Chapter  VII – Article  VII

      From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. —Apostles’ Creed.

      And He shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.—Nicene Creed.

      From whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.  At Whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works.  And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.—Athanasian Creed.

Of the Judgment.

      A belief in the judgment is innate in man: it is one of the fundamental religious ideas found in human consciousness; for it follows necessarily from the conviction that man is a responsible being.  There are many, doubtless, who would deny that they believed in a judgment to come, but few, or probably none, who, if they were asked, Are you a responsible being? would not answer, Certainly I am.  Responsible, then, to whom? to what?  To the laws of my country or to society, some would reply.  And yet there are many who care little for law, and less for society, who yet feel that they are responsible beings, and in their inner conscience recognise a responsibility to Him, Whose representatives are law and society.  If there be no judgment man is only responsible so far as that responsibility can be enforced, and that does not extend very far – only to actions which, the law condemns or which are contrary to the changing code of society’s morals, not to what a man thinks, not to what a man is.

      I.  Natural religion, then, teaches a judgment to come, and Revelation tells us of the nature and character of that judgment.  There are few facts on which our Lord dwells with greater fullness than that there will be a day of judgment and final retribution.  Again and again in various parables the character of this judgment is revealed.  Natural religion dwells almost exclusively on sins of commission, evil actions which men have done; the Christian revelation, on the other hand, chiefly on sins of omission, opportunities neglected or misused, duties left undone.

      And this may be accounted for partly by the fact that conscience is chiefly prohibitory; it forbids rather than commands.  It is necessary to add to natural conscience faith, in order that it may become mandatory, and may bring within the sphere of its operation the duties which flow from a recognition that we are God’s stewards in this life, and that some day we must give an account of our stewardship.

      A careful consideration of our Lord’s teaching on this most solemn subject brings before us two prominent ideas in regard to the judgment: First, there is its searching character, extending even to thoughts and idle words, for in the list of deadly sins which our Lord gives, ‘evil thoughts’ is put at the very head of the list;¹ while on another occasion our Lord said that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.’²

¹S. Matt. 15:19; S. Mark 7:21.                      ²S. Matt 12:36.

      Then there is our responsibility for the use of gifts and opportunities.  In the parable of the Unjust Steward¹ the accusation is that he had wasted his lord’s goods; in that of the Rich man and Lazarus² that the rich man had neglected the opportunity of ministering to the needs of Lazarus; in the parables of the Talents,³ of the Pounds,⁴ of the Ten Virgins,⁵ of the Sheep and the Goats,⁶ the teaching is similar; in none is there any accusation of what we should call actual wrong-doing, that is, of sins of commission; always it is the leaving undone the duties of life, the neglect to use the gifts and talents intrusted to us.⁷  And even in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant, which might seem to be an exception, the charge on which he is condemned is not having compassion on his fellow-servant.

¹S. Luke 16:1–13.                ²S. Luke 16:19–31.                    ³S. Matt. 25:14–31.

⁴S. Luke 19:11–28.              ⁵S. Matt. 25:1–14.                     ⁶S. Matt. 25:31–46.

⁷S. Matt. 18:23–35.

      And this indeed is reasonable when we reflect that God’s purpose in creating us, and endowing us with so many gifts both of nature and grace, was not merely that we might do no harm in the world, but that we might do good.  So the aspect of life on which our Lord dwells, not only in His parables, but in His revelation of the purpose of His own life on earth, is that life is given us to do God’s will, to accomplish His work in the world.¹

¹S. John 4:34.

      For this we were created, for this we are responsible, and in considering the Article of the Creed which treats of the Day of Judgment it is well for us to realise, what our Lord so emphasises in His teaching, that we shall be held accountable, not merely for our evil deeds, but for the fulfillment of God’s purpose for us, for the use of the talents bestowed upon us, and of the opportunities put in our way.

      We learn from revelation that the Judge shall be the Son of Man.¹  One who can ‘be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,’ seeing He ‘was in all points tempted like as we are,’² and that He shall sit upon the throne of His glory, and shall be attended by all the holy angels,³ and the Saints,⁴ and that the books of judgment shall be opened.⁵

¹S. Matt. 25:31 ; cf. S. John 5:22.                 ²Heb. 4:15.

³S. Matt. 25:31.                   ⁴S. Jude 14.                  ⁵Rev. 20:12.

      Those who shall be judged are described in the Creed and in Holy Scripture as the quick and the dead,¹ and by the quick is doubtless meant those who shall be alive at our Lord’s coming.²

¹Acts 10:42; 2 Tim. 4:1; 1 S. Pet. 4:5.                       ²1 Thess. 4:17.

      The matter of the judgment includes thoughts, words, and deeds, and also neglected duties and opportunities.¹  And the results of the judgment are eternal, whether for good or evil, in heaven or in hell.  So Holy Scripture in the very words of our Lord clearly states: ‘These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life everlasting.’²  So, too, we profess in the Athanasian Creed: ‘They that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.’

¹S. Matt. 25:45.                   ²S. Matt. 25:46.

      The general tendency in our own day is to pass over this solemn question, or, where it is treated at all, to minimise or deny the doctrine of eternal punishment, or else to substitute for it some human theory unknown either to Scripture or the Church.  This tendency naturally belongs to an age characterised by lax views of morality and extreme impatience of all restrictions of authority.  Under the influence of this spirit it is easy to overlook or fail to realise the tremendous and awful responsibility incurred by those who put into the background or explain away a doctrine, not only expressly revealed by our Lord Himself, but which occupies so prominent a position in His teachings¹ as does the doctrine of eternal punishment.

¹Cf. S. Matt. 25:41 and 46; S. Matt. 8:12 and 10:28; S. Mark 9:43–48.

      When we remember that our Blessed Lord knew exactly in what sense His words would be understood by His Church, and when we further find in both East and West entire consent in teaching the doctrine of everlasting punishment, it does seem rashness amounting to presumption to weaken or change this teaching to suit the refined sensibilities of an age whose moral sense is not shocked at sin, but is greatly scandalised at the revelation that the consequences of sin may to the sinner be eternal.

      II.  The realisation of the judgment, that is, a real belief in this Article of the Creed, is a great grace from God; for it leads to a sense of the awfulness of sin, and, therefore, to watchfulness against temptation and to a consciousness of responsibility for the gift of life with its duties and opportunities.

      And this will imply the practice of frequent self-examination, for if we have to give account for our work – as the Athanasian Creed teaches, doubtless from our Lord’s parable of the Unjust Steward, where we read, ‘Give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward’¹ – if we have to give an account we must keep an account, and self-examination is the means by which we keep the account which we must one day render to God.  We can render it now in penitence at the tribunal of mercy or hereafter at the Day of Judgment.

¹S. Luke 16:2.

      In making our self-examination we must begin with a recognition of the difficulties connected with it arising from our own self-love, and from the fact that the spirit of evil is always trying to deceive us about the sinfulness of sin.  This makes it very difficult to judge ourselves honestly, but to help us we have the Holy Ghost, Whose office it is to convince the world of sin, and Who will, if we ask in prayer, give us light to know our sins; and more, when we begin to know them He will give us grace truly to repent of them so that they may be forgiven now in this life.

      In this work of self-examination it is important that we should know something of the different classes into which sins fall.

      There is first material and formal sin; for it is very evident that some actions which are materially or intrinsically sinful, when considered by themselves, are deprived of their guilt, that is, are not formal sin, because they were done in ignorance; for these there can be no responsibility, unless it be such as attaches to negligence in seeking instruction.

      Then sins for purposes of self-examination may be divided into mortal and venial sins.  S. John seems to teach this distinction when he writes, ‘There is a sin unto death,’ and again, ‘There is a sin not unto death.’¹

¹S. John 5:16, 17.

      Mortal sin, as the word implies, is a sin of such gravity that it kills the spiritual life of the soul, depriving it of grace and cutting it off from communion with God.  While recognising the terrible consequences of a mortal sin we must be careful not to exaggerate, and so to place in this category sins which, though serious, are lacking in some characteristic which would make them mortal; and we should remember that a Christian, who is using the means of grace and earnestly desirous to please God, ought never to fall into mortal sin.

      The characteristics of mortal sin are three:—

      (1) There must be ‘weighty matter’ (office for the Visitation of the Sick).  Many Protestant sects fail to recognise any difference in degrees of a class of sin; for them stealing is stealing, and lying is lying: yet our moral sense surely refuses to admit that the act of a child who takes a lump of sugar involves the same guilt as that of a burglar who robs a bank; or that the habit of exaggeration which leads a person to say what is not true, but from no other motive than perhaps vanity, is the same as the deliberate lie, which is not only intended to deceive but to injure another.

      Not only, however, does our moral sense tell us this, but Holy Scripture; for S. John, in the passage from which we have quoted, tells us plainly that while ‘all unrighteousness is sin’ ‘there is a sin not unto death’ as well as ‘a sin unto death’; so that, considered per se, the difference between mortal and venial sin is to be found in the gravity of the act itself.

      (2) Moreover, for a sin to be mortal it must not only be material but formal sin, that is, it must not only have weighty matter, but there must be a consciousness of guilt.  The person at the time that the sin was committed must have been conscious that he was doing wrong, for no sin committed in ignorance can be mortal.

      (3) The third characteristic of mortal sin is consent of the will or deliberation, so that an act, however grievous, if done unintentionally, cannot be mortal.  For instance, if through careless driving a man runs over a child and kills it, the guilt is to be found in the carelessness, and is not the guilt of murder.

      All sin which is not mortal is ‘venial.’  But we must not think of venial sins as little sins, since in God’s sight no sins are really little; but venial sins are such as do not destroy grace in the soul, and therefore do not separate the soul from God.  We should realise that temptations to sin are not, as some suppose, to be classed with venial sin, since temptation is not sin at all; indeed temptation, if resisted, develops character, and enables us to acquire merit.  Venial sins are rather those sins of infirmity or surprise into which every man at times is apt to fall, as we read in the book of Proverbs: ‘A just man falleth seven times.’¹

¹Prov. 24:16.

      An act of prayer or of contrition is sufficient for the remission of venial sin, as S. John seems to indicate in the words, ‘If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death.’¹  For the remission of mortal sin, S. John implies that something more is needed; for he says: ‘There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.’²  And the Prayer-Book in the office for the Visitation for the Sick, as also in the Exhortation in the Communion Service, teaches that for such sin confession and absolution is the remedy.

¹1 S. John 5:16.

²Ibid.

      It would, however, be a great mistake to think lightly of venial sin, or to pass it over in our self-examination, since many evils and dangers follow in its train when it becomes habitual.

      1.  While theologians teach that venial sin does not diminish grace, since grace is the life of God in the soul, and life cannot be diminished, there being no state possible between life and death; yet as the vitality of a living man may be decreased and his power diminished by diseases which are not in themselves fatal, so in like manner venial sins do affect the grace of the soul, though indirectly, for these diminish its fervour, and fervour renders duty both easy and delightful.  Thus a habit of venial sin often renders it difficult to fulfill our obligations, – as, for instance, to pray well, – and robs us of the sweetness of that communion with God, which might otherwise be experienced in prayer.

      2. Again, venial sin often hinders graces which God would give us, and especially hinders our reception of sanctifying grace.

      3. But the greatest evil of venial sin is that it disposes and prepares the soul for mortal sin.  Just as slight sicknesses often reduce the strength of a man and render him more susceptible to great diseases, so lesser sins prepare the way for greater.  Thus it is with habits of venial sin; by weakening the will they prepare for some great fall.  ‘White lies’, as they are sometimes called, prepare the way for downright falsehoods, little exhibitions of temper, for some great act of passion.

      In making our self-examination we should therefore not overlook venial sins, and especially such as are habitual; a habit of sin, even though it be but venial sin, is a great hindrance to spiritual progress.

      We have already pointed out the prominence our Blessed Lord gives to sins of omission; we must therefore carefully examine ourselves in regard to duties left undone, opportunities of doing good neglected.

      It is often well in making our self-examination at special seasons to use some book of questions on the Ten Commandments or the Deadly Sins;¹ but such questions are scarcely necessary in ordinary self-examination.

      ¹One of the most helpful books of this sort is the late Canon Carter’s Manual of Repentance.

      We should be careful to avoid making our examination in a merely perfunctory manner, – it will only increase our condemnation to know what our sins are, if we do not go on to make acts of real contrition and repentance for our sins.

Chapter  VIII – Article  VIII

      I believe in the Holy Ghost—Apostles’ Creed.

      And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, Who spake by the Prophets.—Nicene Creed.

      The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son : neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.—Athanasian Creed.

Of the Holy Ghost.

      The discussion of this Article demands a treatise, not a chapter; so that we must be content here with a brief investigation of the terms of the Article, and the addition of some notes on the work of the Holy Ghost.

      I.  We have already considered the position of the Holy Ghost in the inner life of the Ever-Blessed Trinity; we shall therefore pass at once to the propositions affirmed of the Holy Ghost in this Article.

      i.  That He is a Divine Person.  This is implied by the position of the Article; for the Holy Ghost stands in the same relative position in the Creed as the Father and the Son, but it is made certain by the titles ‘Lord’ and ‘Life-Giver’.¹  Lord, as we have already seen, is the equivalent of the Hebrew Jehovah, and can only be applied by the Christian (or Jew) to God; and Life-Giving is also an attribute of God.  In Holy Scripture we find other attributes of God ascribed to the Holy Ghost, as for instance Omniscience,² Omnipotence,³ Omnipresence.⁴  We find Him associated in terms of equality with the Father and the Son in such passages as the Baptismal formula, ‘baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,’⁵ and the Apostolic benediction, ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost.’⁶

¹το κύριον, το ζωοποιόν.                  ²1 Cor. 2:10; S. John 16:13.                    ³Rom. 8:11.

⁴Wisd. 1:7.              ⁵S. Matt. 28:19.             ⁶2 Cor. 8:14.

      We find S. Peter in his condemnation of Ananias speaking of the Holy Ghost as God; for he says, Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost ... thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.’¹

¹Acts 5:3.

      These and many other passages show that neither Holy Scripture nor the Creeds leave any room for the opinion advanced by some that the Holy Ghost is not a Person of the Godhead, but a power or influence of God metaphorically personified, as ‘death’, and ‘sin’, and other powers are in Holy Scripture.

      The title ‘Life-Giver’ (ζωοποιόν) teaches us that in the work both of Creation and Restoration the Holy Spirit is the vivifying principle and creative power – that He is, in a word, the Agent of all Creation.  S. Basil describes His work in the new creation in these words: ‘By the Holy Spirit is given the restoration to Paradise, the rising to the kingdom of heaven, the restoration of the adoption of sons, the confidence of calling God our Father, the communion of the grace of Christ, the appellation of a child of light, the participation of eternal glory; – in a word, the plenitude of benediction, both in the present time and in the future of those good things laid up for us.’¹

¹S. Basil, De Spir. Sanct. xv. 36; Migne, P. G. xxxii. col. 132.

      ii.  The Nicene Creed tells us that He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and the Athanasian Creed implies this.  We have given the history of the introduction of the clause ‘Filioque’ into the Creed, and have treated of the double Procession; it remains for us to point out that the difference between Eastern and Western theologians is one of words rather than of doctrine, and that the teaching of the early Fathers seems to imply the double Procession.

      Easterns admit that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father by the Son,¹ or, as they sometimes put it, that He ‘proceedeth from the Father and receiveth from the Son’;² while Westerns, in teaching the double Procession, are careful to assert that there is in the Godhead only one Principle or Source (Άρχη or Πηγή).  Hence the difference is chiefly in mode of definition.

      ¹το εκ του Πατρος δι Υιου εκπορευόμενον.  Cf. Creed of Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople; Migne, P. G. xcviii. col. 1461.

      ²εκ του Πατρος εκπορευόμενον, και του Υιου λαμβανόμενον.  Cf. Creed of Epiphanius; Migne, P. G. xliii. col. 233.

      Further, we find passages in the Fathers in which the double Procession is either taught or implied: e.g. ‘The Spirit is not foreign to the Son, for He is called the Spirit of Truth, and Christ is the Truth; and He proceeds from Him as from God the Father.’¹  ‘It is not necessary that one should speak of Him, for He must be confessed as having origin from the Father and the Son.’²  ‘The Holy Spirit also, when He proceeds from the Father and the Son, is not separated from the Father, is not separated from the Son.’³  From these passages it is evident that the doctrine was not unknown, and in reply to the charge of an unlawful introduction of the clause into the Creed, we, may point out, as Dr. Pusey has done,⁴ that the additions supposed to have been made by the Council of Constantinople (which was wholly a Greek Council) to the Nicene Creed were equally unwarranted; and in the light of recent historical discoveries in regard to the source of the Constantinopolitan Creed this argument becomes even stronger.  Moreover, the ‘Filioque’ is not the only addition which has been made.

¹S. Cyril. Alex., Ep. xvii.; Ad. Nest. de Excom. 10.  Migne, P. G. lxxvii. col. 117.

²S. Hilary, De Trinitate, lib. ii. 29; Migne, P. L. x. col. 69.

³S. Ambrose, De Spir. Sanct. lib. I. c. xi. 120; Migne, P. L. xiv. col. 733.

⁴In a letter to the Times, Dec. 28, 1875.

      iii.  The Nicene Creed then adds, what is a necessary inference, that as the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, so with the Father and the Son together He is worshipped and glorified.

      iv.  This Article concludes with the clause, ‘Who spake by the Prophets.’  It is probable that this was simply intended as corroborative proof that the Holy Ghost was God; for this part of the Creed, as we learn from the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon, was intended to meet the heresy of the Pneumatomachi.  No one doubted that the prophets were sent by God and inspired by Him; hence to assert that they spake by the Holy Ghost was to assert that the Holy Ghost was God.  The Article has, however, a further value in our own day, when assaults upon the authenticity and inspiration of Holy Scripture are so common, in that it proclaims the inspiration of the writers of Holy Scripture, though without indicating the method of that inspiration.

      II.  If we turn now to the work of the Holy Ghost, we shall observe that it falls into three divisions:

      i. The work of the Holy Spirit before the Incarnation; ii. His work in the Incarnation; and iii. His work since Pentecost.

      i.  In the opening words of revelation the Holy Ghost is brought before us as the Agent in Creation.  We are told that ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.  And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.’¹

¹Gen. 1:1:2.

      To the third Person of the Holy Trinity has been assigned the office of Perfecting the works of God; not as though God’s works were created incomplete or imperfect, but it is the function of the Holy Ghost to lead all things to their end, to enable them to accomplish God’s purpose, which is their perfection.  So we find the Spirit of God represented in the first chapter of Genesis as the Agent by whose operation the material world is developed from a condition described as ‘without form and void,’ to that in regard to which we are told that ‘God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.’¹  And in the New Testament we learn that it is by the operation of the same Spirit of God that the soul of man, and the mystical Body of Christ, the Church, are sanctified and perfected.

¹Gen 1:31.

      In regard to the first creation, the Biblical account has been thought by some to imply that the Hexameron described in Genesis 1 was rather a work of restoration than of creation, the words translated ‘without form and void’ (literally ‘wasteness and desolation’) pointing to some previous catastrophe by which the first creation had been wrecked.  This some have thought was occasioned by the fall of the Angels.  Without, however, pronouncing any opinion on the point, we may observe that the idea of a process of evolution is by no means a product of our own age, for not only is it found in S. Augustine¹ and others, but Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, suggests that all things were made materially at first, but became formally distinct afterwards through passage of time, as herbs, trees, and perhaps animals.²  And it is certain that the language of Genesis lends itself better to a process of evolution, or development, than to a series of special creations.  We read that ‘God created the heaven and the earth’ (v. 1), that He ‘created ... every living creature that moveth’ (v. 21), and that ‘God created man in His own image’ (v. 27).  This would seem to correspond with the creation of matter, of life, and of mind.  But God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit’ (v. 11); and ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven’ (v. 20); and again ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind’ (v. 24).  These do not suggest creation, but evolution or development.

      ¹Prius ergo materia facta est, confusa et informis, unde omnia fierent, quae distincta atque formata sunt – S. Aug. de Genesi contra Manich., lib. I. c. v. 9; Migne, P. L. xxxiv. col. 178.

      ²Qumdam vero non formaliter, sed materialiter tunc facta fuisse, quae post per temporis accessum formaliter distincta sunt, ut bestiae, arbores, et forte animalia. – Pet. Lombard. Sent., lib. II. d. xv. 5; Migne, P. L. cxcii. col. 682.

      Hence we may perhaps consider the work of the Holy Spirit in creation to be the development, by means of environment and natural selection, of the endless varieties of species which add so much to the beauty of the world, and manifest so plainly the wisdom and power of God.  This, too, would be a counterpart of the work of the Holy Ghost in the soul of man, developing its latent powers not only by grace given within, but by the environment which calls for the exercise of those powers and the use of that grace.  Thus we see the work of the Holy Spirit in perfecting both the material and spiritual works of God.

      After the Fall, the work of the Holy Spirit upon man in preparing him for that restoration which was to be the result of the Incarnation, is traced in a threefold operation.  1. From within He acts upon man’s conscience, convincing him of sin.¹  2. From without He reveals to man the law of God, so giving him a standard of conduct and a rule of worship.  3. And further, through the Prophets He reveals God’s will, making known God’s gracious promises and declaring His judgments.  Let us briefly consider these three methods by which the Holy Ghost prepared man for the Incarnation.

¹Cf. Hutchings, The Person and Work of the Holy Ghost, 3rd ed. chap. ii.

      1. By acting upon the conscience of man.  From the time of Adam in Paradise to the end of the world, two spirits have claimed man’s allegiance, have offered to lead man in the difficult paths of life, – the spirit of evil and the Spirit of God; for, as S. Paul tells us, ‘As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the Sons of God.’¹  The fall of man in Adam was occasioned by yielding to the leading of the spirit of evil, and from that time on to the end of the world we find, and shall find, a division among men, some yielding to the spirit of evil and choosing what S. Paul calls (in the same chapter) to live after the flesh,’² others following the guidance of the Spirit of God, and living in the freedom of the sons of God.  We read of these ‘sons of God’ in the earliest records of Genesis.

¹Rom. 8:14.                         ²Ibid. 8:13.

      This division is seen first in Cain and Abel; then we are especially told of Enoch that he walked with God,’¹ but in the time of Noah we read that ‘the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.  And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with men, for that he also is flesh.’  The passage is a mysterious one and has been diversely interpreted, but this much seems clear, that it marks a deterioration so great in the ‘sons of God,’ i.e. those who had been led by the Spirit of God, that the Spirit is withdrawn from them apparently because they had chosen the life of mere fleshly pleasure.

¹Gen. 6:2, 3.

      The flood follows, and the work of the Spirit begins anew in the family of Noah, of whom Ham and Canaan choose the evil life.  In Abraham a great advance is made; a special family is chosen, with whom God enters into a covenant, and from whom a nation is developed; and henceforth the work of the Spirit in preparing man for the Incarnation proceeds steadily, yet not without great vicissitudes.

      2. In the Mosaic dispensation we observe a new operation of the Spirit in the giving of the Law by which God’s chosen people were taught on the one hand how to worship God, on the other how to serve God acceptably in a holy life.  The Law as given through Moses consisted of three divisions: (a) The Ceremonial law, which taught all that related to the worship of God and prepared for our Lord’s coming by its symbolical sacrifices; (b) the Moral law, as summed up in the Ten Commandments, which gave man a moral code based upon the revealed Will of God; (c) and thirdly, the judgments.  ‘Thou shalt keep the commandments and the statutes, and the judgments.’¹  This Judicial law was the direct work of the Holy Spirit, as we see from God’s direction to Moses to choose seventy men of the elders of Israel upon whom God might bestow ‘the Spirit’ which was upon Moses.²

¹Deut. 7:11.                        ²Numb. 11:16, 17.

      Some have seen in S. Paul’s description of the Law as ‘holy, just, and good’¹ a recognition of this threefold division, the Ceremonial law being referred to as ‘holy,’ the Judicial law as ‘just,’ and the Moral law as ‘good.’²

¹Rom. 7:12.

²Hutchings, The Person and Work of the Holy Ghost, p. 63.

      3. A further advance in the work of the Holy Spirit in preparing man for the Incarnation is singled out, as we have seen, for special notice in the Nicene Creed, in the clause, ‘Who spake by the Prophets.’  Here we have certain special revelations on special occasions to individuals, who become, as it were, the mouthpiece of the Holy Ghost to deliver to God’s people certain messages of warning or encouragement, teaching them God’s will, declaring God’s judgments, and proclaiming God’s gracious promises not only in regard to the present and immediate future, but unfolding God’s loving purposes for His people in the Incarnation.

      The work of the Holy Ghost, then, from the Fall to the Incarnation, consisted first in brooding over the race, fallen but not forsaken, and in leading those who corresponded to His inspirations; then in choosing from the race a family and a people, and training them, and from them producing one, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who by sanctity should be a fitting instrument of the Incarnation.  We may therefore regard Mary, full of grace, as the crowning operation of the Holy Ghost upon humanity in preparation for the Incarnation.

      ii.  The second great stage in the work of the Holy Ghost is His work as the Agent of the Incarnation.  This is brought before us in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, in the clauses, ‘Conceived by the Holy Ghost,’ and ‘Was incarnate by the Holy Ghost.’

      As the Incarnation has already been treated [in Chapter III], it will be sufficient here to draw attention to one or two points in which the operation of the Holy Ghost in this great Mystery is manifested.

      1. S. Luke tells us that the Angel Gabriel in answer to her question revealed to the Blessed Virgin the manner in which the Incarnation was to be accomplished in these words: ‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.’¹  This overshadowing of God’s chosen instrument reminds us of that overshadowing or brooding (as the Hebrew word signifies) over the wasteness and desolation described in the second verse of Genesis: the Spirit of God brooding over the expanse of waters, when God said, ‘Let there be light: and there was light,’ – light to see the wasteness and desolation, and then gradual restoration.  So again, brooding over the great mass of humanity, sinful but not abandoned, the Holy Ghost has trained one individual perfectly to surrender herself to God’s Will, and overshadowing her, God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was indeed light; for His only begotten Son stepped down into creation to become the Light of the World, not only revealing the darkness and confusion of sin, but beginning the work of redemption.

¹S. Luke 1:35.

      So is it in the first great extension of the Incarnation, the Sacrament of Baptism: the Holy Ghost overshadows the child born in sin, and by the grace of Baptism light is kindled in the regenerate soul, the light of Him who was the Light of the world.

      2. The Holy Ghost in the life of the Holy Trinity is the bond of union between the Father and the Son.  His work is to unite with God; so He becomes the Agent by whom the hypostatic union between the created and uncreated natures of Christ is effected, the human and divine natures being united hypostatically in the One Person of the Son of God through the operation of the Holy Ghost.

      So too is He the Agent by which the individual soul is mystically united to God in spiritual life.

      3. We have already referred to the unction of the Holy Ghost by which our Lord’s human nature was anointed for His threefold office of Prophet, Priest, and King, from which His Name ‘Christ’ is derived, and by which the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled: the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.’¹

¹Isa. 11:2.

      In the spotless humanity of Christ the Holy Ghost finds a resting-place: ‘the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him’; for to Him, as S. John proclaims in his Gospel, ‘God giveth not the Spirit by measure’;¹ and the Baptist witnesses of Him, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him.’²

¹S. John 3:34.                      ²S. John 2:32.

      iii.  There remains for us briefly to notice the work of the Holy Ghost in His temporal mission in the Church of Christ.

      Among the Old Testament administrations of the work of the Holy Ghost, few are more striking than the three missions of the dove sent forth by Noah from the Ark after the flood.¹  From the first the dove returned, having ‘found no rest for the sole of her foot’; from the second she returned, and ‘lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off’; the third time the dove was sent forth ‘she returned not again.’

¹Gen. 8:8–12.

      The first mission may be taken for the work of the Holy Spirit before the Incarnation; the second, by its olive leaf, surely typifies the work of the Incarnation; the third, the mission at Pentecost, which still lasts on.  In the first, the dove finds no rest for the sole of her foot; so before the Incarnation there was no dwelling-place for the Holy Ghost in man.  By the Incarnation peace is proclaimed, and in the human nature of our Lord the dove finds a resting place; while after Pentecost, through the channel of the sacred humanity, the Holy Spirit finds a dwelling place in the soul of man as well as in the Church of Christ.¹

      ¹Rupertus applies this type somewhat differently. – Rupert., De Trinit. et oper. tom. I. lib. iv. 23; Migne, P. L. clxvii. col. 347, 348.

      1. Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, is the fulfillment of the Vision of Ezekiel of the dry bones.  ‘Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.  So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.’¹

¹Ezek. 37:9, 10.

      The dry bones of humanity at Pentecost are gathered into the Church and become an exceeding great army, conquering the world; and the Agent is the Lord, the Life-Giver, the Holy Ghost.  The Spirit of God had never abandoned man, but His work had been transient, He could find no dwelling place; now in the Church of Christ and in the soul of man He is to dwell personally.  This is the great difference between the work of the Holy Spirit before and after the Incarnation – a personal indwelling instead of transient operations.

      The next Article of the Creed – the Catholic Church – tells of the manifestation of this indwelling of the Holy Ghost; for He is the Life of the Church, the Source of its unity, the Power of its growth, the Agent of its Sacraments, and above all, its Guide into all truth.  The deposit of truth given at Pentecost is His gift, and is unfolded by Him as the Church has need.

      As the work of the Holy Ghost in the Church belongs to the next Article, we shall in this place only draw attention to a common error, which ascribes to the Holy Ghost a separate dispensation.

      People often write and speak as though there were three dispensations: that of the Father in the Old Testament, that of the Son during our Lord’s historic life on earth, and that of the Holy Spirit now, and indeed from the day of Pentecost.  This is quite erroneous.  We are Christians, members of the Church of Christ, living under the Christian dispensation, and the Holy Spirit working in the Church and in our souls is the Spirit of Christ, sent by Him, and the direct result of His continuous intercession in heaven.

      By His agency in the Sacraments Christ is brought to us.  In Baptism we are incorporated into His mystical Body; in the Holy Eucharist we feed upon His Body; in Penance we are cleansed by His Precious Blood.  The Holy Ghost carries on the work of Christ, but in no sense supersedes it.

      2. Not only does the Holy Ghost dwell in the Church, but in each soul that has been incorporated into Christ by Baptism.  It is at Baptism that the Holy Ghost takes up His personal abode in the soul, bestowing upon it potentially those sevenfold gifts which were the special prerogative of Christ as anointed by the Holy Ghost,¹ and which are given in all their fullness in Confirmation.  There is a modern theory, which has been quite lately put forth, that the indwelling of the Holy Ghost does not follow Baptism, but Confirmation; that whereas certain gifts are bestowed in Baptism, the Holy Ghost is not given till Confirmation.  This theory is unknown to the theologians either of the Eastern or Western Churches, and its consequence is to deny the Personal gift of the Holy Ghost to all that large class of Christians who, though members of Christ by Baptism, are severed from the Church’s unity.  Presbyterians, Methodists, and other Sectarians, according to this theology, are Christians without the Spirit of Christ.  This reductio ad absurdum should be sufficient to condemn such a theory.  Our Lord has told us, ‘By their fruits ye shall know them,’² and it should certainly be our joy, while mourning over their separation from ourselves, to recognise in many Sectarians, often in great abundance, the fruits of the Spirit, the evidence that through Baptism they have received the gift of the Spirit of God.

¹Acts 10:38; 4:27; Isa. 11:2.             ²S. Matt. 7:20.

      The gifts of the Holy Ghost, as we have already observed, are, in the first place, the endowment of the sacred Humanity of our Blessed Lord as the second Adam, the perfect or archetypal Man, the Head of our race.  In Him we see their perfect manifestation; but they are not confined to Him, for the anointing of our Great High Priest is shared in by every member of His Body, and these gifts are like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down unto the beard, even unto Aaron’s beard, and went down to the skirts of his clothing.’¹  They are, therefore, found in His Church where we can study their corporate operation, and also in each of His members, in whom is seen their individual manifestation.

¹Ps. 133:2.

      In the germ these gifts are possessed by all the baptized, and may be developed by those who are unconfirmed, but with much greater difficulty, and possibly never in their fullness.

      Of these gifts of the Holy Ghost four are intended to perfect the intellect, and three to strengthen and perfect the will.  The four intellectual gifts are Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, and Knowledge.  By their aid we can, under the different circumstances of life, know what is right and true.  The three moral gifts, which perfect the will, are Ghostly Strength, Piety (or True godliness), and Holy Fear.  These three gifts enable us when we know what is right to do it.  The general effect of these gifts of the Holy Ghost is to form in us the features of the Perfect Man, our Lord Jesus Christ, and their exercise should be manifested in the production of a Christlike life as revealed by our Lord Himself in the Seven Beatitudes.

      Besides this, S. Paul tells us that there are nine Fruits of the Spirit which we may consider as the result of the possession and use of the Seven Gifts.  These fruits of the Spirit fall into three classes: those which we exercise towards God – Love, Joy, and Peace; those which we manifest towards our neighbour – Long-suffering, Kindness, and Goodness; and those which form in ourselves – the special virtues of Fidelity, Meekness, and Temperance.

Chapter  IX – Article  IX

      The Holy Catholic Church ; the Communion of Saints.—Apostles’ Creed.

      And I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church.—Nicene Creed.

I.  Of the Church.

      The English word Church, like the Scottish Kirk, and the German Kirche, is derived from the Greek κυρικαή, an adjective signifying that which belongs to the Lord.  It is the equivalent of the Greek and Latin εκκλησία (from εκκαλέω), but long before εκκλησία had passed into the New Testament it had taken on a special meaning, being used at Athens for the assembly of the free citizens of the Commonwealth, and in a similar sense it is employed in the Septuagint as the equivalent of the Hebrew Qāhāl, the word used in the Old Testament to describe the whole nation of Israel regarded as an organised society.  In the New Testament the word Church is found twice in the Gospels,¹ but many times in the Acts, Epistles, and Revelation.  The idea, then, which is expressed by the ‘Church’, is that of Christians regarded as a society, and not as a mere collection of individuals.  The Church is an organised society, a social unity, consisting of all that is salvable in the human race, of the world itself as the object of redemption.²

¹S. Matt. 16:18; S. Matt. 18:17.

      ²For an interesting investigation of the use of the term ‘Ecclesia’, cf. Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, Chap. i.

      While it is true that our Lord died for each one, and loved each one of us with a real and individual love, so that S. Paul could say, ‘Who loved me and gave Himself for me,’¹ yet we must not lose sight of the other side of this truth, that ‘God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.’  The term ‘world’ is an equivocal word, and is used in Holy Scripture in many different senses; e.g. of this present age,² as representing the majority of men,³ as symbolising riches or power,⁴ as personifying the powers of evil,⁵ and as representing man as a social organisation, the race Christ came to save.  The number of passages in which the word is used in this last sense is very large, and in them our Lord is spoken of as the Saviour of the world,⁶ as redeeming or reconciling⁷ the world, as loving⁸ the world, etc.

¹Gal 2:20.                ²S. John 3:16.                ³S. Luke 1:70; S. Matt. 13:40.

⁴S. Matt. 4:8; 16:26.             ⁵S. John 14:30; 17:14.

⁶S. John 3:17; 4:42; 6:33, 51; 12:47; 1 Tim. 2:4 ; 1 S. John 4:14.

⁷Rom. 11:15; 2 Cor. 5:19; cf. 1 S. John 2:2; 4:10.                   ⁸S. John 3:16.

      These passages point to the fact that in Holy Scripture man is recognised as by nature a social being, and is not in the work of redemption to be regarded merely as an individual, but as a social unit; that there is a solidarity in the race which is recognised alike in the Fall and in Redemption, and which is a most important element in our conception of the Church or Christian ‘Ecclesia’.

      Among the titles used in the New Testament to describe the Church, the two most suggestive are ‘the Kingdom of heaven’, and ‘the Body of Christ’.  Both alike imply a society, and into both alike, as we are clearly told, the admission is by Baptism; for we read: ‘Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God’;¹ and again, ‘For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.  For in one Spirit are we all baptized into one body.’²  The Church therefore, regarded extensively, consists of all the baptized.

¹S. John 3:5.                        ²1Cor 12:12, 13.

      i.  In the Creeds we have given us four notes or characteristics of the Church, that She is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic; and by examining these notes we shall better understand what the Church claims to be and really is.

      1.   We begin with the Unity of the Church.

      There are two conceptions of the Unity of the Church: the one the idea of a body or society accidentally formed of individual members who have gradually come together, and for mutual edification or interest have enrolled themselves into a body or corporation.  If this conception of the Church be true, the ‘body’ is a purely human creation, and the individual members have only an accidental and not an organic unity, for at any time, by the action of its members, the body might be dissolved.  In this case the body would grow from below, – from the fact into the idea.

      The other conception of the Church is the entire reverse of this.  Here the body is a divine idea, realised in fact, as by Baptism members are added to the body; but here we have an organic, not an accidental unity, a unity which cannot be destroyed or dissolved, since as the body is not an aggregation of members, but exists first, the members being members of the one body, if that one body die, the members die with it.

      Which of these is the true conception of the Church’s unity?  Is it a unity reached from below or from above? is it an accidental or organic unity?  Our Lord’s great high-priestly prayer gives us the answer.  He prays ‘That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us’; and again, ‘That they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one.’¹  From this we may certainly learn that the unity which the Church represents, and for which our Lord prays, is a personal unity – the unity of God; it is not the final stage of an evolution, but the Church is one essentially, because God is One.

¹S. John 17:21–23.

      We may perhaps gain a clearer proof of the true view of the Church’s unity by examining the three partial or erroneous views which are found amongst us now.

      (1) There is first the modern rationalistic view, to which we have referred, of a unity artificially formed from diversity by fusing individuals into a society.  This, as we have seen, is absolutely inconsistent with our Lord’s revelation in Holy Scripture of the Church’s unity.

      (2) The next is the Puritan view of a purely spiritual unity, which is independent of, and indeed contrasted with, a bodily or corporate unity.

      (3) The third is the modern Roman view of a bodily unity, visible and external, and contrasted with spiritual unity.  The last two views, while diametrically opposed, contain partial and different views of truth; they are mutually complementary, though apparently opposed, and together make up the whole truth, for the unity of the Church is both a bodily and a spiritual union.  ‘For in one Spirit are we all baptized into one body.’¹

¹1 Cor. 12:13.

      But here we must carefully determine what we mean by ‘body’.  Do we mean something separate from and contrasted with spirit?  Certainly not; for though spirit can be separated from body, it is only at the expense of the body’s life that this can be done; and a living human body implies union with and possession of spirit.  Body, therefore, is altogether dependent upon, and is indeed a manifestation of, spirit.

      So S. Paul writes, ‘Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  There is one body and one spirit,’¹ and certainly no one ever in his own life better or at greater cost exemplified this principle, as the history of S. Paul’s tremendous and lifelong struggle to preserve unity between the Judaizing and Gentile parties in the early Christian Church shows.  If a mere internal and spiritual unity, which does not manifest itself in visible intercommunion, were sufficient, S. Paul’s absolute refusal to acquiesce in the formation of two distinct bodies was inexplicable, and his efforts and sacrifices to preserve, at almost any cost, external and visible unity between the Church he founded among the Gentiles and that presided over by S. James at Jerusalem were quite useless and vain.

¹Eph. 4:3, 4.

      In most great principles we may distinguish between that which is essential and that which is ideal; in the four characteristics of the Church which we are treating we shall find this exemplified, for in each we shall discover an essential and an ideal standard.  In regard to the first, the unity of the Church: we find the essential unity in the common participation of the one spiritual life, in the fellowship of that Holy Spirit which circulates like the life-blood through every living member of Christ’s Body, the Church; its visible symbol being the one Baptism by which all are incorporated into the one body.

      The ideal unity is the fellowship of all the members manifested in their intercommunion in the Sacraments, and especially in the Holy Eucharist; and in their perfect love for one another.  We must not think of this ideal unity either as unattainable or unattained.  In the first ages of the Church it was realised, so far as intercommunion, though sometimes with difficulty, and it is realised perfectly now in the Church triumphant; for we must not narrowly confine the Church to the members who are militant now on earth.  The Church exists in three states – the Church militant here on earth, the Church expectant in the intermediate state, and the Church triumphant in heaven; and we may hope that by far the majority now enjoy the privileges of the Church in heaven.

      For greater unity now and here we ought to work and pray.  And we may strive to attain to it, not by mutilating the body or surrendering its most precious gifts, but by charity and forbearance, by trying to see what is good even in the most imperfect forms of Christianity.

      We should show our desire for this unity, not by proclaiming that those who differ from us and are separated from intercommunion with us by schism are therefore no part of the Body of Christ, which is not true, but by recognising that they are members of the same body as ourselves, and by striving to bring them to a better appreciation of their gifts and privileges.  We should regard them rather as fellow children with us of the Great King, who are ignorant of their privileges and responsibilities, and who are living a life unworthy of their high lineage and possibilities.  We are not to give up our own privileges to unite with them in their lower life; but recognising that they are the King’s children, we should strive to lead them to realise and value their heritage.

      2. The second note of the Church is Holiness.

      The Church is holy because it is the Body of Christ, and is dwelt in by the Holy Ghost.

      It is holy because its end is to make its members holy by imparting to them the righteousness of Christ, and by making them through Baptism the temples of the Holy Ghost.

      The means by which it accomplishes this end are its Sacraments, which are holy as the channels of grace; its doctrines, which are holy as being the truth once for all delivered to the Church at Pentecost, and continually unfolded according to the Church’s needs by the Holy Ghost; and its precepts, which are holy as enjoined for the purpose of forming in its members holiness of life.

      Again, the Church is holy in that it requires holiness in its members, and is thus distinguished from Lutheranism which teaches not, like the Church, an imparted righteousness, which makes the individual holy, but an imputed righteousness, which leaves him unholy.  Lutheranism, however, by a sort of legal fiction, counts man holy by imputing to him the righteousness of Christ, and, as it were, casts this righteousness around him as a cloak, thus covering and concealing, but not cleansing or removing, his sin.¹

¹Cf. Chapter 5.

      As in each of the notes of the Church, we may here distinguish between the Church’s essential and ideal holiness.

      The Church’s essential holiness is seen in its separation from the evil world, and its ceaseless warfare against sin.  Its ideal holiness, the entire freedom from sin, is realised now only in the Church triumphant, in which is found that holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.’¹  The work of the Church both on earth and in the intermediate state is to prepare souls to enter heaven by helping them to become holy.

¹Heb. 12:14.

      Thus at last shall be realised our Lord’s purpose for the Church, as revealed by S. Paul, that ‘Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.’¹

¹Eph. 5:25–27.

      The attempt to realise ideal holiness in this world of sin has led again and again to both schism and hypocrisy, as instanced by the Donatists, Novatians, Cathari, and Puritans.  The Parables of the Tares and of the Draw-Net are a warning against this.¹

¹S. Matt. 13:24–31; 47–51.

      3. Catholicity is the third note of the Church.

      The word ‘Catholic’, as applied to the Church, was used, at least from the beginning of the second century, in two senses: that of universality, and that of orthodoxy.  The Church is universal or Catholic as distinguished from Jewish and Sectarian exclusiveness, and as recognising that all men are eligible for and equal in its society.  S. Cyril of Jerusalem describes this aspect of the Catholic character of the Church by showing that it embraces the whole world (or rather that it is the Church for the whole world), that it comprehends in its doctrines the whole truth, that it claims as its subjects all classes of men, that it has its remedies for all kinds of sin, and that it includes and inculcates every form of virtue.¹  The earliest use of the term Catholic, as describing the Church, is found in the writings of S. Ignatius (ob. c. 110) as distinguishing the Church from sects;² and next in the circular Epistle of the Church of Smyrna in regard to the martyrdom of its bishop S. Polycarp (ob. c. 155) as distinguishing the true Church throughout the world.

¹Cf. S. Cyril Hier., Cat. xviii. 23; Migne, P. G. xxxiii. col. 1044.

²S. Ignat., Ep. ad Smyrn. viii.; Migne, P. G. v. col. 852.

      In section viii we find, ‘But when He had ended the prayer, having made mention of all who had at any time been associated with Him, of little and great, of those who were distinguished and those who were obscure, and of all the Catholic Church throughout the world.’¹  And again in section xvi they speak of S. Polycarp as Bishop of the Catholic Church in Smyrna.²

¹Ep. Eccles. Smyrn. de Martyrie S. Polycarpi; Migne, v. col. 1036.

²Ibid. col. 1041.

      The note of Catholicity distinguishes the Church from Calvinism, as Holiness does from Lutheranism; for Calvinism confines the Church to a limited number of members who are predestined and elected to salvation, and so shuts out the great majority of baptized Christians.

      The essential Catholicity of the Church is seen in her proclamation that all men are eligible for her membership, and equal in her sight as regards their salvability.

      Her ideal Catholicity is the extension of these privileges to all mankind in accordance with her Master’s command, ‘Go ye therefore and teach all nations,’¹ or according to S. Mark, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.’²

¹S. Matt. 28:19.                   ²S. Mark 16:15.

      Her Catholicity is marred by a theory like that of the Donatists or Puritans on the one hand, or that of the Church of Rome on the other, which narrows the Church either to external communion with the Bishop of Rome, or to the ideal holiness of a self-constituted standard.

      S. Vincent of Lerins in his Commonitorium supplies a text of Catholicity, both in doctrine or practice, by his well-known canon: Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus’;¹ ‘Universality, Antiquity, and Consent.’

¹S. Vincent Liren., Commonitorium; Migne, P. L. 1. col. 640.

      4. The last note of the Church is its Apostolicity.

      By this we mean that the Church’s authority depends upon her Mission,’ that is, upon the fact that she has been sent by her Lord to evangelise the world, and that in that Mission’ is included the authority and gifts necessary for her work.

      We read that on the first Easter Day our Lord said to His Apostles, ‘As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you’;¹ and again before His Ascension, ‘Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them.’²  S. Paul tells the Ephesians that they are built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone’;³ while S. John, in describing the Church under the figure of the New Jerusalem, says that the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.’⁴

¹S. John 20:21.                    ²S. Matt. 28:19.             ³Eph. 2:20.                    ⁴Rev. 21:14.

      In the Epistle to the Romans we read, ‘How shall they preach except they be sent?’¹ and in the Pastoral Epistles we find allusions to the method of handing on the mission which S. Paul had received.²

¹Rom. 10:15.                       ²1 Tim. 3; 4:14, 5:22; 2 Tim. 1:6; Tit. 1:6.

      This mission implies not only the handing on of Apostolic doctrine, but of Apostolic succession, by which we mean a principle of continuity in the ministry of the Church, the bishops succeeding one another in an unbroken chain from Christ Himself through His Apostles and their successors the bishops of the Church, and reaching down to the Episcopate of the present day.

      For while the Episcopate, as we now have it, did not exist during the period of the Apostolate, something very like it began to show itself towards the close of the Apostolic Age in S. James of Jerusalem, S. Timothy, and S. Titus, and a little later, perhaps, in S. Clement of Rome.¹  And we have clear evidence that by the time of S. Ignatius, i.e. in the first decade of the next century, and within a few years of the death of S. John, the Episcopate was fully established at least in Asia; for we read in the Epistle of S. Ignatius to the Philadelphians, ‘For as many as are of God and Jesus Christ, these are with the Bishop; and as many as shall come penitent into the unity of the Church, they also shall be of God, that they may live after Jesus Christ.  Be not deceived, my brethren.  If any one followeth him that maketh a schism, he doth not inherit the kingdom of God.  If any one walk in strange doctrine he hath no fellowship (ουκ συγκατατίθεται) with the passion.  Be careful therefore to keep to one Eucharist; for there is one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup of His Blood, unto unity; there is one Altar, as there is one bishop, together with the presbytery and deacons, my fellow-servants.’²

      ¹The Church in Rome seems to have been governed by a College of Presbyters till well into the second century.  Cf. Wordsworth, The Ministry of Grace, pp. 125–131.

      ²S. Ignat., Ep. ad Philadelph. 3, 4; Migne, P. G. v. col. 700.  Cf. also Ep. ad Smyrn. viii.  Ουκ εξόν εστι χωρις του επισκόπου, ούτε βαπτίζειν, ούτε προσφέρειν, ούτε θυσίαν προσκομίζειν, ούτε δοχην επιτελειν.  Migne, P. G. v. col. 852.

      We find, too, the most unmistakable recognition of the doctrine of the Apostolical succession in the writings of the first Latin Father, Tertullian, who says of the heretics of his own age: ‘Let them exhibit the origins of their Churches, let them unfold the order of their bishops successively coming down from the beginning, so that their first bishop may have as his author and predecessor one of the Apostles, or of those Apostolic men who were continually with the Apostles; for in this way the Apostolic Churches bring down their lists.’¹

¹Tert., De Praescrip. 32; Migne, P. L. ii. col. 44, 45.

      There can therefore be no manner of doubt that within a generation of the last of the Apostles, Episcopacy was recognised not only as a form of Church government, but as the distinguishing characteristic of the Church as contrasted with those heretical and schismatical bodies, which had even then sprung up along side of it.

      We may freely admit that during the lifetime of the Apostles the Churches were governed by elders – that is priests (πρεσβύτεροι and επίσκοποι) under Apostolic direction, and that Episcopacy did not make its way simultaneously to every Church; but that its beginnings may be traced in Apostolic times, and that in the second century it was recognised, in Churches so far apart as Antioch and Carthage, as an essential characteristic of the Catholic Church, is an established historical fact.

      While the doctrine of Apostolical succession is recognised by the Roman, Eastern, and Anglican branches of the Church today as absolutely essential to lawful ministry in the Church, and to the validity of the Sacraments, it is quite naturally rejected by the various Protestant bodies, who forfeited an Apostolic ministry when they separated from the Church, and who cannot regain it except on the condition of reunion with the Church.  As this doctrine is one of the principal obstacles to reunion with the various sects, and is much misunderstood and misrepresented, it may be advisable to devote some space to explaining, not what it is (which does not need explanation), but why it is.

      We ought to begin by acknowledging that much of the prejudice against it is the result of the way it has been taught, of the theory of priesthood put forth (especially by the Church of Rome).  In it a sharp division is made between priests and laity, as, though priests were a caste or class through whom alone the laity must approach God.  A corollary to this is that the priesthood exists to celebrate sacrifices or acts of worship in the place of the body of the people, or as their substitute, and that the laity are not called to so high a standard of Christian life as are priests.¹  It was this teaching, carried to an extreme, which was responsible for much of the reaction against Sacerdotalism, or priestcraft, as it was called, at the Reformation.

¹Cf. Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood, chap. iii.

      As we shall endeavour to show, the theory has elements of truth in it, but is only partial truth at best, and has in it also much that is dangerously untrue.

      It would not be historically accurate to trace the theory we have described simply to sacerdotal encroachment and self-interest; it has been occasioned probably quite as much by the positive unwillingness of the laity to fulfill their duty as members of the Church, and to live according to the standard of Christianity taught in the Gospels.  They were quite as ready to get their duty done by proxy, and to provide a substitute for personal service in the Church of Christ, as was the priesthood to gain power by accepting this position.

      At the Reformation there was much clamour about the priesthood of the laity which had been usurped by the clergy of the Church, and in our own day we find the same outcry among Sectarians of all sorts.

      The claim that there is a priesthood of the laity is entirely valid, but it does not in the slightest degree supersede the need of the sacerdotal ministries of the Church, and it does involve responsibilities, as we have shown, which Sectarians probably do not realise and certainly do not fulfill.

      The Church is a priestly body; all the members therefore in a sense partake of a priestly character,¹ in that all have their share in offering the Christian sacrifice, which the priest offers, not in their stead, but as their representative and organ.  This we shall see best by an investigation of the nature and character of the Church as the Body of Christ.

¹S. Pet. 2:9.

      We have already pointed out that body and spirit are inseparable and necessarily related parts of the Church; that the order in which the Articles on the Holy Spirit and on the Church follow one another in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds implies that the Church is the manifestation on earth of the work of the Holy Spirit; and that as the Body of Christ, it cannot live or act apart from the Spirit of Christ, by which it is informed and energised.

      But we may go a step further.  While there is but one Body and one Spirit, the organs of that one Body are many,¹ the gifts of that one Spirit are diverse.²  This is the great subject of chapter 12 of S. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, and as we know, that Epistle was called forth by dissensions and disorders among the parties in the Church of Corinth, which bear some resemblance to the differences amongst religious parties in England today.

¹Rom. 12:4.             ²1 Cor. 12:4.

      After dealing with the relation of the one Spirit to the one Body,¹ S. Paul says, ‘For the body is not one member, but many.  If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?  And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?  If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing?  If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?  But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased Him.’²

¹1 Cor. 12:12, 13.                ²1 Cor. 12:14–19.

      To confine ourselves to S. Paul’s illustration, we have the Church put before us as one body composed of many members, certain of which are organs performing necessary functions for the wellbeing of the whole body.  But these organs do not confer life on the body – indeed they depend absolutely on the one life of the body.  At the moment after death the eye still retains all its marvellous parts unimpaired, the lens, the retina, the optic nerve; but the life has departed, and the eye is therefore useless to the body and to itself.

      The life of the eye is the life of the body specialised for a particular functional purpose, and yet it would be quite untrue to say that its capacity for seeing was conferred upon it at the will, or by the act, of the body.  No; S. Paul says that it is ‘God [who] hath set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased Him.’¹

¹1 Cor. 12:18.

      Nor can the body dispense with the eye, nor, if it is wanting, can all the rest of the body put together supply its place by discharging the function it was meant to discharge.

      What follows in applying this argument to the doctrine of priesthood in the Church?  Surely this: that the priesthood is an organ of the body, not having a life apart from or in place of the body, but having the life of the body specialised for the function of priesthood.  Further, that as the body does not and cannot create or produce at will its organs, and cannot replace them when they are lost, so the priesthood is not derived from below by the will and action of other members of the body, but from above by the will and action of God, who ‘set the members every one of them in the body, as it pleased Him.’

      This is the true principle of priesthood, and removes many of the objections which are ignorantly brought against sacerdotalism: the transmission of priesthood by Apostolical succession is simply a matter of history.

      The method, prevalent among some of the sects, of a congregation choosing and appointing its minister might have been the method instituted by our Lord in His Church; but so far as Holy Scripture and history teach us (and we have no other guides) it was not.  For although in Apostolic times there are indications of ordination ‘by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery,’¹ this presbytery consisted, as the word implies, of presbyters (priests), not laymen; and if the authority to ordain was afterwards, by the guidance of the Holy Ghost, confined to a bishop together with presbyters, so that ordination by presbyters alone was no longer allowed, this does not in the least do away with the necessity of Apostolical Succession.  Because presbyters, who possessed the power to ordain, could limit the exercise of that power to one of their number who already possessed it, it does not follow that laity, who possess no such power, can perpetuate a valid ministry.

¹1 Tim. 4:14.

      Indeed, it seems as unreasonable to suppose that a congregation of individuals, none of whom possess the power of ministry, can together confer what none of them possesses, as to suppose that all the members of the human body together can confer on some one member or organ a function which they themselves do not possess, e.g. can confer on the ear the function of sight.

      What, however, has often been overlooked by members of the Church, is that the loss of an organ does not always involve the loss of life.  It is very wonderful how, in the case of the blind, other faculties, such as hearing and touch, are sharpened and developed to supply to some extent the lost sense; but this is scarcely an argument for dispensing with eyes.  Where sight is lost life may go on, and useful life; but it is life which has its limitations, not perfect life.  We pity the blind man and add to our pity admiration that he accomplishes so much in spite of his great limitations; and this, it would seem, should be our attitude to those who do not possess an Apostolic ministry.  Instead of regarding them with contempt, we should ungrudgingly recognise and admire the holy lives and great works which are produced under such serious limitations.

      We shall conclude this subject by briefly examining the three views which are held in regard to the basis of the Christian ministry.

      1. That ‘mission’ or divine appointment to the ministry manifests itself solely within the individual conscience of the man who is called, and requires no further confirmation.

      2. That this witness in the individual conscience must be accompanied by appointment on the part of the Church body, or of some adequate part thereof.

      3. That no one can be held to be divinely commissioned until he have received authority from such as themselves received it in like manner from others, implying continuous transmission from the Apostles who were themselves commissioned by Jesus Christ.

      The first is the claim of but few, the second of the majority of the sects; the last is the teaching of the Church and really comprehends the other two, adding only that doctrine of Apostolical succession which we find set forth by Tertullian at the close of the second century as the distinguishing feature of the true Church.  For the Church requires first an interior vocation, asking of the ordinand, ‘Do you think in your heart that you be truly called?’ then the public examination of the candidate, with the statement that the ordinand is found to be ‘lawfully called’ and ‘meet’ for the ministry, opportunity being given for any one to allege an impediment if it be known; and lastly, after these two calls, the interior call ‘in the heart’ and the exterior or ‘lawful’ call of the Church, have been certified to, the Apostolic transmission of the gift of priesthood follows, the bishop laying on his hands with the form prescribed in the Ordinal.

      To reject the doctrine of Apostolical succession, we may at least say, is certainly a most rash and unwarranted procedure, which, according to the teaching of the Roman, Greek, and Anglican Churches, together making up all historic Christianity, invalidates the ministries of those who take this position.

      ii.  We have yet to draw attention to a much neglected aspect of the life of the Church of Christ.  The Church possesses not only an Apostolic ministry, but certain spiritual endowments upon the use of which much of its work depends.  A careful reader of Holy Scripture cannot but be struck by the extraordinary manifestations of the Holy Ghost which are referred to in S. Paul’s Epistles, as though they formed part of the ordinary life of the Church in his day.  Not only, he tells us, has the one body many members, but the one Spirit bestows upon these members a diversity of gifts.¹  We have no less than four lists of these gifts – in the Epistles to the Romans, Ephesians, and two in the Corinthians.²

¹1 Cor 12:4.                        ²Rom. 12:6–9; Eph. 4:11, 12; 1 Cor. 12:8–11, and 28.

      Before we examine them, let us for a moment return to the description of the Church as the Body of Christ.

      In addition to the organs of his body, a man has certain endowments, which we ordinarily speak of as ‘gifts’, e.g. the artistic gift for drawing or painting, a talent for music or for teaching, or for administration, etc.  Now it is quite evident that these gifts belong not to the body but to the spiritual or intellectual part of the man.  One who has a gift for music or for colour has not, therefore, a keener sense of hearing or of sight the gift is not a development of the organ of the body, but belongs rather to the mind.  So we find that in addition to the organs of the body in which the life of the one body is specialised for certain functional purposes, as for priesthood, the members of Christ’s body are endowed with various gifts which we are told belong to the one Spirit.  These gifts are bestowed not so much for the sanctification of the recipient, as for the edification of the Church.  For we read, ‘He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.’¹

¹Eph. 4:11, 12.

      These ‘gifts’ are distinguished in Holy Scripture from ‘grace’ by the use of a different form of the same word: gifts are χαρίσματα, grace is χάρις.  So theologians distinguish between the ‘gratia gratis data’ and the ‘gratia gratum faciens’: the first corresponds to χαρίσματα, and the latter to χάρις.  This twofold division depends upon the end or purpose for which the grace is given.  The first (charismata) is given to man principally for the edification of others, and can exist even when the recipient is in mortal sin, as the power to work miracles and the gifts of the Apostolate were possessed by Judas, and the gifts of priesthood are possessed even by an unworthy priest.  The latter (χάρις) is given chiefly for a man’s own sanctification, and is called ‘gratia gratum faciens’ because it makes its possessor pleasing or acceptable to God.  The former is called ‘gratia gratis data’ because it is given irrespective of the deserts of the recipient, and chiefly ‘for the edifying of the body of Christ’.

      It is evident that the gifts of priesthood come under this head, but that this by no means exhausts the charismata.  By carefully comparing the four lists to which we have referred, we find a relation between them, the same gift, however, appearing in some lists under a different name.

      In the first list in Corinthians we have nine charismata: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, working miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, kinds of tongues, and interpretation of tongues.  In the second list we have eight: apostles, prophets, teachers, workers of miracles, gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.  In that in Romans we have seven: prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, distribution, ruling, healing.  In that in Ephesians we find only five: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.

      These charismata are not confined to the organised ministry of the Church; they may be found among laymen, and are many of them exhibited in a marked degree among the sects; and to these gifts must be attributed much of the work for Christ, which is undoubtedly done by them.

      These gifts were manifested most actively during the first ages of the Church; afterward they seem to have given place to the ordinary organised ministry of the Church, though sporadically exhibited by individuals, especially in periods of religious revival, and associated with great religious movements: e.g. some of them were manifested in a marked degree by S. Benedict, S. Francis Assisi, Savonarola, S. Ignatius, S. Francis of Sales, S. Vincent of Paul, and others.  They were displayed in the great Catholic revival of our own day, and they are to be looked for, and prayed for, as among the great endowments of the Church of Christ.

      A comparison of the two passages by which the charismata are introduced in the Epistles to the Ephesians and Romans seems to imply that while to each one is given that grace (gratia gratum faciens) which is necessary to his individual sanctification, this grace is generally accompanied by some charismata by which he may edify the body of Christ, and do his work as a faithful and useful member of that body.  The passage in the Ephesians is, ‘But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ’;¹ that in the Romans reads: ‘Having then gifts (charismata) differing according to the grace that is given to us.’²  From this it would seem to follow that it behoves each member of the body to ask himself what gifts have been bestowed on him? what talent he is responsible for using to the edifying of the Church?  Without attempting an examination of all the charismata mentioned by S. Paul, we may point out that—

¹Eph. 4:7.                ²Rom. 12:6.

      (1) Prophecy is not necessarily confined to the priesthood, for we see it exercised within the Church by laymen, especially in the lay preaching of S. Francis Assisi and his friars.

      (2) Ministry may be seen in mission work among the poor and outcast by many of our lay workers today.

      (3) Teaching is manifested in Sunday school work, and in helping to prepare the ignorant for the sacraments.

      (4) Distribution is exercised in the man of wealth giving of his means, and with this his time and experience, for special works in the Church.

      (5) Healing is practised in the work of the Christian nurse ministering to the sick and suffering in our hospitals, and in the homes of the poor.

      How tremendous would be the power of the Church, if each member by prayer and experiment strove to find out what charismata had been bestowed upon him, and then used his gifts for the glory of God and the edifying of the body of Christ!

      iii.  There remains for us to point out the four principal functions of the Church as the Guardian and Teacher of Truth, the Guide in Morals, the Dispenser of Grace, and the Director of Worship.

      1. The Church is the Guardian and Teacher of Truth.

      S. Paul calls the Church ‘the pillar and ground of the truth’;¹ but what is truth?  Minds differ, and philosophers disagree.  What reason, then, have we to claim that the Church is the Teacher of truth?  The claim of the Gospel itself; for in it our Lord Jesus Christ says of Himself, ‘I am the Truth,’² and ‘to this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.  Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice’;³ and again, to the seventy, He said, ‘He that heareth you, heareth Me’;⁴ and to His Apostles, ‘When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth’;⁵ and to S. Peter, ‘Upon this rock I will build My Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’;⁶ and yet once more, ‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’⁷  The Christian, then, has in the Church, which our Lord founded on the rock of His Divinity, an unerring teacher of truth.  The Church, however, has not for its sphere to teach man what he can find out for himself – that is, she has no commission to teach those laws of the physical world which are commonly called scientific truth.  The truth committed to her is that knowledge which can make man wise unto salvation, and which is the subject matter of revelation.  She is therefore the Giver and Interpreter of Holy Scripture, the books of the Bible being accepted on the authority of the Church, and the meaning of their contents being elucidated by her teaching.  Her methods of teaching have already been considered under the head of ‘Faith.’8

¹1 Tim. 3:15.                       ²S. John 14:6.                ³S. John 18:37.

⁴S. Luke 10:16.                   ⁵S. John 16:13.              ⁶S. Matt. 16:18.

⁷S. John 8:32.                      ⁸Cf. Article  I.

      2. The Church is the Guide in Morals.

      In morals the Church claims to promulgate the laws and principles which must guide human conduct, and this claim is closely allied to her claim to be the teacher of truth; for we must first believe rightly or we cannot act rightly.  The world has its science of ethics, but its history is a history of discord; for the various schools of ethics cannot even agree on any one basis of morals, or that, in fact, morals have any basis.

      A well-known writer says: ‘In one sense, moralists are almost unanimous; in another they are hopelessly discordant.  They are unanimous in pronouncing certain classes of conduct to be right, and the opposite wrong.  No moralist denies that cruelty, falsehood, and intemperance are vicious; or that mercy, truth, and temperance are virtuous. ... But if we turn from the matter to the form of morality; if instead of asking what actions are right or wrong, we ask, What is the essence of right and wrong? how do we know right from wrong? why should we seek the right and eschew the wrong? – we are presented with the most contradictory answers; we find ourselves at once in that region of perpetual antinomies, where controversy is everlasting, and opposite theories seem to be equally self-evident to different minds.’¹

¹Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, pp. 1, 2.

      Here a scientific writer, quite unbiased on the side of the Church or of religion, confesses at the outset of his treatise on morals, that while there may be some consent regarding what is right and what is wrong, there is absolutely no agreement concerning the basis of morality, why things are right or why they are wrong.  And when he flatters himself that there is some unanimity in the matter of morals, is he not too sanguine?  For while those particular things which he mentions – cruelty, falsehood, and intemperance – may be universally accepted in the abstract, there is no agreement whatever in their application to concrete cases – no agreement whatever apart from the law of human conduct which the Church lays down.

      The writer we have quoted admits that all systems of morals are in hopeless disagreement on three points: (1) What is the essence of right and wrong, or the basis of ethics? (2) How do we know right from wrong, or the standard of morals? and (3) Why should we seek the right and eschew the wrong, or the necessity of ethics?

      The Church has no hesitation in answering: (1) that the basis of ethics is God’s Will, revealed to man.  Things are right because God has revealed that they are His Will, and wrong because He has forbidden them.  (2) The Church’s standard of morals is the life and teachings of Jesus Christ; and (3) The necessity of morals depends on man’s eternal relation to God, as his Creator and his End.

      On these principles the Church has ruled on all questions of human conduct.

      3. The Church is the Dispenser of Grace.

      To the Church is committed the ministration of the Word and Sacraments, by which man is supplied with grace for all his needs.  By her standard of morals the Church teaches her children what is right, and through her Sacraments supplies them with strength to carry this into effect.

      4. The Church is the Director of Worship.

      Our Blessed Lord founded His Church not only to teach man truth, and to guide man in morals, and to dispense to man grace, but also to direct man how to worship God acceptably.  This is not the least important of the Church’s functions; for to teach men how to worship God rightly is to prepare them for that life in heaven, which will be one long unbroken act of worship.

II.  Of the Communion of Saints.

      This clause was the last addition to the Apostles Creed as we now have it, and was introduced in the fifth century.

      i.  It is found, as we have seen, in the Creed of Faustus of Riez (c. 460), as reconstructed from his De Spiritu Sancto and his two homilies on the Creed, and Harnack in his work, Das Apostolische Glaubensbekenntniss, published in 1892, claims this as its first appearance in a Creed form.  It, is however, found in an Explanatio symboli, attributed to Nicetas of Aquileia, but which is now generally accepted as a sermon of Nicetas of Remesiana, who, according to Gennadius of Marseilles, seems to have lived in the fourth and fifth centuries (c. 370-420), and to have been the Nicetas who was the friend Of Paulinus of Nola.¹  In this sermon we find for the first time the phrase ‘sanctorum communionem’; but whether it belongs to the Creed he is explaining, or to the explanation itself, is difficult to decide.  The passage is: ‘What is the Church but the congregation of all Saints? ... Believe then that in this one Church you will attain the Communion of Saints.’

¹Paulin. Nol. Ep. xxix. 14; Migne, P. L. lxi. col. 321.

      Harnack in his later Article on the Creed, in the third edition of the Hauck-Herzog Real-Encyclopädie, considers it improbable that it belongs to the Creed itself, and suggests that from the acquaintance with the Catechetical lectures of S. Cyril of Jerusalem, which Nicetas manifests, the phrase may have been borrowed from S. Cyril.  Whether, however, it passed into the Creed of Gaul from Nicetas or originated in Gaul on account of the heresy of Vigilantius, is an open question.

      In his earlier work Harnack puts forth the latter view with some confidence, and it seems to us the most probable opinion; for even if the phrase were borrowed from the sermon of Nicetas, the occasion which led to its introduction in the Creed of the Church of Southern Gaul may have been the prevalence of the heresy of Vigilantius in that neighbourhood and in Spain, of which we have independent evidence.

      Vigilantius denied that the Saints in glory pray for the living, and the article on the Communion of Saints appears to have been intended to refute this denial.

      As Zahn points out, the passage in Nicetas does not by ‘Saints’ mean those who are now on earth; the use of the future tense, and indeed the whole context, shows that he refers to those who have passed into the world beyond.  Zahn quotes from two interesting sermons wrongly attributed to S. Augustine.¹  In the first the phrase ‘sanctorum communionem’ is explained of ‘ the saints who died in the faith which we receive’; in the second it is referred to a spiritual community of goods in heaven.

      ¹Pseudo-Aug. Sermo. ccxlii; Migne, P. L. xxxix. col. 2193.  Sermo. ccxl., ibid., col. 2189.

      ii.  There seem to have been three views of the teaching of this Article.

      (1) That to which we have just referred, which Harnack considered was almost undoubtedly the original teaching, since it is that set forth in the sermon on the Creed by Faustus of Riez, who is our first certain authority for the Article as part of the Creed of the Church of Southern Gaul.

      (2) That which would confine the fellowship to members of the Church still living in the world.

      (3) That which would take ‘sanctorum’ as neuter, and so make the fellowship to consist in communion through participation in the Eucharist.

      The last view seems to have originated in the twelfth century, and is at best mediaeval and lacking in antiquity; it was apparently confined to a few writers in France, and so also lacks both catholicity and consent.  It seems to have been revived by Zahn in our own day, but has met with but little favour from others .¹

      ¹Zahn, The Apostles’ Creed, p. 196–200; cf. also Dr. Sanday in Journal of Theological Studies for October 1901.

      The second view is found in the African Church about the year 400, when it was used (in the Donatist controversy) of communion with the orthodox, ‘Communionen Sanctorum’ being equivalent to ‘Ecclesia Catholica’.

      It is, however, remarkable that not one of the old commentators on the Creed gives this meaning of the Article, and as it was not part of the African Creed in S. Augustine’s time, this use of the phrase can have little weight in deciding the meaning of the clause in the Creed, especially in the light of its manifest application to the Saints in heaven, both in Nicetas and Faustus, our earliest authorities for it.

      Besides, to narrow the ‘Saints’ to those on earth is surely a most inadequate connotation of the title ‘Saint’.

      We have therefore left the first view, which would recognise a Communion with the Saints in heaven, though we need not restrict this to the application, found in the Sermon of Faustus, to the cultus of the Saints.

      The Church, as we have seen, though existing now in three states, Militant, Expectant, and Triumphant, is essentially one body.  And in a body, as S. Paul insists, there can be no ‘schism’¹ between the members, but ‘the members have the same care one for another.  And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member rejoice, all the members rejoice with it.’  And further, that ‘the whole body [is] fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth.’²

¹1 Cor. 12:25, 26.                      ²Eph. 4:16.

      Hence the Communion of Saints, that is the fellowship of the whole Church, is strictly in analogy with the functions of a body.  For as in the human body the life-blood circulates through every member, supplying it with nourishment and uniting it with the rest of the body; so in the Church does the same Holy Spirit circulate in every member, sanctifying every part, for the Saints are the fruits of the Holy Ghost.

      In this fellowship of the whole Church we may recognise:—

      (1) A fellowship of interest and hope in the final triumph of the Church, and therefore, of its Head Jesus Christ, when the number of the elect shall be made up, and ‘God’ shall be ‘all in all’.¹

¹1 Cor. 15:28.

      (2) A fellowship of work, all working for the glory of God and the common good of the whole body.

      (3) A fellowship of prayer.

      In the Church militant each prays for all, and all for each member; this would include also a fellowship in the Sacraments, and especially in the Eucharist.  The Church militant, too, prays for the faithful departed, that they may have light, rest, and refreshment.  S. Augustine teaches us that we may aid them not only by our prayers, but by offering the Holy Eucharist and by Alms-giving.  He says, ‘There can be no doubt that the dead are helped by the prayers of the Holy Church, by the life-giving sacrifice, and by the alms which are offered for them, to such an extent that they are treated by the Lord more leniently than their own sins have deserved.’¹  This is the authoritative teaching alike of East² and West.³

¹S. Aug. Sermo. clxxii. 2; Migne, P. L. xxxviii. col. 936.

²Orthodox. Confess. Quest, 65.                  ³C. of Trent, Sess. 25.

      Moreover, it is witnessed to by the instincts of natural religion, by Holy Scripture, and by the testimony of the Catacombs.

      The Church on earth honours the Saints in heaven by keeping their feast days, and she also asks for their prayers.

      The invocation of the prayers of the Saints may be direct or indirect – that is, we may ask the Saints directly to pray for us, or we may ask God to grant us a share in the intercession of the Saints.

      The authority for invocation of the prayers of the Saints is overwhelming.  In the Roman Catacombs we find a very large number of such prayers addressed directly to individual Saints.

      We find also invocation in the works of Origen, S. Gregory of Nyssa, S. Gregory of Nazianzus, S. Ambrose, S. Chrysostom, S. Basil, and S. Jerome, etc.¹  S. Jerome’s work, Contra Vigilantium, is in defence of the practice.

      ¹For a catena of patristic authorities cf. Perrone, Tract. de Cultu S.S., cap. iii. prop. 2, ed. Migne, tom. i; Petavius, De Incarn. lib. xiv. cap. 10, col. 1180–1193; Forbes, XXXIX Articles, pp. 377–422.

      That the practice has been grievously abused is undeniable, but so have many helpful practices in the Church, and ‘the abuse of a thing taketh not away its lawful use.’

      The holy dead in the intermediate state are not only the objects of our prayers, but probably they pray for us, and for the final coming of Christ’s Kingdom.

      While the Saints in heaven still care for the other members of the body, as S. Paul implies,¹ probably they watch us in our struggles here, striving to help us by their prayers.  The passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, ‘Seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,’² has generally been taken to point to this.  And if it be asked, How do the Saints see us and know our needs and that we ask their prayers? while we cannot answer this with any certainty, yet the most common opinion of theologians has been that the Saints see us ‘in the Word,’ or, as some have expressed it, ‘in the mirror of the Holy Trinity’; that is, beholding the Vision of God in heaven, they see in God, not absolutely all things, but all that God wills them to know, and all that it is necessary for their happiness that they should know, and among these things are the interests and struggles of the Church on earth.

¹1 Cor. 12:25, 26.                ²Heb. 12:1.

Chapter  X – Article  X

      The Forgiveness of Sins.—Apostles’ Creed.

      I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.—Nicene Creed.

Of the Forgiveness of Sins.

      Two words which are most familiar, and seem most simple, and yet about which the gravest misapprehension exists – ‘Sin’ and ‘Forgiveness’!  Many would say, surely these words need no explanation; every one knows what ‘sin’ is and what ‘forgiveness’ is; but, as is often the case, what we assume that every one knows is precisely that about which there is the most general ignorance.

      If we knew what sin was, could we go on sinning? if we understood what forgiveness involved, could we so easily assume that we were forgiven?

      None, of course, can adequately comprehend the malice of sin, regarded either as an act of rebellion against God or as an act of self-destruction, an attempt to kill all that is best in ourselves; but it may help us in our penitence to that ‘godly sorrow [which] worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of,’¹ that is, to such sorrow as shall ensure forgiveness of our sin, if we turn our thoughts in the consideration of this Article of the Creed to the seriousness of sin and of forgiveness.

¹2 Cor. 7:10.

      I.  What is sin?  S. John tells us that it is the transgression of the law.¹  In the Bible, in the Church, and in our conscience, God has written His holy law, and when we willfully transgress this we sin.

¹1 S. John 3:4.

      This seems very simple, but some have suggested that no one willfully sins; for that we cannot help ourselves in the matter.  And this comes from two most opposite sources.  On the one hand, the Calvinist, with his doctrine of predestination and election, practically denies any real exercise of free-will, and therefore of human responsibility; on the other, the rationalist tells us that heredity and environment leave no room for free-will, that the forces of birth and circumstances control absolutely our actions.

      It is sufficient here to point out that if either of these views were true we could have no responsibility for what we do; for we cannot be responsible for that which we cannot control.  But they are not true, for Holy Scripture, from which Calvinists think they deduce their doctrine of election, clearly teaches, again and again, that God holds man accountable for his actions, and this implies free will or the power of choice of good and evil.

      In regard to the position of rationalists – mysterious as free will is, and difficult to think out – man by his own laws and by his own life bears witness to his conviction that the will is free, since everywhere man is held responsible for what he does, both in the intercourse of social life and in the law which protects society.  Human law, indeed, in punishing the criminal for theft, murder, etc., proceeds on the assumption that the criminal is responsible and has free will.  This is evidenced by the fact that, if the plea of insanity can be proved, the punishment is not inflicted on the express ground that the person is irresponsible.

      Sin, then, is an act of the will.  That sovereign power of the soul by which man is able to choose good or evil is exercised in the choice of evil; that great gift of God, free will, by which man is distinguished from all other creatures, is used to rebel against God, his Creator and King, to disobey His commands, to break His laws; and the greatness of the outrage may be measured by the distance between the dignity of the King and the littleness of the subject who rebels, and thus measured it is seen to be infinite.

      While the malice of sin consists first in its being an act of rebellion against God, it is not exhausted by this, but may be estimated too by its effects upon man himself.  Man by sinning strikes with his puny arm at God, but the blow falls really upon himself; for sin destroys all that is best in man.  It wounds every power of his soul, clouding his intellect, poisoning his imagination, deadening the voice of conscience, weakening his will; and it stops not at the soul: its effects are seen often, as clearly, in the body in the manifold diseases to which it is subject.  If towards God sin may be described as an attempt at deicide, an attempt which only fails, and fails absolutely, from man’s own impotence, towards man himself it is an attempt at suicide; for if indulged in sufficiently it ends in killing all that is godlike in man, all that is truly human, and so it becomes an act of suicide, for by sin a man murders his true self.

      It is most difficult for us to obtain true views of the seriousness of sin, but to help us we have two revelations of God’s view of sin.  The first is the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ – read there in all He suffered for man God’s view of sin.  The other, less pathetic, but in a sense more awful, is the revelation of hell – a revelation from the lips of the tender loving Lord Himself, Who died to take away our sins.  In these two revelations we have set before us in plainest terms God’s view of sin.

      II.  What is forgiveness?  Is it a mere remission of punishment, an ignoring of guilt, or condoning it?  It is of course the remission of penalty; but surely this does not exhaust its meaning, nor adequately express it.  In what category must we place ‘forgiveness’?  Is it a virtue or only an amiable weakness?  Is it the characteristic of the saintly and strong man, or of the man who either has no hatred for sin, or not sufficient energy to manifest it?  Does it consist in the power of persuading oneself that guilt may be condoned or that sin is a light matter?  Is it consistent with abhorrence of evil, with love of truth and justice?

      Since in the Creed we attribute forgiveness of sins to God, it must be an accompaniment of holiness and truth and justice and strength, and consistent with a hatred of sin; for all these belong to God.  It must be a virtue, and a virtue of the highest class, and altogether removed from weakness, or indifference to sin.  It must, therefore, be something more than mere remission of punishment, since under certain circumstances remission of punishment is inconsistent with any of the attributes, which we have just recognised as belonging to God.

      There are occasions when remission of punishment is no act of kindness to the offender, when indeed it only destroys his sense of right and wrong, the little realisation he has of the evil of sin, when it is indeed only an encouragement to go on sinning.  At such times forgiveness would be an immoral act, and the infliction of penalty the truest exhibition of love.

      In order, then, that forgiveness may be a virtue, it must take into account its own moral effect upon the recipient, upon the offender who is to be forgiven.  Will it stimulate him to do right hereafter? will it aid in his moral restoration? or will it be regarded only as a condonation of sin, as an incentive to go on sinning?

      Mercy has been defined in its relation to Justice as the recognition of possibilities of restoration in a character already far gone towards sin, and if we accept this definition we shall see that there can be no conflict between God’s attributes of Mercy and Justice, that they are but two aspects of the same attribute; since Justice is the recognition on the part of God, who knows what is in man, that in certain souls there are no further possibilities of restoration; therefore Justice and Mercy alike are in God simply the recognition of the true state of a human soul.  So long as there is room for Mercy it will be extended by God, who is All-Merciful.  When that condition no longer exists, the Justice of God will take effect, that is, will pronounce the soul to be what it is, what it has made itself, what Mercy cannot unmake it.  This definition of Mercy may be extended to forgiveness.

      Forgiveness, therefore, must depend upon the recipient being forgivable, that is, still possessing the possibility of restoration.  It is not the mere arbitrary pronouncing of a sentence irrespective of the facts of the case, or, rather, of the condition of the offender.

      Under this head we must carefully examine certain passages of Holy Scripture, in which our Lord teaches us the duty of forgiveness.

      In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord said: ‘For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’¹  In this passage our Lord clearly teaches that God’s forgiveness is conditioned by a certain disposition in the recipient, and this condition – the forgiveness of others – implies charity; for we cannot love God and hate our brother, and to be in charity with our neighbour is the best test of our love towards God.²

¹S. Matt. 6:14–15; cf. also 18:35, and S. Luke 6:37.

²S. John 4:7, 11, 20, 21.

      In S Matthew, chapter 18, and in the parallel passage in S. Luke, we find some very full instruction on the duty of forgiveness; the two passages need to be read together to appreciate it.  In S. Matthew we are told that in answer to S. Peter’s question, ‘Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?’ Jesus replied, ‘I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven’;¹ but in S. Luke it is recorded that He said, ‘Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.  And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.’²  In the passage in S. Luke the repentance of the one who has sinned is expressly mentioned, and may be considered as a condition of his forgiveness.  While it is not explicitly spoken of in the passage we have quoted from S. Matthew, it is implied in what has gone before: ‘Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee (i.e. if he repent), thou hast gained thy brother’;³ and still more strikingly is there brought out the need of a right disposition in the recipient of forgiveness in the parable which follows from, and illustrates our Lord’s answer to S. Peter.  The whole parable should be read; in it the unmerciful servant, who seeks and obtains forgiveness, by his conduct to his fellow servant, shows that he has not the disposition required for forgiveness, and the forgiveness which he has obtained is withdrawn, while the lesson of the parable is enforced in the words, ‘So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.’⁴

¹S. Matt. 18:21, 22.              ²S. Luke 17:3, 4.

³S. Matt. 18:15.                   ⁴S. Matt. 18:35.

      From all these passages we learn, that for a man to be forgiven he must be forgivable, that is, he must have in him the possibilities of restoration; forgiveness without this cannot benefit him, because it does not change him, as we see in the parable.

      A clearer grasp of what forgiveness implies in the recipient would go far towards removing a common, though unthinking, objection to the doctrine of eternal punishment.  It is often put thus: ‘I cannot believe that God Who is love, and Who has revealed that we are to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times, can Himself ever refuse to forgive any sinner however grievously and perseveringly he may have sinned.  I cannot believe that God, therefore, will allow any one to be lost, when by the exercise of Mercy in forgiving such an one he would be saved.’

      The reply to this objection might take some such form as this.  There is indeed no limit to God’s mercy, He is ever ready to forgive those who are forgivable, to save all who are salvable, but God’s forgiveness does not make a man what he is not, does not unmake what he has made himself.  Salvation is freely offered to all, but the acceptance of it implies the power to appropriate it on man’s part, and that power may have been destroyed by a man’s own willful choice of sin.  God gives to all the light of the sun, but to those who have destroyed the faculty of sight the gift is useless, and they must remain in darkness though light be all around them.¹

      ¹Cf. Moberly, Atonement and Personality, chap. iii., to which the Author desires to express his obligation.

      In reflecting upon this Article of the Creed we must strive to realise the malice of sin, strive to grasp what forgiveness involves on our part, in order – not that we may despair of it – that we may ensure it.

      III.  In the Nicene Creed we profess our belief ‘in one Baptism for the remission of sins,’ and this brings before us the means by which forgiveness may be obtained and sin remitted.

      The means whereby sin is remitted is primarily the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, or, as Holy Scripture puts it, His Precious Blood – ‘the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.’¹

¹1 S. John 1:7.

      The ordinary channel through which the Blood of Christ is applied to the soul is the Sacraments, especially Baptism, Penance, and the Holy Eucharist.

      Born in original sin, that is, with a tainted nature derived from the first Adam, and, in the case of adults, guilty also of many actual transgressions, Baptism is the means by which all sin is remitted, and more – by which many good gifts are bestowed upon the soul.

      The expression ‘one Baptism’ was probably introduced into the Creed from the passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians, ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism,’¹ but it also reminds us that Baptism cannot be repeated, that we can receive its grace but once.  Hence since it is of such imperative necessity, and since in some cases it is possible for doubts to arise (especially in regard to Baptism received in infancy) both in regard to the fact of its reception and to its validity, if received, the Church has provided a conditional form to be used in such cases: ‘If thou art not already baptized, N., I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’

¹Eph. 4:5.

      Baptism is one of those Sacraments which cannot be repeated, because it conveys character, the character of the child of God, which is indelible, and which therefore can never be lost, even though, through sin, the soul be deprived of sanctifying grace, and cut off from union with God.  The other Sacraments which convey character are Confirmation and Holy Orders.

      The special grace of Baptism is the Gift of Regeneration, or New Birth, the implanting in us of the Christ-life, the first quickening of the spiritual life.

      This grace carries with it the grace of Justification or Sanctification, whereby all sin, both original and actual, is remitted – not only the guilt, but the eternal punishment due to sin, and the temporal punishment due to the individual (though not such consequences as are proper to human nature).  In the case of adults the remission of actual sin is conditional on their faith and repentance.  On one baptized without these dispositions the character of Baptism is bestowed, and potentially the distinctive grace of the Sacrament, Regeneration, but the graces are inoperative until penitence has removed the obstacle of sin.

      In Baptism, too, there is an infusion of sanctifying grace by which the soul is made pleasing to God, and an infusion of the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love, with the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

      The baptized becomes the temple of the Holy Ghost, Who then takes up his personal dwelling in the soul.¹

¹1 Cor. 6:19; cf. 3:16.

      The Gift of Regeneration incorporates us into the Body of Christ, and makes us by adoption the children of God.

      The effects of Baptism are indeed wonderful, transforming the natural man into a spiritual man,’¹ and endowing him with all the gifts and graces of the spiritual life.

¹Cf. 1 Cor. 2:14–16.

      If, however, Baptism were the only channel by which the Precious Blood of Christ could be applied to the soul, the salvation of most Christians would be more than doubtful.  Our Blessed Lord, therefore, provided what the Fathers often speak of as the second plank in shipwreck (perhaps the earliest use of this simile being found in Tertullian¹) – the Sacrament of Penance, instituted on Easter Day, when ‘He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.’²

      ¹Eam (poenitentiam) to peccator, mei similis, ita invade, ita amplexare, ut naufragus alicujus tabulae fidem,’—Tert., De .Poenitentia, i; Migne, P. L. i. col. 1233.

²S. John 20:22, 23.

      That the power to administer this Sacrament has been given to the ministers of the Church we are daily reminded in the form of Absolution in Morning and Evening Prayer; that the Sacrament is to be sought under certain circumstances is affirmed in the Exhortation in the Communion Office ; and in the only office provided in our Prayer Book for ministering to individual souls is the direction given that the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter.’  After which confession the priest is ordered to absolve him, a very solemn and direct form of Absolution being provided.

      The Church of England thus clearly recognises this second sacramental channel for the remission of post-baptismal sins.

Chapter  XI – Article  XI

      The resurrection of the body (flesh).—Apostles’ Creed.

      And I look for the resurrection of the dead.—Nicene Creed.

      At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies.—Athanasian Creed.

Of the Resurrection of the Body.

      Under this Article we have first to notice the difference in the three Creeds: the Apostles’ professing a resurrection of the flesh (carnis); for though our present translation has ‘body’, the Latin is ‘carnis’, the Greek (of Marcellus of Ancyra) ‘σαρκός’; and the English Creeds before 1543 had the more accurate rendering ‘flesh’.  The Nicene Creed has always had ‘the resurrection of the dead’ (των νεκρων), and the Athanasian body (cum corporibus suis).

      I.  If we turn to S. Paul’s great treatise on the resurrection, we shall find, in the very passage in which he refutes the view that the body with which we rise will be materially identical with our present bodies, that he uses all three terms flesh, body, and dead, as practically synonymous.¹

¹1 Cor. 15:39, 40, 42.

      We know that even in S. Paul’s time there were those who, professing to believe in the resurrection, either limited it to the soul – a view held by most of the heathen who believed in some sort of immortality – or explained it of a spiritual resurrection at the time of conversion from heathenism to Christianity, like Hymenus and Philetus, ‘who concerning the truth (have) erred, saying that the resurrection is past already.’¹

¹2 Tim. 2:18.

      We find also in the second century that the Gnostics¹ accepted a resurrection, but not the resurrection of the body.  This too was the teaching of the Manicheans and of Marcion.²  And it was doubtless the necessity of combating these and similar heresies which led many of the early Fathers of the Church to substitute for the scriptural phrase ‘resurrection of the dead’ that which passed into the Apostles’ Creed, ‘resurrection of the flesh’; and not only to use this phrase, but often to interpret it in a very materialistic sense, e.g. Tertullian,³ S. Jerome,⁴ Rufinus,⁵ S. Augustine,⁶ the only one who protested against this being Origen.⁷  He complains that not only among heretics, but even among the orthodox, was the opinion prevalent that the very same bones and flesh and blood would be raised in order that the body of each at the resurrection might be precisely identical with the body possessed in this life.

      ¹S. Iren. v. 9; Migne, P. G. vii. col. 1144; Tertullian, De carne Christi, 48; Migne, P. L. ii. col. 863–865.

²Tertull., Contra Marcion, v. 9–10; Migne, P. L. ii. col. 491–497.

³Tertull., De res. Carnis, 63; Migne, P. L. ii. col. 885.

⁴Hieron., Contra Joan. Hierosol.; Migne, P. L. xxiii. 375.

⁵Rufin., De Symb. 42; Migne, P. L. xxi. col. 379.

      ⁶S. Aug., De Civit. xxii. 20 and 21; Migne, P. L. xli. col. 782, 783; Retract. i. 17; Migne, P. L. xxxii. col. 613.  S. Augustine in his earlier work, De fide et Symbolo, xxiv, takes a less materialistic view.  ‘Illo tempore immutationis angelicae non jam caro erit et sanguis sed tantum corpus ... in caelestibus ... nulla caro sed corpora simplicia et lucida quae adpellat Apostolus Spiritualia.’  Migne, P. L. xl. col. 195.

      ⁷Origen, quoted in S. Hieron. Contra Joan. Hierosol. 25; Migne, P. L. xxiii. col. 375.

      That the resurrection body will be identical with the body we now possess is indeed the doctrine of the Church, but its conditions will be so different that it behoves us to consider what we mean by our body – or rather, as that would be a most difficult question to answer, what we do not mean by it, and to distinguish between what is essential in our body and what is only accidental.  Now it seems evident that the material molecules which compose our flesh and blood and bones, and which can be analysed and resolved into their chemical constituents, cannot be a permanent part of the body, since they are in this life in a constant state of flux, and are only the food which we have assimilated by the processes of digestion.

      The molecules, which form the various tissues of which the body is composed, change almost entirely every few years; so that there is no material identity of tissue between the body of a man at the age of twenty and his body forty years later.  And yet there is in him a real identity of body, in the sense that he has but one body, and that through all its changes of tissue it remains the same body.  The body then is not the chemical constituents of which its tissues are composed, but an organism which has the power of taking into itself, by the processes of digestion, certain material elements needed to build up its tissue, and to supply its waste, in order that it may fulfill its functions in this life.  In another life, wherein the conditions are different, we can quite conceive that the organism may supply its needs in an entirely different manner.

      We have but one example of a resurrection body – that of our Lord’s – since the bodies of others who, like Lazarus, were raised from the dead returned to the same conditions of life, and did not possess ‘glorified’ bodies.  But in our Lord’s case His appearances were evidently adapted to the needs of those to whom He manifested Himself, as when ‘while they yet believed not ... He took and did eat before them’;¹ and when, to overcome the doubts of S. Thomas, He said ‘Reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into My side: and be not faithless, but believing.’²  It would therefore not be safe to draw from them inferences concerning the resurrection body; since we have reason to believe that the function of eating will be unnecessary in heaven,³ and that the injuries sustained in this life will have no effect on the glorified body.  Two properties, however, which do not seem to come under this category, we may notice in our Lord’s risen body: That it was independent of the laws of matter; for He rose from the tomb before the stone was rolled away, and became present in the room where the disciples were assembled on Easter Day, the doors being shut for fear of the Jews; and again, that it was only recognisable at the will of our Lord; for Mary Magdalene in the garden did not at first recognise Him, nor did the two disciples who walked with Him to Emmaus, nor did S. Peter and S. John when they first saw our Lord standing upon the shore of the lake and heard His voice.

¹S. Luke 24:41, 43.              ²S. John 20:27.              ³Rev. 7:16.

      II.  Our principal source of knowledge in regard to the resurrection of the dead is S. Paul’s treatise on this subject in 1 Corinthians 15.  We shall find there not indeed all that would satisfy our curiosity, but enough to quicken our faith, and to enable us to meet some of the objections which are commonly brought against it.

      i.  The whole chapter is devoted to the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, and falls into two great divisions.  The first deals with the fact of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the fact upon which Christianity stands or falls; the second treats of the mode of the resurrection of the dead.

      The first division, which consists of thirty-four verses, seems to fall into four subdivisions.

      (1) The evidence for the fact of Christ’s resurrection, verses 1–11.

      (2) The argument from this for the resurrection of the dead, verses 12–19.

      (3) Certain doctrinal inferences from Christ’s resurrection, verses 20–28.

      (4) Certain moral consequences which flow from a belief in the resurrection of the dead, verses 29–34.

      The second division, with which we are especially concerned, contains twenty-four verses and carries us to the end of the chapter.  It may be divided into three parts:

      (1) The first deals with two questions in regard to the mode of the resurrection, viz.: How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come, verses 35–49.

      (2) Then S. Paul considers the case of those who do not pass through death, verses 50–53.

      (3) And lastly, he gives a magnificent description of our final triumph over death.

      ii.  If we now examine more closely the first part of the second division, which contains S. Paul’s treatment of the two questions, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? we shall find there practically all the light which Revelation throws upon this mysterious subject.

      The questions are not answered directly, but by analogy.  We are referred to the common, everyday fact, with which all are familiar, of the growth of a grain of wheat, or of any other seed; and our attention is especially directed to certain points, which by analogy suggest an answer to the two questions.  In regard to the first, ‘How are the dead raised up?’ it is shown that in the case of a seed the condition of its return to life is its death, that is, the dissolution of its material wrappings – ‘That which thou thyself sowest is not quickened except it die.’  It is by the process of dissolution that the germ of life, which the seed contains, is set free and asserts itself.  This germ of life shows itself by two shoots in opposite directions, one beneath the ground, the root; the other, the stem, above it.  But the tissue of which these are formed is not contained in the seed, but is derived from properties in the soil and the air, which the organism contained in the seed has the power of assimilating in order to build up its new tissue, and so to grow according to the law of its own nature.

      Here we may observe that S. Paul avoids two common mistakes: (1) that of identifying the risen body with the present body, as if they contained the same material molecules; (2) and that of destroying all connection between the two – as if the risen body were altogether a new creation without organic relation to the earthly body.

      Our Lord uses the same figure of His own death and resurrection when He says, ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’¹

¹1 S. John 12:24.

      Hence we may say that the answer which S. Paul gives to the first question, ‘How are the dead raised up?’ is simply – through the action of death itself in dissolving the molecular constituents, and setting free the organism for a new effort of life.

      This, he seems to say, is what we see in the ordinary processes of the growth of a grain of wheat, and this affords some analogy to what we may suppose will take place in the resurrection of the dead.  We must be careful to observe that nothing more than an analogy is suggested, and that nothing more definite is asserted.

      In regard to the second question, ‘With what body do they come? ‘S. Paul works out the analogy more in detail.

      He begins by pointing out that in the case of the seed, ‘that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain.’¹  The word bare (γυμνόν) calls attention to the greatness of the contrast between what is sown, and what is produced from the seed, – between the bare naked seed, stripped of all covering, stripped of its leaves, calyx, corolla, etc., and what springs from it after it has passed through death, and its molecular constituents have been dissolved by it.

¹1Cor. 15:37.

      Here he does no more than show that the analogy suggests a resurrection body far more glorious than that which is committed to the earth.

      In his next statement S. Paul adds to the analogy the assertion that God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every (each) seed its own body.’¹

¹1 Cor. 15:38.

      S. Paul does not say that God shall give to each a body as it shall please Him in the future, but that the body God gives at the resurrection is the body which was determined upon (ηθέλησεν) when God created man, and that to each is assigned a body of its own (ίδιον σωμα).  Hence that body would seem to be the development of the organism under the different conditions of the resurrection life, but according to the laws which God Himself originally imposed upon it.  Here the organism (the body) had the power of supplying its needs of life and growth, under the conditions of this world, by assimilation of certain molecular constituents by processes of digestion; very different are the conditions of the life there, where they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more,’¹ and where they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God’² – that is apparently where the functions of eating and drinking and of reproduction find no place.  In that life the body may have power to appropriate what it needs for its perfect life, yet that life may not require the assimilation of material molecules.  In other words, there may be in the life beyond an identity of the organism (the body) without an identity of molecular tissue.

¹Rev. 7:16.              ²S. Matt. 22:30.

      S. Paul then passes on to show that both in celestial and terrestrial bodies there is such a difference as to insure each body its own individual properties.  As he observes, the flesh of men and the flesh of beasts is of a different genus, and is quite distinguishable from all others, so that each here has a body of his own.  So, he says, shall it be in the resurrection of the dead: each shall retain his own corporeal individuality and identity in the body which God assigned to him.

      ii.  Then S. Paul, dropping the analogy, states four positive propositions concerning the character of the resurrection body which form the basis of all theological treatment of the subject.  The propositions are that the body—

      1. Is sown in corruption; is raised in incorruption.

      2. Is sown in dishonour; is raised in glory.

      3. Is sown in weakness; is raised in power.

      4. Is sown a natural (i.e. psychical – ψυχικόν) body; is raised a spiritual (πνευματικόν) body.

      From these four propositions we derive the four properties of the resurrection or glorified body, viz. Impassibility, Clarity (or brightness), Agility, and Subtlety.  Let us consider each a little more in detail.

      We shall understand these properties better if we consider the body as the instrument of the soul by which it is informed.  In this life the body, wonderful as it is in its construction, is but an imperfect instrument, in that it often impedes the soul in its action, and, instead of being its obedient servant, becomes its tyrannical master by the assertion of inordinate appetites.  In the life of heaven after the resurrection the body will be in all respects the perfect instrument of the soul, whose every behest it will promptly obey, since it will become possessed of the properties of Impassibility, Clarity, Agility, and Subtlety, which it will receive from the soul itself.

      1.  For impassibility, which means not only freedom from death but from all pain and suffering, S. Thomas Aquinas considers arises from the perfect subjection of the body to the rational soul, by virtue of which the soul communicates its own impassibility to the body.¹

      ¹S. Thomas Aquin., Summa: supp. quaest. lxxxii. a. 1; ed. Migne, tom. iv. col. 1312.

      2. Clarity or brightness is that property of the glorified body which causes it to shine with the glory and beauty of heaven, of which the Apostles had a glimpse when our Lord was transfigured; for His Face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light.’¹

¹S. Matt. 17:2.

      To this property of the risen body S. Paul refers in the words, ‘It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory.’  And in the parable of the Tares our Lord expressly foretells this when He says, ‘Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.’¹

¹S. Matt. 13:43.

      This brightness will be caused, as S. Thomas teaches, by the overflow of the glory of the soul upon the body.¹

¹S. Thomas, Summa: supp. quaest. lxxxv. a. 1; Migne, col. 1335.

      3. Agility is that endowment by which the risen body is able to transfer itself from place to place with the swiftness of thought at the will of the soul, which property S. Paul implies when he says ‘it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.’  In this life our movements are regulated and limited by the mobility of our bodies; in heaven they will be controlled by the mobility of the soul.  S. Thomas puts it thus: ‘The soul is not only joined to the body as its form, but as its motor, and in both cases it befits the glorified body to be entirely subject to the glorified soul, so that it may be apt and obedient to all the motions and actions of the soul.’¹

¹S. Thomas, Summa: supp. quaest. lxxxiv. a. 1; Migne, col. 1328.

      4. Subtlety, which is that quality in the risen body which enables it to penetrate other bodies without injury either to themselves or to those bodies through which they pass, is exemplified by our Lord’s risen body on Easter Day, in rising from the tomb before the stone was rolled away, and in becoming present to the disciples in the chamber with the doors closed.  This attribute does not arise from absence of dimension or extension in the glorified body, but rather from the fact that these properties are so suspended that it is able to penetrate other bodies.  S. Thomas holds that this quality arises from the dominion of the glorified soul which ‘informs’ the body when the body is called spiritual, since it is altogether subject to the spirit.¹

¹Ibid. quaest. lxxxiii. a. 1; Migne, col. 1319.

      5. When S. Paul says of the body that ‘it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body,’ he uses terms (ψυχικός and πνευματικός) which seem to imply that the body in this life is psychical, in that it is dominated by the influences of the animal or lower soul; for S. Paul, when he contrasts soul with spirit (ψυχή with πνευμα), as he does in the passage ‘May your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,’¹ is not using a division all the members of which are coordinate, since such a division could have but two members, soul and body (the spiritual and material parts of man as he now is); but in the one he employs the first two members, ‘spirit’ and ‘soul,’ fall under the general member ‘soul’ of our second division (into soul and body).  Hence in this passage S. Paul regards the ‘spirit’ as the higher part of the human soul – the rational soul; and ‘soul’ as the lower part or animal soul – animal not in the sense in which we ordinarily use the word, but as animating the body.

¹1 Thess. 5:23.

      The term ψυχικός occurs in two other passages in the New Testament, in S. James 3:15 and S. Jude 19, both of which are rendered in our version by the word ‘sensual’, i.e. under the domination of the senses, which suggests the same idea, the domination of the animal part in the human soul as distinguished from the rational part.

      A holy man is one whose rational soul or spirit, corresponding with the influences of the Holy Spirit, is able to keep more or less in subjection the impulses of the mere animal soul; a sensual man is one of whom the opposite may be said, as the passage in S. Jude implies: ‘These be they who separate themselves (make separations), sensual, having not the Spirit.’

      In the glorified body after the resurrection the rational soul freed from every evil influence will absolutely dominate the body, which will be its perfect and willing instrument, and hence is spoken of by S. Paul as ‘spiritual’ in that it is entirely subject to the spiritual part of man.

      So that all the endowments of the risen body are the result of its perfect subordination to the glorified soul, whose properties it therefore shares.

      The resurrection of the body is not merely a doctrine of theological interest, it should have great moral consequences in our lives now.  For the capacity of the body, for beatitude after the resurrection and in eternity, depends upon the discipline of the body now.

      The injuries which the body receives through accident or disease in this life will leave no mark upon the glorified body, but sin has effects which last beyond the grave.  The indulgence in unrestrained passion or unconquered sloth may have the effect of limiting the capacity of the body, as well as of the soul, for the full enjoyment of the glories of eternity.

Chapter  XII – Article  XII

      And the life everlasting.—Apostles’ Creed.

      And the life of the world to come.—Nicene Creed.

      And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting : and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.—Athanasian Creed.

Of the Life Everlasting.

      Each of the three Creeds ends with a profession of faith in an eternal life after the general resurrection, the Athanasian Creed stating explicitly, what the others imply, the twofold character of that life according as we are among the lost or the saved.

      This is the undoubted teaching of Holy Scripture, for in the last parable our Lord spoke we read, ‘And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal’;¹ and the everlasting punishment is described, in a previous verse of the parable, as everlasting fire’; – ‘Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.’²  It is most solemnly suggestive that the very last words of our Lord’s public teaching should have been: ‘These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal,’ – a glorious promise, but a solemn and awful warning.

¹S. Matt. 25:46.                   ²S. Matt. 25:41.

      There are some who ‘catch at the straw’ of evasion of the plain meaning of our Lord’s words, by claiming that the word translated ‘everlasting’ (αιώνιον) does not always signify ‘everlasting’, but rather means ‘ages’.  The answer is simple, that this word is used of the life of God Himself, ‘according to the commandment of the everlasting God’ (του αιωνιόν Θεου),¹ and that the same word is used in the second member of this sentence: ‘but the righteous into life eternal.’  By every principle of interpretation the word, αιώνιος, must be taken in precisely the same sense in both clauses; so that if the life of the righteous is without end, the punishment of the lost must be of the same duration.  This does not necessarily assert that there may not be mitigations, as Newman suggests; but it does require, what it says, that the state into which the lost enter shall be eternal, and shall be a state of punishment.

      ¹Rom. 16:26 ; cf. also Septuagint; Gen. 21:33; Job 33:12; Isaiah 24:4; 40:28.

      But to turn to the glorious future in eternity of the saved, let us consider in what this ‘life everlasting’ consists.

      I.  The Collect in the Burial office teaches us to pray, ‘that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of Thy holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in Thy eternal and everlasting glory,’ and it would be difficult to find a phrase in which better to express ‘the life everlasting’ of the saved.

      The ideal of heaven set before us is the attainment of the perfect consummation of all the powers both of body and soul.  Its realisation for each individual will be limited by the capacity for it developed in this life; for heaven will be the working out of our life here.

      There will be beatitude of every faculty which has been rightly cultivated here according to the will of God, and according to the pattern given us in our Lord’s life on earth – beatitude, that is, both of body and soul.  The properties of the glorified body we have treated in the previous Article; it remains, therefore, only for us to consider the characteristics of the life of the soul in eternity.

      The two great powers of the soul, to which all the other powers are subsidiary, are the Intellect and the Will; for the two supreme passions of human nature are to know and to love.  And the perfect satisfaction of these two passions will be heaven; for it will leave nothing to be desired.

      This does not mean that the power to know God and to love God will be the same in all – that will depend upon the capacity of each, and the capacity upon the development reached in this life; but the satisfaction will be perfect in each, for it will be according to the full measure of the capacity of each soul.  The vessels will not all be of equal capacity, but every vessel will be filled to the brim.

      Since all the powers of our nature find their highest expression in an act of the Intellect or of the Will, it will be sufficient for our purpose in treating of the life everlasting in heaven, if we consider the perfect development of these two powers in eternity.

      But first it is necessary to examine the significance of the word ‘perfection’, as we use it of the service of God, both in this life and the life to come.

      What is perfection in a creature, in man?  Is it the attainment of a certain measure or standard – the same in all?  If not this, what then does it signify ?

      It is evident that the only absolute perfection is God’s perfection, and that in a creature perfection must ever be relative, and will be the full attainment of its Creator’s purpose for it.  In other words, perfection in us is not quantitative, but qualitative; it is not the amount of virtues we have developed, but the sole quality of having fulfilled God’s purpose for us.

      That the perfection of a creature is the fulfillment of its Maker’s purpose may be illustrated from the creatures of our own hands.  If we take the most intricate and complicated piece of machinery and compare it with the most simple, we shall see that perfection consists not in the size or intricacy of the machine, but in its realising and fulfilling the purpose for which it was made.  For instance, compare the engines of a great steamship with a common needle.  The one displays the marvellous ingenuity of its maker in adopting all its varied parts to the one purpose of propelling the ship through the ocean at a certain rate of speed per hour.  It easily gets out of order, and frequently fails to attain the speed the maker expected.  The other is perhaps the simplest of all machines – a tiny bar of steel, sharpened at one end and pierced at the other, but the fact that it remains substantially the same today as a hundred years ago, is the best witness that it perfectly fulfills the purpose for which it was made.  Hence the perfection of the needle is at least as great, and perhaps superior, to that of the engines of the steamship, for it seems to have reached its completion, while the constant improvements to engines seem to imply that they have not reached theirs.

      And this corresponds well with the signification of the various forms of the Greek word τελειότης, which we translate by ‘perfection’.  It comes from τέλος, which we often render by our word ‘end’, but which does not mean (in good Greek) the cessation of a thing, but its completion.  Hence the word, as it stands in such passages as ‘Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’;¹ ‘And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfection,’² clearly means the attainment of the end for which we were created; for we cannot be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect in any other sense, and the attainment of this end is charity, which is therefore called the bond of perfectness.

¹S. Matt. 5:48.                     ²Col. 3:24.

      S. Paul, however, distinctly makes this perfection to consist in attainment to the ‘measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,’¹ in conformity to His image,² but our blessed Lord reveals to us the perfection of His own life in such words as ‘My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me,’ and ‘I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me,’³ so that we are to attain to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ by the fulfillment of God’s purpose for us, and in this we reach our perfection.

¹Eph. 4:23.              ²Rom. 8:29.                   ³S. John 4:34, 35.

      This perfection in its fullness belongs to the life to come, for we can neither know perfectly, nor love perfectly, till in the Beatific Vision we see God face to face.  Of the imperfection of our knowledge here S. Paul reminds us when he writes, ‘For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I fully know even as also I have been fully known,’ and two verses before he says, ‘For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.’¹

¹1 Cor. 13:12 and 9:10.

      And in regard to love, it is evident there must be an increase in the perfectness of our love when it is no longer marred by sin, and when we see face to face the object of our love, ‘the King in His beauty,’ and ‘the land that is very far off.’¹

¹Isa. 33:27.

      And yet Holy Scripture tells us of ‘perfect love’¹ even in this life, and speaks of men as ‘perfect’ while still in the flesh.²  From this it has been inferred that there are two degrees of perfection: the one proper to our life in this world, the other to our life in heaven.  They are called in ascetic theology Perfection ‘in via’ and ‘in patria’, and they are related as the ‘means’ is to the ‘end.’  The man is spoken of as perfect here who, like S. Paul, ‘forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, presses on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.’³  Such an one, using all the helps and means of grace within his reach, becomes perfect ‘in via’; for he fulfills the purposes of God for him at that time.  But ‘in patria’, having attained to the end for which he was created, he reaches a different and higher degree of perfection, and this abides.

¹S. John 4:17, 18.                 ²1 Cor. 2:6; Phil. 3:15; Col. 4:12; S. Jam. 3:2.

³Cf. Phil. 3:13, 14.

      II.  From the consideration of the sense in which we use the term ‘perfection’ of creatures, we must turn back to an investigation of that perfection of the Intellect and Will, in which consists the beatitude of the soul in ‘life everlasting’.

      Beatitude has been defined by S. Thomas as ‘a perfect good which entirely satisfies our desires’, and he proceeds to show that men cannot find ‘beatitude’ in created things, but only in the uncreated Good – that is, in the possession of God.¹

¹S. Thomas, Summa, 1^a. 2^ae quaest. ii. a. 8; ed. Migne, tom. ii. col. 31.

      For God, and God alone, is at once the first Principle from which we receive our being and all other good things, and the final End to which our intellectual powers, rightly used, ceaselessly tend.  But created good things, since they are finite and transitory, can never satisfy the desires of an immortal soul; as S. Augustine well expresses it: ‘Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it rests in Thee.’¹

¹S. Aug. Confess.; Migne, P. L. xxxii. col. 661.

      The beatitude of heaven, which is also spoken of as the glory of heaven, may be considered as twofold: the glory of the soul and the glory of the body.  Of the latter we treated in the last Article.

      The beatitude or glory of the soul in heaven consists essentially in its vital union with God, and this union is thought to be perfected by a twofold act, – by the Beatific Vision in which the Intellect immediately sees God, and by a beatified Love with which the Will loves Him.  By these two acts the Blessed possess and enjoy God.¹

      ¹This treatment of the beatitude of the soul is taken from the author’s Catholic Faith and Practice, Part II. pp. 442–448.

      i.  The Beatific Vision has been defined as a distinct and intuitive, but nevertheless not comprehensive, knowledge of God as He is in Himself.

      It is distinct or clear, as differing from a knowledge of God, acquired either by reason or by faith, since such knowledge has always a certain obscurity.¹  It is intuitive or immediate in the sense that God is seen in Himself directly, and not through the medium of creatures.  Thus the Beatific Vision is distinguished from abstract or deductive knowledge; for in these God is apprehended by effects, whilst in the Beatific Vision we see God directly and in Himself as really present to the intellect.

¹Cf. 1 Cor. 13:12.

      We are not, however, able to see God, even in the Beatific Vision, comprehensively, since a finite intellect cannot perfectly comprehend God, who is infinite.

      It is, of course, with the eyes of the soul, not with bodily eyes, that God is seen.  This follows from the fact that God is incorporeal.  Nor can any created intellect in its own natural strength enjoy the Beatific Vision, for there is no proportion between the Divine Nature and the highest created intelligence.

      There must therefore be a transformation or elevation of the natural powers of the soul to enable it to apprehend the Beatific Vision.  For as the natural eye requires two things to enable it to see – the presence of an object, and light in order that the image of the object may be received; so the intellect in order to see God requires not only the proximity of the Divine Essence, but also an interior gift by which it is elevated to an act above its natural powers.

      This quality in the intellect of the Blessed, theologians call ‘the light of glory,’ a term which is used frequently in the Fathers, and which was adopted by the Council of Vienne.¹

¹Labbé et Cossart. Conc., tom. xv. col. 43.

      The light of glory bestows three gifts upon the intellect of the Blessed.

      (i)  It raises it to a mode of apprehension altogether Divine; so that they are able to know God directly and immediately, as He knows Himself.

      (ii)  It increases the capacity of the intellect, so that it may be capable of immeasurable and unlimited good.

      (iii)  It determines and assists the intellect in its apprehension of the Beatific Vision, as light enables the eye to produce, not the object which it sees, but the Vision of it.

      While the Saints in heaven all intuitively behold God face to face, they do not all apprehend Him in an equal degree.

      The first part of this proposition requires no proof, since we are told again and again in Holy Scripture that we shall see God face to face, and shall know even as we are known.

      That we shall not, however, all behold God in the same degree, S. Paul implies when, speaking of the state of the Blessed after the Resurrection, he says, ‘One star differeth from another star in glory.  So also is the resurrection of the dead.’¹  And our Lord said, ‘In My Father’s house are many mansions.’²  Besides, Holy Scripture in many places declares that God will render to each one according to his works,³ and that ‘he which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.’⁴

¹1 Cor. 15:41.                      ²S. John 14:2.

³Cf. Prov. 24:12; S. Matt. 16:27; 1 Cor. 3:8.              ⁴2 Cor. 9:6.

      This inequality follows from the difference of capacity in the soul, which depends partly upon the talents which God bestowed upon it in creating it, but still more upon the fidelity with which those talents have been developed.

      Their inequality, however, will be no cause of envy among the elect, since each one will enjoy the Beatific Vision to his full capacity, and this for him will leave nothing more to be desired.

      Two objects are seen in the Beatific Vision: The first is God Himself, as seen in Himself; the second is the creatures, which are known in God.  The first object constitutes the essential, the latter the accidental, beatitude of the Saints.

      In the Beatific Vision we see God Himself: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; Truth, Justice, Love, etc.

      The Blessed see, besides God, many other things, past, present, and future, and especially those which belong to their condition.  In regard to this, theologians have taught that the knowledge of each of the blessed will be threefold:—

      (1) As elevated to the order of grace, they will understand in a more perfect manner the mysteries in which they believed when they were upon earth; they will know the other Saints and their fellow citizens in heaven, and especially those whom they knew and loved on earth with a supernatural affection.

      (2) As part of the universe, they will know all the laws of nature; and it is thought by some, that those who in their work for God gave themselves to the study of any particular science, will probably have special joy in penetrating the principles of that science.

      (3) As individuals, holding public or private office, each will know all things which appertain to his former state.  A Bishop, for instance, will see especially all that pertains to the government of the Church.  A mother will perceive those things which relate to her children.  Those persons and matters in which they were interested, when they were on earth, will remain special objects of care to the Saints in heaven, and they will pray for them.  This last, of course, is only before the Day of Judgment.

      ii.  From the intuitive knowledge of God in the Beatific Vision flows a perfect and beatified love, so that the Saints love God fully and perfectly; for S. Paul says: ‘Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.’¹  The Will is infallibly attracted to the highest Good.  In the Beatific Vision the intellect recognises God as the highest Good, therefore the will reaches out to God with most burning and perfect love.

¹1 Cor. 13:8.

      As the light of glory is bestowed upon the Saints in heaven to perfect the intellect and to enable it to know God absolutely, so in the Blessed the will is strengthened by the habit of charity, which enables it to love God perfectly as the Supreme Good.

      Theologians teach that the effect of this beatific Love may be regarded as twofold: ecstasy and union with God.

      Ecstasy may be described as the state in which a man, so to speak, passes out of himself into the possession of the object of his love.  Thus the Saints are so drawn to God in thought and affection that all thoughts and motives of self-love become entirely extinguished in them, and they are, as it were, dead to self and alive only to God; seeking nothing but His glory, as S. Paul says: ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’¹  The other effect of beatific Love is perfect union with God.  By this union the Saints are joined so closely to God through the sublime and perpetual contemplation of the Divine Essence (since they always behold the Face of God), and by continual imitation of the Divine Character, and perfect conformity with the Divine Will, that they are in a sense transformed into the likeness of God.  Thus the Saints are so consumed with the love of God that they all seem to be absorbed and immersed in the abyss of Divinity, and yet without loss of individuality, for they always remain distinct from Him.

¹Gal. 2:20.

      Thus, in the beatification of the Intellect and Will, the two supreme passions of man’s nature – to know and to love – find their perfect satisfaction in the life everlasting.¹

      ¹This is the view of a large school, of whom Lessius and Suarez, following S. Bonaventura, were the leaders.  There are, however, two other opinions: that of the Scotists, who hold that formal Beatitude consists essentially in the beatific Love; and that of the Thomists, who teach that it consists in the Beatific vision alone; so that Love, although proceeding from the vision and pertaining to the state of happiness, yet does not pertain to its essence.

      iii.  So far we have treated only of the positive joys of heaven, but revelation reminds us that there are negative joys also; that there shall be no more sorrow and suffering, no more doubts and fears, no more sin, no more death; for ‘God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’¹

¹Rev. 21:4.

      Then, too, in heaven, as we have said, there will be no loss of our individuality.  We shall not be merely swallowed up in one great ocean of goodness in which all personality will be lost, but we shall each drink in the joys of that Vision and shall be individually satisfied with it.

      iv.  And lastly, heaven is eternal – that life will be everlasting.  In this life, to spoil every joy, is the certainty that it will not last.  Here is ceaseless change; but of His kingdom there shall be no end.’¹

¹S. Luke 1:33.

      Eternity is not an infinite succession of years, but that which exists necessarily and has no beginning, no end, and no change.  Eternity is distinguished from immutability too, in that immutability is only the negation of change, while eternity expresses something more, duration and perseverance in being together with the negation of measure.  As S. Thomas (adopting the definition of Boethius) says, ‘Eternity is a simultaneously full and perfect possession of interminable life.’¹  Eternity, therefore, is to time what immensity is to space.  Both belong to God necessarily, because He is infinite and Self-existing, and to the Saints in heaven by virtue of their union with God.

¹S. Thomas, Summa, Pars. I. quaest. x. a. 1; ed. Migne, tom. i. col. 521.

      The Beatific Vision and the Beatific Love of God are to the Saints an endless source of unspeakable joy and supreme happiness.  As the Psalmist tells us: ‘They shall be satisfied with the plenteousness of Thy house; and Thou shalt give them drink of Thy pleasures, as out of the river.  For with Thee is the well of life; and in Thy light shall they see light.’¹  And again, ‘As for me, I will behold Thy presence in righteousness: and when I awake up after Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it.’²

¹Ps. 36:8, 9.                                    ²Ps. 17:15.

LAUS DEO

Part  III – Appendices

Appendix  A

      In this Appendix will be found, arranged chronologically, all the important Creed forms quoted or referred to in our treatment of the Apostles’ Creed, together with a note of the date and source of each.

      For convenience of reference we have given the section and page in Hahn’s Bibliothek der Symbole (3rd edition) on which each Creed may be found, and also, where the Creed finds a place in Heurtley’s Harmonia Symbolica, we have noted the page.

      In some few cases a different reading from Hahn’s has been followed.

S. Irenaeeus, Church of Southern gaul (c. 180),

Contr. Haeres. lib. 1. cap. ix et x.

      Contr. Haeres. lib. i. cap. ix. 4.—Ούτω δε και ο τον κανόνα της αληθείας ακλινη εν εαυτω κατέχυν, ον δια του βαπτίσματος είληφε ... cap. x. 1  Η μεν γαρ έκκλησία, καίπερ καθ όλης της οικουμέυης έως περάτων της γης διεσπαρμένη, παρα δε των αποστόλων και των εκείνων μαθητων παραλαβουσα την εις ένα θεον Πατέρα παντοκράτορα, τον πεποιηκότα τον ουρανον και την γην και τας θαλάσσης και πάντα τα εν αυτοις, πίστιν.  Και εις ένα Χριστον 'Ιησουν, τον υιον του θεου, τον σαρκωθέντα υπερ της ημετέρας σωτηρίας.  Καί είς Πνευμα άγιον, το δια των προφητων κεκηρυχοs τας οικονομίας και τας ελεύσεις, και την εκ παρθένου γέννησιν, και το πάθοs, και την έγερσιν εκ νεκρων και την ένσαρκον εις τους ουρανους ανάληψιν του ηγαπημένου Χριστου 'Ιησου του κυρίου ημων και την εκ των ουρανων εν τη δόξη του Πατρος παρουσίαν αυτου επι το ανακεφαλαιώσασθαι τα πάντα και αναστησαι πασαν σάρκα πάσης ανθρωπότητος, ινα Χριστω 'Ιησου τω κυρίω ημων και θεω και σωτηρι και βασιλει κατα την ευδοκίαν του πατρος του αοράτου παν γόνυ κάμψη επουρανίων και επιyείων και καταχθονίων, και πασα γλωσσα εξομολοyήσηται αυτω και κρίσιν δικαίαν ες τοις πασι ποιήσηται·  τα μεν πνευματικα της πονηρίας και αγγέλους [τους] παραβεβηκότας και εν αποστασία γεγονότας και τους ασεβεις και αδίκους και ανομουs και βλασφήμους των ανθρώπων εις το αιώνιον πυρ πέμψη·  τοιs δε δικαίοις και οσίοις και ταs εντολας αυτου τετρηκόσι και εν τη αyάπη αυτου διαμεμενηκόσι, τοις [μεν] απ' αρχης, τοις δε εκ μετανοίας, ζωην χαρισάμενος αφθαρσίαν δωρήσηται και δόξαν αίωνίαν περιποιήση.—§ v. Hahn, pp. 6, 7, Heurtley, pp. 7, 8, 9.

S. Irenaeus, Contr. Haeres. lib. III. cap. iv. 1, 2.

Quid autem si neque Apostoli quidem Scripturas reliquissent nobis, nonne oportebat ordinem sequi traditionis, quam tradiderunt iis quibus committebant Ecclesias?  Cui ordinationi assentiunt multae gentes barbarorum, eorum qui in Christum credunt sine charta et atramento scriptam habentes per Spiritum in cordibus suis salutem, et ueterem traditionem diligenter custodientes, In unum Deum credentes, Fabricatorem [factorem, Hahn] coeli et terrae, et omnium quae in eis sunt, per Christum Iesum Dei Filium; Qui propter eminentissimam erga figmentum suum dilectionem, eam quae esset ex Uirgine generationem sustinuit, ipse per se hominem adunans Deo: Et passus sub Pontio Pilato, Et resurgens, Et in claritate receptus, In gloria nenturus, Salvator eorum qui saluantur et Iudex eorum qui iudicantur; et mittens in ignem aeternum transfiguratores ueritatis et contemptores Patris sui et aduentus eius.—Hahn, p. 7; Heurtley, p. 11.

Tertullian, Church of Carthage (c. 203),

De Praescript. Haeret. cap. xiii.

      Regula est autem fidei, ... illa scilicet qua creditur, Unum omnino Deum esse, nec alium praeter mundi conditorem, qui uniuersa de nihilo produxerit.  Per Uerbum suum primo omnium demissum Id Uerbum Filium eius appellatum in nomine Dei uarie uisum a patriarchis, in prophetis semper auditum, Postremo delatum ex Spiritu Patris Dei et uirtute, in Uirginem Mariam.  Carnem factum in utero eius, et ex ea natum, egisse Jesum Christum.  Exinde praedicasse nouam legem et nouam promissionem regni coelorum; uirtutes fecisse.  Fixum cruci; Tertia die resurrexisse; In coelos ereptum; Sedisse ad dexteram Patris; Misisse uicariam uim Spiritus sancti, qui credentes agat; Uenturum cum claritate ad sumendos sanctos in uitae aeternae et promissorum coelestium fructum, et ad profanos adiudicandos igni perpetuo, Facta utriusque partis resuscitatione, cum carnis restitutione.—§ ix. Hahn, p. 9; Heurtley, p. 15.

Tertullian (c. 210), De Uirginibus Uelandis, cap. i.

      Regula quidem fidei una omnino est, sola, immobilis, et irreformabilis, credendi scilicet, in unicum Deum Omnipotentem, mundi conditorem; Et Filium eius, Iesum Christum, natum ex Uirgine Maria, Crucifixum sub Pontio Pilato, Tertia die resuscitatum a mortuis, Receptum in coelis, Sedentem nunc ad dexteram Patris, Uenturum iudicare uiuos et mortuos, Per carnis etiam resurrectionem.—Hahn, p. 10; Heurtley, p. 16.

Tertullian (c. 210), Aduersus Praxeam, cap. ii.

      Nos uero et semper, et nunc magis, ut instructiores per Paracletum, Deductorem scilicet omnis ueritatis, Unicum quidem Deum credimus: Sub hac tamen dispensatione, quam oeconomiam dicimus, ut unici Dei sit et Filius, Sermo ipsius, qui ex ipso processerit, Per quem omnia facta sunt, Et sine quo factum est nihil.  Hunc missum a Patre in Uirginem, et ex ea natum, Hominem et Deum, Filium hominis et Filium Dei, et cognominatum Iesum Christum: Hunc passum; Hunc mortuum et sepultum, secundum Scripturas; Et resuscitatum a Patre, Et in coelos resumptum, Sedere ad dexteram Patris: Uenturum iudicare uiuos et mortuos: Qui exinde miserit, secundum promissionem suam, a Patre, Spiritum Sanctum, Paracletum, Sanctificatorem fidei eorum qui credunt in Patrem et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum.—Hahn, p. 10; Heurtley, p. 16.

S. Cyprian, Church of Carthage (c. 255), Epist. lxxvi. Ad Magnum.

      Quod si aliquis illud opponit ut dicat, eandem Nouatianum legem tenere, quam catholica ecclesia teneat, eodem symbolo quo et nos baptizare, eundem nosse Deum Patrem, eundem Filium Christum, eundem Spiritum Sanctum, ... nam cum dicunt Credis in remissionem peccatorum et uitam aeternam per sanctam ecclesiam?  Mentiuntur in interrogatione, quando non habeant ecclesiam.

      Epist. lxx.  Ad Ianuarium et caeteros episcopos Numidas.  Sed et ipsa interrogatio, quae fit in baptismo, testis est ueritatis.  Nam cum dicimus Credis in uitam aeternam et remissionem peccatorum per sanctam ecclesiam? intelligimus, remissionem peccatorum non nisi in ecclesia dari, apud haereticos autem, ubi ecclesia non sit, non posse peccata dimitti.—§ xii. Hahn, pp. 16, 17; Heurtley, p. 20.

Pope Dionysius of Rome, Church of Rome (259–269).  Fragment contained in S. Athanasius’ De decretis Nicenae Synodi, cap. xxvi; also in Epist. 1. Dionysii adv. Sabellianos.

      Άλλα πεπιστευκέναι χρη εις θεον Πατέρα παντοκράτορα και εις Χριστον Ίησουν τον υιον αυτου και εις το αγιον Πνευμα, ηνωσθαι δε τω θεω των όλων τον λόγον, ... ούτω γαρ αν και θεία τριας το άγιον κήρυγμα της μοναρχίας διασώζοιτο.—Hahn, p. 16 (note).

Novatian (c. 269), De Trinitate sancta de regula fidei.

      Regula exigit ueritatis, ut primo omnium credamus in Deum Patrem et Dominum omnipotentem, id est, rerum omnium perfectissimum Conditorem. ...

      Eadem regula ueritatis docet nos credere post Patrem etiam in Filium Dei Christum Iesum, Dominum Deum nostrum, sed Dei Filium. ...

      Sed enim ordo rationis et fidei auctoritas digestis uocibus et literis Domini admonet nos post haec credere etiam in Spiritum Sanctum, elim ecclesiae repromissum, sed statutis temporum, opportunitatibus redditum.—§ x. Hahn, pp. 15, 16.

Creed of S. Gregory Thaumaturgus (260–270).  Έκθεσις πίστεως κατα αποκάλυψιν Γρηγορίου επισκόπου Νεοκαισαρείας.

      Εις Θεός, Πατηρ λόγου ζωντος, σοφίας υφεστώσης και δυνάμεως, και χαρακτηρος αϊδίου, τέλειος τελείου γεννήτωρ, πατηρ υιου μονογενους Εις κύριος, μόνος εκ μόνου, θεος εκ θεου, χαρακτηρ και εικων της θεότητος, λόγος ενεργός, σοφία της των όλων συστάσεως περιεκτικη και δύναμις της όλης κτίσεως ποιητική, υιος αληθινος αληθινου πατρός, αόρατος αοράτου και άφθαρτος αφθάρτου και αθάνατος αθανάτου και αίδιος αιδίου.  Και εν Πνευμα άγιον, εκ θεου την ύπαρξιν έχον και δι’ υιου πεφηνος [δηλαδη τοις ανθρώποις], εικων του υιου, τελείου τελεία ζων ζώντων αιτία [πηγη αγία], αγιότης αγιασμου χορηγός, εν ω φανερουται θεος ο πατηρ ο επι πάντων και εν πασι, και θεος ο υιος ο δια πάντων· τριας τελεία, δόξη και αϊδιότητι και βασιλεία μη μεριζομένη μηδε απαλλοτριουμένη.  Ούτε ουν κτιστόν τι η δουλον εν τη τριάδι, ούτε επείσακτον, ως πρότερον μεν ουχ υπάρχον, ύστερον δε επεισελθόν· ούτε γαρ ενέλιπέ ποτε υιος πατρί, ούτε υιω πνευμα, αλλ’ άτρεπτος και αναλλοίωτος η αυτη τριας αεί.—§ clxxxv.  Hahn, pp. 253, 254, 255.

Aphraates (330),¹ Homilies of Aphraates.

      This is the faith: that we believe in God the Lord over all, Who created heaven, earth, the seas and all that therein is; Who created man after his own image, and Who gave the law to Moses and sent of His Spirit into the prophets, and Who also sent His Messenger into the world, and that we believe in the resurrection of the dead, and also believe in the mystery of Baptism.

      This is the faith of the Church of God.—§ xvi.  Hahn, pp. 20, 21,

      ¹This Creed is found in a Syrian volume of Homilies.  The homilies themselves inform us that they were written between 336 and 345 by a man in the Persian Empire who could speak Syrian.  From other sources we learn that these homilies are the work of Aphraates, Monastery Bishop of Mar Mattai, on the east bank of the Tigris near Mossul-Nineveh.  The Creed is found at the end of the first homily.

Creed of Marcellus of Ancyra, Church of Rome (c. 341), Epiphan., Haeres. 52.

      Πιστεύω εις Θεον παντοκράτορα Και εις Χριστον Ιησουν, τον υιον αυτου τον μονογενη, τον Κύριον ημων·  Τον γεννηθέντα εκ Πνεύματος αγίου και Μαρίας της Παρθένου·  Τον επι Ποντίου Πιλάτου σταυρωθέντα και ταφέντα·  Και τη Τρίτη ημέρα αναστάντα εκ των νεκρων·  Αναβάντα εις τους ουρανους, και καθήμενον εν δεξια του Πατρός·  Όθεν ερχεται κρίνειν ζωντας και νεκρούς·  Και εις το άγιον Πνευμα·  Αγίαν εκκλησίαν·  Άφεσιν αμαρτίων·  Σαρκος ανάστασιν·  Ζωην αιώνιον.—§ xvii.  Hahn, pp. 22, 23; Heurtley, pp. 24, 25.

S. Ambrose, Church of Milan (c. 367), Expositio Symboli ad initiandos.

      Credo in Deum Patrem Omnipotentem.  Et in Iesum Christum filium eius unicum, dominum nostrum, qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Uirgine, sub Pontio Pilato passus et sepultus, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis, ascendit in coelum, sedet ad dexteram Patris, inde uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos.  Et in Spiritum sanctum, sanctam ecclesiam, remissionem peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem.—Caspari, ii. 126, 127.—§ xix.  Hahn, p. 24, 25 (ascribed to Rufinus).

Rufinus, Church of Aquileia (c. 390), Expositio Symboli Apostolorum.

      Credo in Deo Patre omnipotente inuisibili et impassibili; Et in Christo Iesu, unico Filio eius domino nostro, qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto ex uirgine Maria, crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato et sepultus, desceudit in inferna, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis, ascendit in coelos, sedet ad dexteram Patris, inde uenturus est iudicare uiuos et mortuos; Et in Spiritu Sancto, sanctam ecclesiam, remissionem peccatorum; huius carnis resurrectionem.—§ xxxvi.  Hahn, p. 42; Heurtley, p. 26.

Nicetas of Remesiana (c. 400), Explanatio Symboli ad Competentes.

      Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem (coeli et terrae creatorem:) Et in Filium eius Iesum Christum, natum ex Spiritu Sancto et ex uirgine Maria, sub Pontio Pilato passum crucifixum et mortuum; Tertia die resurrexit uiuus a mortuis, ascendit in coelos, sedet ad dexteram (Dei) Patris, inde uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos: Et in Spiritum Sanctum, sanctam ecclesiam catholicam, communionem sanctorum, in remissionem peccatorum (hujus) carnis resurrectionem et in uitam aeternam. —§ xl.  Hahn, p. 47.

Priscillianus, Bishop of Avila, The Spanish Church (c. 385).

      (Credimus) unum Deum Patrem omnipotentem, et unum Dominum Iesum Christum, natum ex Maria uirgine ex Spiritu Sancto, passum sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixum sepultum; tertia die resurrexisse, ascendisse in coelos, sedere ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis inde uenturum et iudicaturum de uiuis et mortuis.  (Credimus) in sanctam ecclesiam, Sanctum Spiritum baptismum salutare; (Credimus) in remissionem peccatorum; (Credimus) in resurrectionem carnis.—§ liii.  Hahn, p. 64.

Victricius, Bishop of Rouen, Church of Gaul (390–409),

Liber de laude Sanctorum.

      (Confitemur Deum Patrem confitemur Deum Filium), de Maria Uirgine, passus est, crucifixus, sepultus; tertia die resurrexit a mortuis, ascendit in coelum, sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris, inde uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos; Et in Spiritu Sancto.—§ lx.  Hahn, p. 70.

S. Augustinus, Church of Carthage (First quarter of fifth century).

Sermo ccxv., In Redditione Symboli.

      Credimus in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, uniuersorum creatorem, regem saeculorum, immortalem et inuisibilem.  Credimus et in Filium eius [unicum] Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, natum de Spiritum Sancto ex uirgine Maria; qui crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato et sepultus est, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis, adscendit ad caelos, sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris, inde uenturus est iudicare uiuos et mortuos.  Credamus et in Spiritum Sanctum, remissionem peccatorum, resurrectionem carnis et uitam aeternam per sanctam ecclesiam.—§ xlvii.  Hahn, p. 58.

      Other slightly different forms of the Creed may be found in S. Augustine’s works.  In his various sermons to catechumens on the tradition and rendition of the Creed, in his book De fide et Symbolo, in the Enchiridion, etc., we may find with more or less fullness the various articles of the Creed of the Church of Carthage as it existed in S. Augustine’s day.

S. Petrus Chrysologus, Bishop of Ravenna, Church of Ravenna (433–458),

Sermones in Symbolo.

      Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem; Et in Christum Iesum, Filium eius unicum, Dominum nostrum; Qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Uirgine; Qui sub Pontio Pilato crucifixus est, et sepultus.  Tertia die resurrexit a mortuis; Ascendit in coelos; Sedet ad dexteram Patris; Inde uenturus est iudicare uiuos et mortuos; Credo in Spiritum Sanctum; Sanctam ecclesiam Catholicam; Remissionem peccatorum; Carnis resurrectionem; Uitam aeternam.—§ xxxv.  Hahn, p. 41; Heurtley, p. 48.

S. Maximus of Turin, Church of Turin (c. 450), De exposition Symboli.

      Credo in Deum Patrem Omnipotentem; Et in Iesum Christum Filium eius unicum, Dominum nostrum; Qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Uirgine; Qui sub Pontio Pilato crucifixus est, et sepultus; Tertia die resurrexit a mortuis; Ascendit in coelum; Sedet ad dexteram Patris: Inde uenturus est iudicare uiuos et mortuos; Et in Spiritum Sanctum; Sanctam Ecclesiam; Remissionem peccatorum; Carnis resurrectionem.—§ xxxiv.  Hahn, p. 40 ; Heurtley, p. 50.

Faustus, Bishop of Riez, Church of Southern Gaul (c. 460)

(reconstructed), Libri duo de Spiritu Sancto and various homilies.

      Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem; (Credo) et in Filium eius Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria uirgine, crucifixus et sepultus, tertia die resurrexit, ascendit ad coelos, sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis, inde uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos; Credo in Spiritum Sanctum, sanctam ecclesiam catholicam, sanctorum communionem, abremissa peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem, uitam aeternam.—§ lxi.  Hahn, p. 70.

S. Casarius, Archbishop of Arles, Church of Southern Gaul (503–543)

(reconstructed), Sermo ccxliv., Pseudo-Augustine.

      (Credo) in Deum Patrem omnipotentem; (Credo) et in Iesum Christum, filium eius unicum, Dominum nostrum, conceptum de Spiritu Sancto, natum ex Maria uirgine, passum sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixum mortuum et sepultum; ad inferna desceudit, tertia die a mortuis resurrexisse, eum ascendisse in caelis; sedet in dextera Patris, inde uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos.  Credo in Spiritum Sanctum, sanctam ecclesiam catholicam, sanctorum communionem, remissionem peccatorum, resurrectionem carnis et uitam aeternam.—§ lxii.  Hahn, pp. 72, 73.

Cyprian, Bishop of Toulon, Church of Southern Gaul (c. 540),

Epist. ad Maximum, Episc. Genevensem.

      Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem; Credo et in Iesum Christum filium eius unigenitum, Dominum nostrum, qui conceptus de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria uirgine, Passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus et sepultus.  Tertia die resurrexit a mortuis, ascendit in coelos, sedet ad dexteram Patris, inde venturus iudicaturus uiuos ac mortuos.—Not found in Hahn; cf. Burn, pp. 225, 226.

Facundus Hermianensis, African Church (547),

Epistola fidei catholicae in defensione trium capitulorum.

      Credimus in unum Deum Patrem omnipotentem; Et in unum Dominum, Iesum Christum Filium eius; Natum ex Spiritu Sancto et Maria uirgine; Qui sub Pontio Pilato crucifixus est et sepultus; Tertia die surrexit a mortuis; Ascendit in coelum; Sedet ad dexteram Patris; Unde uenturus est iudicare vivos et mortuos; ‘et reliqua’.—§ li.  Hahn, p. 63; Heurtley, p. 54.

S. Ildefonsus, Bishop of Toledo, Spanish Church (659–669),

Liber de cognitione Baptismi, cap. 35.

      Credo in Deum Patrem omnipoteutem.  Et in Iesum Christum, Filium eius unicum, Deum et dominum nostrum, qui natus est de Spiritu sancto et Maria Uirgine, sub Pontio Pilato crucifixus et sepultus, descendit ad inferna, tertia die resurrexit vivus a mortuis, ascendit in coelum, sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis; inde uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos.  Credo in Sanctum Spiritum, Sanctam ecclesiam Catholicam, remissionem peccatorum, Carnis resurrectionem et uitam aeternam. —§ lv.  Hahn, 66.

Martin, Archbishop of Bracara (Braga), Spanish Church (c. 572),

De correction rusticorum.

      Credo in Deum Patrem Omnipotentem, Et in Iesu Christo, Filio ejus unico, Deo et domino nostro, qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto a Maria Uirgine, passus sub Pontio Pilato, Crucifixus et Sepultus, descendit ad inferna, tertia die resurrexit uiuus a mortuis, ascendit in coelos, sedet ad dexteram Patris, inde venturus judicare uiuos et mortuos.  Credo in sanctum Spiritum, Sanctam ecclesiam catholicam, remissionem omnium peccatorum, carnis resurrectionum et uitam oeternam.—§ liv.  Hahn, pp. 65, 66.

Venantius Fortunatus, Southern Gaul (close of sixth century), Expositio Symboli.

      Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem; Et in Iesum Christum unicum Filium; Qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Uirgine; Crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato; Descendit ad infernum; Tertia die resurrexit; Ascendit in coelum; Sedet ad dexteram Patris; Iudicaturus uiuos et mortuos; Credo in Sancto Spiritu; Sanctam Ecclesiam; Remissionem peccatorum; Resurrectionem carnis.—§ xxxviii.  Hahn, p. 45; Heurtley, p. 55.

Pirminius (or Priminius) (c. 750), French Church. Dicta abbatis Pirminii (or Priminii) de singulis libris canonicis scarapsus.  Mabillon, Vetera Analecta, pp. 65–73, Paris, 1723.

      Credo in Deum Patrem Omnipotentem, Creatorem coeli et terrae; Et in Iesum Christum, Filium eius unicum, Dominum nostrum; Qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Uirgine; Passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, Mortuus et sepultus; Descendit ad inferna; Tertia die resurrexit a mortuis; Ascendit ad coelos; Sedit ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis; Inde uenturus est iudicare uiuos et mortuos.  Credo in Spiritum Sanctum; Sanctam Ecclesiam Catholicam; Sanctorum communionem; Remissionem peccatorum; Carnis resurrectionem; Uitam Hternam. — § xcii.  Hahn, p. 96; Heurtley, p. 71.

Etherius, Bishop of Osma and Beatus, the Presbyter, Spanish Church (785), Etherii episcopi Uxamensis et Beati presbyteri adversus Elipandum archiepiscopum Toletanum libri duo.

      Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem; Et in Iesum Christum, Filium eius unicum, Deum et Dominum nostrum; Qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto et Maria Uirgine; Passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, et sepultus; Descendit ad inferna; Tertia die resurrexit uiuus a mortuis; Ascendit in coelos; Sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis; Inde uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos.  Credo in Spiritum sanctum; Sanctam ecclesiam Catholicam; Remissionem omnium peccatorum; Carnis resurrectionem; Et uitam aeternam.—§ lvi.  Hahn, pp. 66, 67; Heurtley, p. 73.

Creed of the Bangor Antiphonary, Irish Church (seventh century).

      Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, inuisibilem omnium creaturarum uisibilium et inuisibilium conditorem.  Credo et in Iesum Christum, Filium eius unicum Dominum nostrum, Deum omnipotentem, conceptum de Spiritu Sancto, natum de Maria Uirgine, passum sub Pontio Pilato, qui crucifixus et sepultus, descendit ad inferos, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis, ascendit in coelis, seditque ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis, exinde uenturus iudicare uiuos ac mortuos.  Credo et in Spiritum Sanctum, Deum omnipotentem, unam habentem substantiam cum Patre et Filio; sanctam esse ecclesiam catholicam, abremissa peccatorum, sanctorum communionem, carnis resurrectionem.  Credo uitam post mortem et uitam aeternam in gloria Christi.—§ lxxvi.  Hahn, pp. 83, 84, 85.

Sacramentarium Gallicanum, Codex Bobiensis (seventh century).

      Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, creatorem coeli et terrae; Credo in Iesum Christum, Filium eius unigenitum sempiternum.  Conceptum de Spiritu Sancto, natum ex Maria Uirgine; Passum sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixum, mortuum et sepultum; Descendit ad inferna; Tertia die resurrexit a mortuis; Ascendit ad coelos; Sedit ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis; Inde uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos.  Credo in Spiritum Sanctum; Sanctum Ecclesiam Catholicam; Sanctorum communionem; Remissionem peccatorum; Carnis resurrectionem; Uitam aeternam.—§ lxvi.  Hahn, p. 75; Heurtley, p. 68.

Sacramentarium Gallicanum, Codex Bobiensis (seventh century).

      Petrus dixit, Credo in Deum Patrem, omnipotentem; Ioannes dixit, Credo in Iesum Christum, Filium eius unicum, Deum et Dominum nostrum; Iacobus dixit, Natum de Maria Uirgine per Spiritum Sanctum; Andreas dixit, Passum sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixum et sepultum; Philippus dixit, Descendit ad inferna; Thomas dixit, Tertia die resurrexit; Bartholomaeus dixit, Ascendit in coelos; sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis; Matthaeus dixit, Inde uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos; Jacobus Alphaei dixit, Credo in Spiritum Sanctum; Simon Zelotes dixit, Credo in Ecclesiam sanctum; Judas Iacobi dixit, Per baptismum sanctum remissionem peccatorum; Matthias dixit, Carnis resurrectionem in uitam aeternam.— § lxvi.  Hahn, p. 76; Heurtley, p. 67.

Creed of the Missale Gallicanum (second century),

Mabillon De Liturgia Gallicana tres libri.

      Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem creatorem coeli et terrae.  Credo et in Iesum Christum, Filium eius unigenitum sempiternum, qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus est de Maria Uirgine, passus est sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus et sepultus; descendit ad inferna, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis, ascendit Uictor ad coelos, sedit ad dexteram Patris omnipotentis: inde uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos.  Credo in Sanctum Spiritum, sanctam ecclesiam Catholicam, sanctorum communionem, remissionem peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem, uitam aeternam.—§ lxvii.  Hahn, pp. 77, 78; Heurtley, pp. 69, 70.

Codex Laudianus,¹ Church unknown (eighth century).  In the Bodleian Library.

      Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem; Et in Christo Iesu, Filium eius unicum, Dominum nostrum; Qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto et Maria Uirgine; Qui sub Pontio Pilato crucifixus est, et sepultus; Tertia die resurrexit a mortuis; Ascendit in coelis; Sedet ad dextera Patris; Unde uenturus est iudicare uiuos et mortuos: Et in Spiritu Sancto; Sancta Ecclesia; Remissione peccatorum; Carnis resurrectione.—§ xx.  Hahn, p. 25; Heurtley, p. 63.

      ¹Wetstein believes this to have been the identical copy which was used by Bede, and assigns it to the beginning of the seventh century.

Creed in the Psalter of King Athelstan (ninth century),

British Museum, Galba A., xviii.

      Πιστεύω εις θεον Πατέρα παντοκράτορα·  και εις Χριστον Ιησουν, υιον αυτου τον μονογενη, τον κύριον ημων, τον γεννηθέντα εκ πνεύματος αγίου και Μαρίας της παρθένου, τον επι Ποντίου Πιλάτου σταυρωθέντα και ταφέντα, τη τρίτη ημέρα αναστάντα εκ νεκρων, αναβάντα εις τους ουρανούς, καθήμενον εν δεξια του Πατρός, όθεν έρχεται κριναι ζωντας και νεκρούς και εις πνευμα άγιον, αγίαν εκκλησιάν, άφεσιν αναρτιων, σαρκος ανάστασιν.—§ xvii. Hahn, pp. 23, 24.

Creed of the Mozarabic Liturgy (tenth century).

      Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, Et in Iesum Christum, Filium eius unicum, Dominum nostrum, natum de Spiritu sancto ex utero Mariae Uirginis, Passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus et sepultus, tertia die resurrexit uiuus a mortuis, ascendit in coelum, sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis, inde venturus iudicaturus uiuus et mortuos.  Credo in sanctum Spiritum, sanctam ecclesiam Catholicam, sanctorum Communionem, remissionem omnium peccatorum, carnis hujus resurrectionem et uitam aeternam.—§ lviii.  Hahn, p. 69.

Appendix B

      In this Appendix will be found the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creeds with their respective bases the Creeds of Caesarea and Jerusalem.

Creed of Eusebius of Caesarea (325), Socrates, Hist. Eccles.  Lib. i. 8.

      Πιστεύομεν εις ένα θεον Πατέρα παντοκράτορα, τον των τε και αοράτων ποιητήν.  Και εις ένα κύριον Ιησουν Χριστόν, τον του θεου λόγον, θεον εκ θεου, φως εκ φωτός, ζωην εκ ζωης, υιον μονογενη, πρωτότοκον πάσης κτίσεως προ πάντων των αιώνων εκ του θεου πατρός γεγεννημένον δι’ ου και εγένετο τα πάντα·  τον δια την ημετέραν σωτηρίαν σαρκωθέντα και εν ανθρώποις πολιτευσάμενον, και παθόντα, και αναστάντα τη Τρίτη ημέρα, και ανελθόντα προς τον Πατέρα, και ήξοντα πάλιν εν δόξη κριναι ζωντας και νεκρούς.  πιστεύομεν και εις εν Πνευμα άγιον.—§ cxxiii.  Hahn, 131, 132.

Creed of the Council of Niciea.

      Πιστεύομεν εις ένα θεον Πατέρα παντοκράτορα, πάντων όπατων τε και αοράτων ποιητήν.  Και εις ένα κύριον Ιησουν Χριστόν, τον υιον του θεου, γεννηθέντα εκ του πατρος μονογενη—τουτ εστιν εκ της ουσίας του πατρός— θεον εκ θεου φως εκ φωτός, θεον αληθινον εκ θεου αληθινου, γεννηθέντα, ου ποιηθέντα ομοούσιον τω Πατρί, δι’ ου τα πάντα εγένετο τά τε εν τω ουρανω και τα εν τη γη (or επι της γης)·  του δι’ ημας τους ανθρώπους και δια την ημετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα και σαρκωθέντα, επανθρωπήσαντα, παθόντα, και ασαστάντα τη τριτη ημέρα, ανελθόντα εις [τους] ουρανούς, ερχόμενον κριναι ζωντας και νεκρούς.  Και εις το άγιον Πνευμα.—§ cxlii.  Hahn, 160, 161.

S. Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 350), (reconstructed), Catechesis vi–xviii.

      Πιστεύομεν εις ένα θεον Πατέρα παντοκράτορα, ποιητην ουρανου καί γης, ορατων τε πάντων και αοράτων.  Και εις ένα κύριον Ιησουν Χριστόν, τον υιον του θεου, τον μονογενη τον εκ του πατροs γεννηθέντα θεον αληθινον προ πάντων των αιώνων, δι’ ον τα πάντα εγένετο·  σαρκωθέντα και επανθρωπήσαντα, σταυρωθέντα και ταφέντα, αναστάντα τη τριτη ημέρα, και ανελθόντα ειs τους ουρανους και καθίσαντα εκ δεξιων του Πατρός, και ερχόμενον εν δόξη κριναι ζωνταs και νεκρούς·  ου τηs βασιλείας ουκ έσται τέλος.  Και ειs εν άγιον Πνευμα, τόν παράκλητον, το λαλησαν εν τοιs προφήταις.  Και εις εν βάπτισμα μετανοίας εις αφεσιν αμαρτιων, και εις μίαν αyίαν καθολικην εκκλησίαν και εις σαρκοs ανάστασιν, και εις ζωην αιώνιον.—§ cxxiv.  Hahn, 132, 133, 134.

So-called Creed of the Council of Constantinople (381).

      Πιστεύομεν εις ένα θεον Πατέρα παντοκράτορα, ποιητην ουρανου και γης, ορατων τε πάντων και αοράτων.  Και εις ένα κύριον Ιησουν Χριστόν, τον υιον του θεου τον μονογενη, τον εκ του Πατρός yεννηθέντα προ πάντων των αιώνων, φως εκ φωτός, θεον άληθινον εκ θεου αληθινου, yεννηθέντα ου ποιηθέντα, ομοούσιον τω Πατρί, δι’ ου τα πάντα εyένετο·  τον δι’ ημας τους ανθρώπους και δια την ημετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα εκ των ουρανων και σαρκωθέντα εκ Πνεύματος αγίου και Μαρίας της παρθένου και επανθρωπήσαντα, σταυρωθέντα τε υπερ ημων επi ΙΙοντίου Πιλάτου και παθόντα και ταφέντα και αναστάντα τη τρίτη ημέρα κατά τας γραφάς, και ανελθόντα εις τους ουρανους, και καθεζόμενον εκ δεξιων του Πατρός, και πάλιν ερχόμενον μετα δόξης κριναι ζωντας και νεκρους·  ου της βασιλείας ουκ έσται τέλσς.  Και εις το Πνευμα το άyιον το κύριον το ζωοποιόν, το εκ του Πατρός εκπορευόμενον, το συν Πατρι και υιω συμπροσκυνούμενον και συνδοξαζόμενον, το λαλησαν δια των προφητων, εις μίαν, αγίαν, καθολικην και αποστολικην εκκλησίαν.  ομολογουμεν εν βάπτισμα εις άφεσιν αμαρτιων, προσδοκωμεν ανάστασιν νεκρων και ζωην του μελλσντος αιωνης.  Αμήν.— § cxliv. Hahn, pp. 162–165.

Appendix C

The Athanasian Creed

  1. Quicunque uult saluus esse ante omnia opus est ut teneat catholicam fidem.

  2. quam nisi quisque integram inuiolatamque seruauerit, absque dubio in aeternam peribit.

  3. Fides autem catholica haec est, ut unum Deum in Trinitate, et Trinitatem in Unitate ueneremur;

  4. neque confundentes personas neque substantiam separantes.

  5. Alia est enim persona Patris, alia Filii, alia Spiritus Sancti,

  6. sed Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti una est diuinitas, aequalis gloria, coaeterna maiestas.

  7. Qualis Pater talis Filius talis et Spiritus Sanctus.

  8. Increatus Pater increatus Filius increatus et Spiritus Sanctus.

  9. Immensus Pater immensus Filius immensus et Spiritus Sanctus.

10. AEternus Pater aeternus Filius aeternus et Spiritus Sanctus.

11. Et tamen non tres aeterni sed unus aeternus:

12. sicut non tres increati nec tres immensi, sed unus increatus et unus immensus.

13. Similiter omnipotens Pater omnipotens Filius omnipotens et Spiritus Sanctus,

14. et tamen non tres omnipotentes sed unus omnipotens.

15. ita Deus Pater Deus Filius Deus et Spiritus Sanctus,

16. et tamen non tres Dii sed unus est Deus.

17. Ita dominus Pater dominus Filius dominus et Spiritus Sanctus,

18. et tamen non tres domini sed unus est dominus.

19. Quia sicut singillatim unamquamque personam et Deum et dominum confiteri christiana ueritate compellimur; ita tres Deos aut dominos dicere catholica religione prohibemur.

20. Pater a nullo est factus nec creatus nec genitus.

21. Filius a Patre solo est, non factus nec creatus sed genitus.

22. Spiritus Sanctus a Patre et Filio, non factus nec creatus nec genitus, sed procedens.

23. Unus ergo Pater non tres Patres, unus Filius non tres Filii, unus Spiritus Sanctus non tres Spiritus Sancti.

24. Et in hac Trinitate nihil prius aut posterius, nihil maius aut minus, sed totae tres personae coaeternae sibi sunt et coaequales:

25. ita ut per omnia, sicut iam supradictum est, et Trinitas in Unitate et Unitas in Trinitate ueneranda sit.

26. Qui uult ergo saluus esse ita de Trinitate sentiat.

27. Sed necessarium est ad aeternam salutem, ut incarnationem quoque domini nostri Iesu Christi fideliter credat.

28. Est ergo fides recta ut credamus et confiteamur, quia dominus noster Iesus Christus, Dei Filius, Deus et homo est.

29. Deus est ex substantia Patris ante saecula genitus, et homo est ex substantia matris in saeculo natus.

30. Perfectus Deus perfectus homo ex anima rationali et humana carne subsistens.

31. AEqualis Patri secundum diuinitatem, minor Patri secundum humanitatem.

32. Qui licet Deus sit et homo non duo tamen sed unus est Christus.

33. Unus autem, non conuersione diuinitatis in carne, sed assumptione humanitatis in Deo.

34. Unus omnino non confusione substantiae sed unitate personae.

35. Nam sicut anima rationalis et caro unus est homo, ita Deus et homo unus est Christus:

36. qui passus est pro salute nostra, descendit ad inferna, resurrexit a mortuis.

37. ascendit ad caelos, sedet ad dexteram Patris: inde uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos,

38. ad cuius aduentum omnes homines resurgere habent cum corporibus suis et reddituri sunt de factis propriis rationem.

39. Et qui bona egerunt ibunt in uitam aeternam, qui uero mala in ignem aeternam.

40. Haec est fides catholica, quam nisi quisque fideliter firmiterque crediderit, saluus esse non poterit.

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