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That is, you cannot rise again unless you have first gone down. It is the ascent of the soul we believe in to-day, and not its resurrection, much less the resurrection of the body. Now a word in regard to another of the great historic creeds. The third one to be shaped was the Athanasian Creed. Curiously named most of these are.
Do not mistake me; I believe as strongly as ever I did that the constitution of the Church of England is all wrong; that the arrogance and assumption of her priesthood is essentially opposed to the very idea of the kingdom of Heaven; that the Athanasian creed is unintelligible, and where intelligible, cruel; but where I find my Lord preached as only one who understands Him can preach Him, and as I never could preach Him, and never heard Him preached before, even faults great as those shall be to me as merest accidents.
Olinthus Gregory, a man of unimpeached orthodoxy; who met me by the frank avowal, that the Nicene Creed was "a great mistake." He said, that the Arian and the Athanasian difference was not very vital; and that the Scriptural truth lay beyond the Nicene doctrine, which fell short on the same side as Arianism had done.
"His controversy was not a defence of the Athanasian Creed, I know well," said Sheffield; "for the subject came into Upton's Article-lecture; it was with Priestley; but, whatever it was, divines would only think it all very fine, just as his 'Sermons on Prophecy. It is another question whether they would recognize the worth either of the one or of the other. They receive the scholastic terms about the Trinity just as they receive the doctrine that the Pope is Antichrist. When Horsley says the latter, or something of the kind, good old clergymen say, 'Certainly, certainly, oh yes, it's the old Church-of-England doctrine, thinking it right, indeed, to be maintained, but not caring themselves to maintain it, or at most professing it just when mentioned, but not really thinking about it from one year's end to the other. And so with regard to the doctrine of the Trinity, they say, 'the great Horsley, 'the powerful Horsley; they don't indeed dispute his doctrine, but they don't care about it; they look on him as a doughty champion, armed cap-
On Wednesday I go for the first time to Westminster Abbey, on Epiphany, to hear the Athanasian Creed chanted. I have as yet had no time for sight-seeing, as the days are so short that necessary visits take all my time. No one goes out in a carriage till after two, as the servants dine at one, and in the morning early the footman is employed in the house.
But though we may claim not to be bound by the Augsburg Confession, or by the Lambeth articles, or the Synod of Dort, or the Bull Unigenitus, it does not follow that, if there is a Church at all, there is no more binding authority in the theology of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds.
But the stubborn mind of an infidel, is guarded by secret, incurable suspicion; and the Arian, or Socinian, who has seriously rejected the doctrine of a Trinity, will not be shaken by the most plausible evidence of an Athanasian miracle. The Vandals and the Ostrogoths persevered in the profession of Arianism till the final ruin of the kingdoms which they had founded in Africa and Italy.
The Athanasian Creed, however, might fairly be said to stand on a somewhat different footing. If it had been a pain and a stumbling block only to those who had adopted Whiston's opinions about the Trinity, men to whom the ordinary prayers could not fail to give offence, it would have been clear that such persons had no standing-ground in the ministry of the Church of England.
The occasional additions, too the Athanasian Creed, the Benedictus, Deus misereatur, and Omnia opera, which her father had been used to read at certain great feasts; and the beautiful Litany. What could he want more? where could he find so much?
At another time he asked whether the anathemas of the Athanasian Creed applied to all its clauses; for instance, whether it is necessary to salvation to hold that there is "unus æternus" as the Latin has it; or "such as the Father, ... such the Holy Ghost;" or that the Holy Ghost is "by Himself God and Lord;" or that Christ is one "by the taking of the manhood into God?" He could get no answer.
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