Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/595

Rh CREEDS 561 creed. On the contrary, it is said in the first canon of the council that &quot; the creed of the 318 bishops assembled at Nicsea shall not be made void, but remain for ever.&quot; The probable explanation is that the original Nicene Creed became gradually enlarged in the East, as the dogmatic instinct of the church developed under the pressure of the varying forms of Arian, Apollinarian, and semi-Allan heresy. It was deemed necessary to meet the growth of heretical opinions by additional growths of authoritative Catholic opinion, and as the additions to the creed were really expansions of its implied thought and not in any sense arbitrary external supplements they came to be identified with the original creed, and to pass under its name. This view of the matter is favoured by the fact that the third oecumenical council, held at Ephesus in 431, chiefly for the condemnation of the Nestorian heresy, which was supposed to separate not only the natures but the person of Christ, enjoined in its seventh canon &quot;that no person shall be allowed to bring forward, or to write, or to compose any other creed besides that which was settled by the Holy Fathers who were assembled in the city of Nicsea.&quot; As the fuller creed was almost certainly well known by this time (it having been already in existence before 381), such a statement seems only consistent with the idea that the two creeds were regarded by the Ephesine fathers as virtually identical. For the first time, at the Council of Chalcedon, which was held twenty years later, or in 451, the enlarged creed is found following the original and simpler form of the creed. It is appended as forming a ratification of &quot;the same faith,&quot; and is distinctly attributed to &quot; the 150 fathers who afterwards assembled in the great city of Constantinople&quot; (in 381). The shorter form, or the exposition (lidiffit) of the 318, is assigned the first place, but the other is added, &quot; that those things also should be maintained which were defined by the 150 Holy Fathers of Constantinople for the talcing away of the heresies ivhich had then sprung up, and the confirmation of the same, our Catholic and apostolic faith.&quot; At the same time there is evidence, from what took place at the council, that there was still a large number of bishops who greatly preferred the creed in its original and simpler form, and it appears long to have maintained its ground alongside of the others in the Eastern Churches. In the same churches the clause &quot; God of God,&quot; which, appearing in the original, had dropped out of the expanded creed, was restored in course of time, although the real date of the restoration is unknown ; and in addition to this clause the well-known &quot; filioque&quot; clause was added by the Western Churches at the Council of Toledo in the year 589. From this date no changes have been made in the &quot; Nicene&quot; Creed. It has remained, without the &quot;filioque&quot; clause, the oecumenical creed of the Eastern Church ; and with the addition of this clause it has taken its place amongst the three great creeds of the Western Church. III. What is known as the &quot; Apostles &quot; Creed claims our notice next as the second of the three oecumenical creeds in chronological order. The growth of this creed is involved in considerable obscurity. The tradition which ascribes it to the apostles themselves, it is needless to say, has no authority, and does not reach beyond the 5th century, if it can be carried back so far. The definite source of the legend is supposed to be two sermons spuriously attributed to St Augustine, and found in the appendix to his works. In point of fact, as we have already seen, the creeds prevalent in the Roman and North African Churches, the original representatives of Latin Christendom, were of the briefest character up to the end of the 3d century. The creeds of Cyprian and Novatian already quoted are specimen?. The first example of a more expanded creed after the manner of the &quot;Apostles &quot; is to be found singularly enough in a Greek writer, Epiphanius, who in the 72d book of his Treatise on Heresies quotes the confession of faith presented by Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra in Galatia, to Julius, bishop of Home, as follows &quot;I believe in God the Father Almighty ;. . . and in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried, and on the third day rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father, whence He is coming to judge the quick and the dead ; and in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Church, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the flesh, everlastin^ life&quot; (Epiphan., Ilccr. 52). Marcellus had been one of the most active of the orthodox party at the Council of Niccca, and on bjs return to his diocese had distinguished himself with such zeal against the Arians that he was accused of having fallen into the opposite error of the Sabellians. He was accord ingly deposed from his see by a synod held at Constan tinople in 336, and betook himself to Rome. It was while there, with the view of exhibiting his orthodoxy, that he addressed to Julius the above profession of faith, which he describes as the faith which he &quot; learnt and was taught from the Holy Scriptures.&quot; As he was himself a Greek, he pro bably expressed himself in the Greek language. In any case, it is in Greek that the creed has been preserved to us. It has been doubted from this circumstance, as well as from the position of Marcellus himself, whether his creed can be taken as representing the Roman creed of the time to which it belongs. It has been supposed too expanded for this, as it is beyond question that &quot; the Roman Church used at baptism, and still uses, a much less elaborate form.&quot; It is not improbable, however, that while the earlier and briefer form was retained in the baptismal service, a larger formulary of faith had also grown up from the original simplicity of this form, in obedience to the general growth of the dogmatic sentiment in the West as in the East. It is certain that within half a century from this date, or about the year 390, there is to be found a creed equally detailed the creed not merely of the Church of Aquileia, of which Rufinus was a presbyter, but of the Church of Rome, with which he compares the other, pointing out the differences betwixt the two. Still in neither of these creed- forms, nor yet in those found in the writings of St Augustine, do we approach the complete detail presented by the Apostles Creed as now received. The chief clauses awanting are those relating to the descent into hell and the communion of saints. Generally also, the expression descriptive of the church is simply &quot;The Holy Church,&quot; instead of the &quot;Holy Catholic Church.&quot; &quot;The earliest creed to be met with entirely identical with the present formula occurs in a short treatise published by Mabillon from an ancient manuscript entitled Libellus Pinninii de singulis libris canonicis Scarapsus (scriptis ?) The creed occurs twice in Pirminius s treatise. In the first instance the story is repeated of the several articles having been contributed each by a several apostle, and each article is assigned to its supposed contributor. The other creed, which is identical with the former, is given as it was used in the baptismal service.&quot; (Heurtly, Harmonia Symb. pp. 70-71). There is little known of the life of Pirminius, but he seems to have been active as a missionary in France and Germany in the 8th century, and the date of his death is &quot; about the year 758.&quot; Although the &quot; Apostles &quot; Creed was no doubt substantially in existence long before this, probably from the end of the 4th century, there is no his torical evidence of its reception in its completed form till this period, or about the middle of the 8th century, or more than four centuries later than the original form of the Nicene Creed. VT T T