers, in making ref-
erence to it. These writings may extend, as to
their date, nearly to the middle of the second cen-
tury, beginning with Clement of Rome, a.d. 96.
Clement is silent regarding it, so are Barnabas
and Polycarp, and Papias in the few fragments
of his book, and silent also are the authors of
the Shepherd of Hermas ^ and of the Epistle to
Diognetus. Aristides, the Apologist, had heard
of it (133), introducing it in his first allusion

^ Cf. Taylor, "The Witness of Hermas to the Four Gospels,"
London, 1892, pp. 30-32, for the suggestion of a possible reference
in "Sim." ix (3, 4), in the bright unhewn stones, which make the
foundation of the tower (16, 7).

2o6 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

with ''It is said," but undoubtedly accepting it.
This does not look Hke an universal consensus,
but who shall say how much or how little in this
case means the argument from silence ?

When we come to Justin Martyr (f c. 165) or
to Irenaeus, who followed him in the second cen-
tury (fc. 190), two writers who fully accepted
the fact of the Virgin-birth, we become aware,
on a closer study of their writings, that the evi-
dential value of the Virgin-birth, as a fulfilment
of ancient prophecy, is a preponderating motive,
if not the sole one, which recommends it to their
reason. The Church was endeavoring to meet
the charge of the heathens, that Christianity was
a new religion, and that a new religion could not
be true. To carry the religion of Christ back
into the past, and to show that it had been
anticipated and foretold centuries before Christ
appeared, became therefore a motive with apolo-
gists and polemical writers. When the Virgin-
birth was accepted it became the most striking
evidence of the fulfilment of a prophecy an-
nounced some seven hundred years before
(Is. vii. 14); and in comparison with such an
antiquity, the prevailing religions in the empire
could not compete. The claim was carried
further back by means of the Virgin-birth to the
creation itself, when Eve became the counter-

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 207

part of Mary. It is not here the Virgin-birth,
in its miraculous aspect alone, or in any neces-
sary relation to the Incarnation, but as an event
taking off the rawness of novelty, answering
the question, why Christianity had not appeared
earlier on the scene, if it were a Divine revela-
tion. This argument, which told most effectively
in the second century, has now lost its force
and been abandoned.^

It is necessary that we should give up the as-
sumption that because a certain writer at a
certain time refers to the Virgin-birth, therefore
other writers accept it and in the same sense,
or make the same use of it. If we find that
Aristides mentions it, yet, on the other hand,
Athenagoras does not (c. 177), and his Apology
for power and elegance is unsurpassed. Ar-
nobius makes no reference to it (c. 300), but
his contemporary Lactantius does. The Apology

^ See ante^ p. 124. There was another line of evidence for the
Virgin-birth and for the virginity in partu to which only a reference
is here made. The reader who would know the sort of proof on
which the early Church relied at the time when this doctrine was
working its way to the popular acceptance may seek it for himself,
in the " Protevangelium Jacobi " (19, 20), a book of great antiquity,
widely circulated, whose gratuitous information, eminent Church
fathers did not disdain to employ. In another work based on the
so-called "Protevangelium," known as the "Evangelium Pseudo-
Matthaei," the same proof is incorporated. Cf. Coleridge's re-
mark, in note to p. 186.

2o8 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

of Minucius Felix is silent. Clement of Alex-
andria does not cite the passages referring to it
in Matthew and Luke. One reference to Christ
as born of a Virgin is found in the Stromata (vi,
15), but considering his views on virginity, it may
be of doubtful value. Clement makes no use of
the fact. Origen comments on the Gospel of the
Infancy, but he builds up his doctrine of the
Incarnation without reference to it.

When we pass into the fourth century, it is
a circumstance of significance, calling for ex-
planation, that in the creeds of the churches of
Jerusalem and Caesarea, the Virgin-birth is not
mentioned, and its absence from the Creed of
Nicaea is still more striking. It is these cumula-
tive considerations, which, while they do not
justify the denial of the Virgin-birth, yet do
confirm the conviction that it is not so essential
to the Incarnation as has been maintained ; that
in the Eastern Church at least, however it may
have been in the Western, the belief in the Incar-
nation has not so universally associated with the
Virgin-birth, as to be dependent upon it.

The Church is also confronted to-day with the
possibility that what has happened in the case
of the opening chapters in the Book of Genesis
may happen in the case of the Gospel of the
Infancy as given by Matthew and Luke, — a

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 209

great falling away from the literal accept-
ance once accorded them. Under these cir-
cumstances, and with no additional evidence in
confirmation of the narrative, it is not wise to
attempt to bulwark the Virgin-birth by doubt-
ful scientific analogies, or seek to show that the
exceptional personality of Christ can only be
explained by His exceptional birth. We have
already gone too far in our dependence on the
natural sciences. It is better to keep strictly
to the religious sphere. Laws of heredity, laws
of descent, character as resulting from inherited
structure, considerations based on evolution,
are out of place in religion. ''Ce n'est pas
la science qui nous manque, a nous modernes;
nous Tavons surabondamment. . . . Mais ce
que nous avons absorbe, nous absorbe. Ce
qui nous manque c'est la poesie de la vie."
And indeed, the Virgin-birth, rightly interpreted,
is a protest against the view that Christ comes
forth from humanity by any process of evolu-
tion or heredity. Coleridge^ long ago disposed of
this position, and his statement may be regarded
as final, — that the sinlessness of Jesus is as
difficult to account for with a human mother
alone as with the ordinary parentage. Spencer-
ism in theology leads inevitably to the novel

^ See ante.

210 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

dogma of Rome (1854), that Mary herself was
sinless because immaculately conceived. That
pushes the difficulty back by a generation, where
it is not quite so apparent, but it is there. A
similar attempt to strengthen a dogma by an
appeal to science was the acceptance of the prin-
ciple of '* natural selection" as the analogue of
predestination in the Calvinistic theology. The
Divine decree of election, it was said, meant that
God would save all who were worth saving.
The trouble with these and other apologetics
for ancient dogmas is that they are rationalistic,
treading where Scripture has not ventured, not
only going beyond the Word of God, but by
implication weakening the Scripture teaching
regarding the Holy Spirit's agency, as though
the Holy Spirit were not adequate to the task
of guaranteeing the sinlessness of Jesus. ''And
the child grew, and waxed strong in Spirit;
and the grace of God was upon Him." The
grace of God, the ''sufficient grace," is none
other than the Holy Spirit, whose function it is
in the economy of the eternal and ever blessed
Trinity to unite together the Eternal Father and
the Eternal Son in the bond of the infinite love ;
whose function on earth is to bring all mankind
into the same unity of the Divine love and into
loving obedience to the Divine will. Surely,

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 211

then, the Holy Spirit, who ever waits upon the
Father and the Son, who proceedeth from the
Father and the Son, is adequate to explain the
sinlessness of Jesus, without resort to some
theory of natural law in the spiritual world.

A mistake has been made at this point, and
we need to retrace our steps. There may be
imitations, dim prophecies of spiritual law in
the natural world, which may serve as confirma-
tions of our faith ; but to reverse the process and
to project the natural into the spiritual order is
to lead only to disaster. The experience of the
ancient Catholic Church, as already given, is
here a warning and not a precedent to be fol-
lowed. And it is the reversion to that Catholic
Church of the fifth century which in great
measure explains the present embarrassment and
sensitiveness about the Virgin-birth.

And this process, naturalistic rather than
spiritual, has been accompanied by another
motive, engendered in the great romantic move-
ment which swept like a whirlwind over the last
century. Romanticism in literature and art, or
in the Church, is a term too large to be here
defined, but of some of its fruits in the ecclesias-
tical sphere it may be said that they constitute
a departure from the doctrine of Christ, as this
Church hath received it. The Virgin-birth began

212 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

to rise into a prominence unknown since the
Reformation, in consequence of the proclama-
tion by Pope Pius IX (1854) of the dogma that
Mary herself was immaculately conceived. To
this motive must be added another — the influ-
ence of Italian art, which to many has become
almost their only religion, where the mediaeval
worship of Mary has been presented as the
central fact of the Christian faith. The appeal
made by this feature of ecclesiastical art to the
host of travellers and pilgrims who now visit
Italy as a sacred land is responsible to some
degree for giving an undue and exaggerated,
even a morbid, prominence to the Virgin-birth,
so that now when the clause is recited in
the Creed, it is with difficulty we escape from
it to the true and original purport of its inser-
tion.

It may serve to show how far we have travelled
from the consciousness of our Protestant fore-
fathers, and from the spirit of our formularies,
if we turn to some of the commentaries on
the Creed, which once enjoyed great vogue,
and are now become unfamiliar. Among
them is Nowell's '* Catechism," very influential
in the sixteenth century and after. There it
reads: —

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 213

'^Question. But why is there in this con-
fession, the Apostles' Creed, mention made
by name of the Virgin Mary ?

''Answer. That He, Christ, may be known
to be that true seed of Abraham and Da-
vid, of whom it was from God foretold and
foreshadowed by the prophecies of the
prophets." (Parker Soc. ed., p. 135.)

In Archbishop Seeker's '* Lectures on the
Catechism," ^ of which an American edition was
pubhshed in 1835, it reads: —

**The reason for inserting it [the name
Mary] in the Creed most probably was be-
cause it is set down in Scripture, and that
by naming the particular person of whom
our Saviour sprung. He might appear to be
of that family from which it was foretold
He should arise, being born of this Virgin
of the house of David." (P. 67.)

The Virgin-birth is not in the foreground of
the consciousness of either writer; but both
writers are in accord with the interpretation of
the clause by Ignatius, who also insisted on

^Archbishop Seeker was born 1693 and died 1768. He was
consecrated bishop of Bristol 1735; transferred to Oxford 1737,
to which see was added the deanery of St. Paul's 1750; and en-
throned Archbishop of Canterbury 1758.

214 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

Christ's descent from the house of David as an
essential thing/ that Christ was Messiah ful-
filhng the expectation of the ages. Hence the
importance of the genealogies in the prologues
of Matthew and Luke, and not merely the inci-
dents of the Virgin-birth.^

The difficulties waiting upon the creeds and
their interpretation are not likely to diminish,
rather will they increase, for the question at
issue is the freedom of the clergy and laity .^ Is

^ See ante, p. io8.

^ It is now generally admitted that the genealogies trace the
descent of Joseph and not of Mary.

^ " The Church of England is based upon the Bible. The
Reformation was essentially the creation of a new court of appeal,
the shifting of the sanction for belief from the authority of the
Church to the written word. The Church everywhere appeals to
the written word; nothing which is not contained therein or justifi-
able therefrom can be imposed upon a Christian man whether lay
or cleric. The minister is to be a student of the Word. ' Will
you be diligent in . . . reading of the Holy Scriptures and in
such studies as help to the knowledge of the same .? ' "

Mark the word " studies " : he is not to accept the documents
as formal decrees with fixed traditional meaning, but as a literature
of which he is progressively to learn the meaning. Now, if such
be the position, it appears impossible to dispute the fact that, as
study reveals a new content for the words, new meaning, new
connotation in the Scriptures, there must be liberty of interpreta-
tion of the formularies. If the formularies be the index, the
summary, the table of contents of the Scriptures, and if study,
imposed as a sacred duty, reveal new meaning of the Scriptures,
that new meaning must inevitably be admitted in ascertaining and
determining the meaning of the formularies. Rev. W. Manning,
M.A., in Hihhert Journal, January, 1906, p. 413.

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 215

the Church of Christ free to examine and in-
quire and to make use of such studies as help to
the knowledge of the Scriptures; or are these
things determined in advance by the authority of
tradition as given in the creeds ? This Church
inherits the spirit of freedom from the Anglican
Church, and the Prayer Book is a powerful
incentive to its exercise, and was intended so
to be. Not until the Prayer Book is abandoned
as a mistake and failure can the spirit of free-
dom be exorcised. The rehabilitation of Con-
stitution and Canons, the insistence that the
Church is organized as a business corporation,
and makes a contract with the clergy, by which
they renounce the liberty wherewith Christ hath
made them free in return for their daily bread,
— all this line of procedure will be of no avail.
We have got into the existing difficulty by
abandoning the teaching of the Prayer Book,
by seeking to make the Church infallible, by
substituting tradition for God's Word, and put-
ting a burden on the creeds which they are not
able to carry.

The relief from the evils of the situation may
be sought in two ways, (i) We may return to
the original interpretation of the clause, **born
of the Virgin Mary,"' impressing upon our minds,
as we recite it, how it means that the Son of God

2i6 FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH

was actually born into this world of a human
mother. St. Paul has given the equivalent ex-
pression, *'Born of a woman, born under the
law." We must keep constantly before us the
interpretation of the Creed, as given in the
Church Catechism, for it is one of the most
valuable guarantees of spiritual liberty we pos-
sess. Whatever the Creed may contain in the
way of subordinate statement, what we chiefly
learn from it is the doctrine of the Divine
Fatherhood as based on the creation, the doc-
trine of the Divine Sonship as including the
redemption of all mankind in Christ, the doc-
trine of the Holy Spirit as sanctifying the people
of God, in order to bring them into the fellow-
ship of the Father and the Son. This is what
we are also chiefly to teach ; and this is what the
Creed means, not only in the daily office, but
also at baptism, and in the visitation of the
sick, or at the burial of the dead.

And (2) there is a provision made in the
rubric of the English book before all the creeds,
— Apostles', Nicene, or Athanasian, — that they
be ''sung or said.'' In the American book the
word ''sung" has been omitted, but we may
think no special significance attaches to the
omission. It was the opinion of Dr. Arnold
of Rugby that the creeds should always be

MODERN SENSITIVENESS 217

sung. There has never been any authoritative
decision as to the significance of their hturgical
use, nor is there to-day any common under-
standing. If they are sung they pass into the
rank of the great hymns, the Te Deum and the
Gloria in Excelsis, where misunderstandings
disappear. Recited in their original sense, in
every clause, they can no longer be. They have
been put to the test of Scripture, as Article viii
requires, and the clauses, **He descended into
heir' and the '"resurrection of the flesh,'' have
not stood the test. But as hymns expressing the
faith of the Church of the early centuries, they
will retain their dignity and importance, — a
revelation of the human soul responding to
the Divine call ; which if they become the sub-
ject of controversy and business contract they
must lose. So long as we have the Word of God
containing all things necessary to salvation, the
creeds are not indispensable. They might be
omitted from the offices of the Church and the
Christian faith not be impaired. But as sum-
maries of the convictions of the Christian
heart in past ages, as ties binding us to the one
common Christian life and experience in every
age, they are invaluable, the most precious
heritage of our historical faith, although not its
complete expression.

INDEX

Absolution, 25.
Acquileja, Creed of, 55.
Ambrose, baptismal creed in tlie

time of, 47, 136.
American Episcopal Church, 51,

S7, 90-

Anglican Church, 3 ff., 17 fF., 21,
24, 40.

Apocryphal Gospels, 136.

Apollinaris, denial of the human-
ity of Christ, 131, 141.

Apostles Creed, 18, 20; its origin
and character, 32, 35, 36, 37 ;
relation of, to the time when
it originated, 36 ff. ; diverse
interpretations of, 42 ff. ; a pro-
test against Gnosticism, 113;
fusion with Nicene Creed, 133.

Apostolic Fathers, 205, 206.

Aquinas, 11, 50.

Arians, their acceptance of Vir-
gin-birth, 129.

Aristides, on Virgin-birth, 205.

Armada, 162.

Arnobius, "Apology" of, 207.

Arnold, Dr. Thomas, of Rugby,
on use of the Creeds, 216.

Ascension of Christ, interpreta-
tions of, 59.

Asia Minor, 106, 113, 123, 125,

133^ 155-
Athanasius, on the Incarnation,
54, 56; citation from, 121.

Athenagoras, " Apology " of, 207.

Atonement, 13.

Augustine, 50, 117 ff . ; view of
the Incarnation, 120, 137 ff. ;
on the sinlessness of Mary,
122 ; on the mention of Christ-
mas, 133 ; on the Virgin-birth,
131 (note), 149, 158; citation
from, 164.

Baptism, 27 ; formula of, 39 ;

formula of, as expanded in the

Creed, 46 ; Roman office for, 46.
Becon, on descent into hell, 56;

citation from, 177.
Biblical criticism, 29, 31.
Briggs, C. A., citation from, on

the Virgin-birth, 204.
Brooks, Bishop Phillips, 181.
Buddhism, 105.
Bushnell, Horace, 181.
Butler, Archer, quotation from,

145 ff.
Butler, Bishop, citation from

Analogy of, 201.
Byzantine Church, 122.

Cassarea, Creed of the Church in,

126.
Calvin, citation from Institutes of,

174.
"Catholic," interpretations of the

219

220

INDEX

Catholic Church, definition of, 8,

9 ; the new society, 37, 38 ; its

motive, 104.
" Catholic " Tradition, 'jd^ Jj, 99.
Cerinthus, 128.
Chalcedon, Council of, 140, 165,

167, 169.
Christmas festival, 133.
Christ, 3,4; the test of Scripture,

29 ff. ; His birth and death, 103 ;

His humanity, 105 ; His Mes-

siahship, 214.
Church, infallibility of, 10, 26.
Church Catechism, 2 (note), 15,

43. 50. 79-

Church of England, 161. (See
Anglican Church.)

Clement of Alexandria, 112, 125,
208.

Coleridge, on the creeds, loi ;
comment of on theotokos, 168 ;
citations from, on the Virgin-
birth, 184 ff.

Communion of Saints, interpre-
tations of, 62.

Confessions of the Eastern
Church, 69.

Confirmation, yy.

Constantine, vision of, 198.

Cranmer, Archbishop, 12, 24, 26,
29,46,97, 166.

Creation, contrast with emana-
tion, 53.

Creeds, reference of Articles to,
7; use of, at Baptism, 46;
various interpretations of, 53 ff.,
95 ; value of, 81 ; liturgical use
of, 200 (note).

Creighton, M., late Bishop of Lon-
don, citation from, 14, 30.

Cyprian, baptismal creed in the

time of, 47.
Cyril of Jerusalem, 124 (note),

134.

Deism, 12, 51.

Descent into hell, 32 ff., 55, 217.

Docetism, 105.

Dorner, citations from, 141 (note),

143, 145, 196-
Duchesne, on the cult of the Vir-
gin Mary in the Roman Church,
159 (note).

Eastern Creeds, 32.

Ebionites, 128.

Endless punishment, 66.

Ephesus, Council of, 151.

Epiphanius, 134.

Erasmus, 12.

Eve and Mary, comparison of,

123.
Evening Prayer, 25.

Facundus of Hermiane, baptismal

profession in the time of, 48.
Female deities, 132.
Forgiveness of sins, 25, 38, 63.
Formularies of faith in the reign

of Henry VHI, 44.
Fourth General Council, 7 (see

Chalcedon, Council of).
Froude, J. A., 162 (note).
Future state, as conceived by

Homer and Virgil, 36.

Gelasian Sacramentary, 48 (note).
General Councils, 5, 6, 7, 27,

140.
Gnosticism, 38.

INDEX

221

Gnostics, their relation to Virgin-
birth, 129.

God, majesty of, 23 ; conscious-
ness of, 25 ; consciousness of, in
history, 161 ; consciousness of,
at the Reformation, 43.

Gospel of the Infancy, 80 (see
Virgin-birth).

Greek Church, 5, 15, 21, 40, 52.

Greek Ordinal, 87.

Gregory of Nazianzum, 6 (note).

Hampden, Bishop, 20.

Harnack, on the Creed, 63 ; on

the Incarnation, 141.
Helvidian heresy, 132.
Henry VIII, 20.
Holy Ghost, the, see Holy Spirit,

115, 117,119-
Holy Spirit, the, 144, 210.
Homilies, 71 if.
Hutton, R. H., 181.

Ignatian epistles, 134.
Ignatius, 106 ff., 205.
Incarnation, 4, 53, 54, 80, 125,

137 ff., 140, 142 ; Church of

England, doctrine of, 165 ; see

Anglican Church.
" Institution of a Christian Man,"

70.
Irenaeus, 123.

Isaiah, Ch. VII, v. 14, 123.
Isis, worship of, 132.

Jerome, 5, 56.

Jerusalem, creed of the Church in,

126.
Jewell, citations from " Apology "

of, 175.

Joan of Kent, 178.

John of Damascus on the Com-
munion of Saints, 63 (note) ;
on the Incarnation, 142 ff., 159,
167.

Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council, decision of, on " Life
Everlasting," 65.

Julian the Apostate, 35.

Justification, 23.

Justin Martyr, 123, 206.

Kingsley, Charles, 181.

Lactantius, "Apology" of, 207.

Laity, place of, in Church of Eng-
land, 21, 22; how far creeds
are binding on, 92.

Last Judgment, interpretations of,
60.

Latimer, Bishop, on the sinless-
ness of Mary, 176.

Laurentius Valla, criticism on the
Apostles' Creed, 42.

" Legal fiction," 92 ff.

Leontius of Byzantium, 140.

Leo the Great, 150.

Life everlasting, interpretations
of, 65.

Lord Bacon, influence of, 13.

Luther, 29, 97, 196.

Lutheran Church, 13, 23, 24.

Maine, Sir Henry, on "legal

fiction," 93.
Manning, Rev. W., citation from,

214 (note).
Marcion, 113.
Mary, 4, 43 (see Virgin Mary) ;

222

INDEX

immaculate conception of,
189.
Maurice, F. D., 91, 181.
McGiffert, A. C, on the Apostles'

Creed, 102 (note), 114, 115.
Methodius, oration attributed to,

152.
Michael Angelo, 195.
Middle Ages, 11, 16, 39.
Minucius Felix, 208.
Mithra, religion of, 34, 35.
Mohammedanism, 37.
Monasticism, 177.
Monastic vows, 97.
Montanism, 38.
Morning Prayer, 25.
Mother of God, 4 (see also Theo-

tokos), 5, 7, 131, 149-
Mulford, Republic of God, 60.

National Church, authority of,
169.

"Necessary Doctrine and Erudi-
tion for any Christian Man,"
70.

Nestorius, 151.

Newman, Cardinal, 97, 141, 154,
166.

Nicaea, Council of, 130.

Nicene Creed, i6, 45, 54, 79, 127,

133-
Niceta, on Communion of Saints,

62.
NowelPs Catechism, citation from,
212.

Ordinals, 79.

Oriental religion, 36, 37, 105.
Origen, on the Roman Creed,
no; comment on Isaiah, Ch.

VII, V. 14, 124; on the Incar-
nation, 125.
Oxford movement, 61.

Pearson, Bishop, 12, 49 ff., 56, 57,

65.
Pelagius, 122.
Peter the Lombard, 50.
Plumtre, E. H., 58 (note).
Prayer book, 3, 11, 12, 22, 23,

24 ff.
Predestination, 2, 23.
Priesthood of all Christians, 23.
Protestant scholasticism, 49, 51.
" Protevangelium Jacobi," 207

(note) .
Pseudo Ignatius, 134.
Puritanism, 11, 13, 28.
Pusey, E. B., 98, 166.

Reformation, 3, 11, 16, 20, 21, 22.

25, 28.
Reformed Church, 23, 24, 40.
Renaissance, 36, 42, 160.
Resurrection, interpretations of,

58 ; of the body, 32 ff., 63 ; of

the flesh, 36, 37.
Robertson, F. W., sermons of,

60; citation from, on the hu-
manity of Christ, 191.
Roman Catholic Church, 5, 13, 21,

40 ; dogmatic system of, 52 ;

errors of, 84.
Roman ordinal, 16, 79, 87.
Romanticism, influence of, 211.
Rufinus, commentary of, on the

Creed, 44, 45 ; on the descent

into Hell, 55, 124 (note).
Rules of faith, in Apostolic Age,

103.

INDEX

223

Saracens, 155.

Satan, victory of Christ over, 55.

Scholasticism, 11, 12.

Scripture, authority of, 10, 14,

17 ff., 27, 28, 72 fF., 81, 163;

Why the Word of God, 27 ;

Anglican conception of, 27 ff.
Seekers' "Lectures on the Cate-
chism," citation from, 213.
Second General Council, 134.
Session of Christ, interpretations

of, 59.
Slattery, C L., 39 (note).
Socrates, the historian, citation

from, 151.
St. John, Gospel of, 126.
Subscription, to creeds, 78, 80,

89 fF.
Swainson, reference to, 46 (note),

47, 48 (note), 102 (note).

Tarsians, Epistle to, 109.
Tertullian, 36 (note), 112.
Theodoret, "Dialogues" of, 153.
Theotokos, 4, 150, 167 (see
Mother of God).

Thirty-nine Articles, 2, 12, 15, 83.

Tract, xc, 98.

Trent Council of, 15, 28 (note),

63, 69, 169.
Trinity, doctrine of, 3, 26, 39,

52.

Vigilantius, opposition of, to

Worship of Saints, 63.
Vincentius of Lerins, 61 (note).
Virgin-birth, 107 fF., 135 ; modern

sensitiveness on the subject of,

183 fF.
Virgin Mary, 72, loi, 118,131;

prayers offered to, 153.
Vows of the clergy, 81, 82.

Wesley, John, 51.

Westminster Confession, 16, 28

(note), 41, 49, 69.
Whitefield, 51.
Williams, Isaac, autobiography

of, 97.
Worship in Anglican Church, 25.

Zwinglian Church, 23.

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