Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/593

Rh century after the death of St John, that we meet with any definite summaries of dogmatic belief in Christian literature, and even then there is no evidence that these summaries had any authoritative character. They expressed, no doubt, the belief of the churches to which the writers belonged ; but half a century after the time of Irenaeus (250), it is evident from the statements of Cyprian, then bishop of Carthage, that the baptismal creed of the North African Church, w r hich was at this period more dogmatic in its tendencies than any other church in the East or the West, was of a comparatively brief character. The passage of Cyprian is found in one of his letters (Ep. 76), addressed &quot; to Magnus, his son,&quot; on baptizing the Novatians, and implies plainly that the only addition to the original baptismal formula which had then obtained any authority in the Church of Carthage, was a clause as follows &quot; Dost thou believe in the remission of sins and eternal life through the holy church?&quot; 1 a clause of interrogation which, he adds, they (the Novatians) could not honestly answer &quot; because they have no church.&quot; The creed which is found in the well-known treatise of Irenoeus against Heresies (Adv. Hcereses] in three different forms (i. 10, iii. 4, iv. 33) is of a far more elaborate character even in its simplest form, which is all that can be quoted here. It particularizes on the part of the true or spiritual disciple a &quot; complete faith (TTIO-TIS oi&amp;lt;Xr)po&amp;lt;s) in one God Almighty, of whom are all things; and in the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom are all things, and His dispensations by which the Son of God became man ; also a firm trust in the Spirit of God, who hath set forth the dispensations of the Father and the Son, dwelling with each successive race of men, as the Father willed &quot; (iv. 33, 7). The creed of Tertullian is also found in three several forms in his writings (1) De Prescript. Hceret., c. xiii. ; (2) De Virg. Velancl, c. i. ; (3) Adv. Prax., c. ii.), in the first mentioned of these writings in a more detailed form than in the others. The shortest of the three, or the creed in the treatise De Virginibus Velandis, may be held to be the most primitive in form. We give it as an abbre viated specimen of the others. &quot; The rule of faith is indeed altogether one, irremovable, and irreformable the rule, to wit, of believing in one only God omnipotent, the Maker of the universe, and His Son Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised again from the dead on the third day, received in the heavens, sitting now at the right hand of the Father, about to come to judge the quick and the dead through the resurrection of the flesh as well [as of the spirit].&quot; In the preface to Origen s great work De Principiis there is also a summary of articles of faith professing to have been &quot; clearly delivered in the teaching of the apostles,&quot; which, no doubt, fairly represents the faith of the Alexandrian Church in his time. The amplified and explanatory language of the creed, however, bears clearly the trace of Origen s own hand, and gives it even less a character of general authority than those previously mentioned. Turning to the Church of Rome in the second half of the 3d century, we meet with the fragments of a creed in a treatise of Novatian (De Trin., Migne, iii. 886) of a more simple and popular character, and corresponding, therefore, more nearly to the form which the creed ultimately assumed in the West. It only requires faith &quot; in God tbe Father and Lord omnipotent, the most perfect Maker of all things ;. . also in the Son of God, Christ Jesus, our Lord God, but Son of God ;. . . also in the Holy Spirit,&quot; Novatian, at first a presbyter of the Church of Rome, - Credis remissionem peccatorura et vitam oeternam per sanctam ecclesiam ? 559 was afterwards a schismatic bishop, whose followers, we have seen, were placed by Cyprian beyond the pale of the church,_but there seems no reason to doubt that his &quot;Regula Veritatis&quot; (the same form of expression, it deserves to be noticed, as that used by Tertullian) represents the Roman creed of his time. ^ These may be said to represent all the distinctive author ities in creed literature before the formation of an authorized creed at Nicsea in 325. There is sometimes also quoted a creed of Gregory Thaumaturgus, who was a pupil of Origen at Ca3sarea in Palestine a creed both more elaborate and precise in its theological terms than that of his great teacher; but besides that its form is rather oratorical than confessional, this creed cannot be said to present any distinctive features. It is sufficiently evident that &quot;confessions of faith,&quot; or &quot;rules or standards of truth,&quot; existed in the Ante-Nicene Church from the age of Irenseus, or the last quarter of the 2d century, and there is every reason to conclude that they existed even before this, although we get no trace of them in Christian literature. Candidates for baptism were, no doubt, always required to profess their belief in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. But it is equally evident that there was no rule of faith universally accepted by the church, or authoritatively imposed by any Catholic body up to the time of the Nicene Council. Each church seems to have had its own &quot;regula veritatis,&quot; or &quot; confessio fidei,&quot; identical in substance, but varying in form and language, and varying even in the same church in completeness. The simpler, less detailed, or less theological forms are plainly at once the more original and the more generally or popularly accepted forms. There is further supposed to be a marked distinction between the creeds of the Eastern and the creeds of the Western Church, although the division of Latin or Western Church is only beginning to emerge at the period we have reached. Irenoeus, although a bishop of the West, was an Oriental Greek in language and theology. Hippolytus, who was bishop in or near Rome in the second half of the 3d century, still wrote and taught in Greek. Tertullian and Cyprian of the North African Church are the only re presentatives of Latin theology. Even thus early, however&quot;, 1 the creeds of the Oriental Church are supposed to show a ten dency to theological expansion or dogmatic adaptation which is not observable in the Western the creed of Novatian, for example, which has been already quoted. &quot; The Eastern creeds, while they have all along retained their characteristic notes, were at first by far the more flexible, readily adapting themselves to meet the exigencies of the church, in her maintenance of the faith once delivered to the saints against the perversions of heretics, with which the East, owing to the genius of its subtle-witted people, was infested much more than the West The case of the Western creeds was widely different. With them no council ever interfered. They were left to the custody of the several churches, while at the same time each church seems to have felt itsel &quot; at liberty to make additions or alterations to some extent where occasion required.&quot; These remarks of Professor Heurtly in his Harmonia Symbolica (1858) point mainly to a later period than the end of the 3d cen tury, and to a classification which he himself makes of the creeds into a Western group typified by the &quot; Apostles Creed, and an Eastern represented by the creed of Nicaea. But the distinction, to some extent, underlies the inchoate creeds of the Ante-Nicene Church as well, and helps us to understand the true historical order of the creeds, which has been disturbed by the traditionary prestige assigned to what is known as the Apostles Creed. There was no such creed as yet, nor till long afterwards, in the familiar form iii which it is now held by the Western churches. In