CHAPTER XII - OF THE USE OF CREEDS

THUS far my purpose has been mainly historical, to trace the development of the chief creeds of Christendom to the point at which each attains the form in which it is used today. It remains to justify this use. With this object it will be necessary to review briefly some of the theological statements made by way of explanation of historical facts.

"Trahit sua quemque uoluntas."

Faith still includes an act of will to believe all that the Scriptures have spoken as summarised in the creeds. Its reasonableness is found in recognition of the continuity of thought which unites the saints of today with the Church of the first century in one communion and fellowship.

I. The Early Use of a Baptismal Creed

Our historic faith began with a simple confession of loyalty to Christ, of belief in His Person, which carried with it belief in His words. The Church required this as the minimum of knowledge, which a Christian ought to have and believe to his soul's health.

Confession of faith in Jesus as the Lord, or the Son of God, was to a Jew or a proselyte the pledge of faith in one living and true God, who had visited His people Israel. 
It was inseparably bound up with the teaching of the Lord's Prayer. The cobwebs which Scribes and Pharisees had spun out of the law were brushed aside. They knew that they were treading the way of life in the light of God's presence, having seen the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The heathen had more to learn, if he had nothing to unlearn. For him, as for the Jew, it was all summed up in the Baptismal Formula, when he was baptized

"into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."

The Old Roman Creed, which we have traced back to the generation immediately succeeding the apostles, is to be regarded as containing a summary of the catechetical instruction given c.100 in the ancient Church to which both S. Peter and S. Paul had ministered in the great capital where they laid down their lives for their faith. It was truly a Rule of apostolic teaching, and the strength and simplicity of its style secured for it acceptance in other Churches from very early times. At that time the Roman Church was bilingual, and it is probable that its Latin and Greek forms were composed by the same hand. With one possible exception, this form remained unaltered to the fifth century. Enough has been said elsewhere of the exact and rigid fidelity with which it was preserved. It was only given to the catechumen (Traditio symboli) when he had been taught and tested, and he was required to repeat it publicly before his baptism (Redditio symboli). The earliest expositions delivered at the Traditio which have come down to us belong to the fourth century. Both Cyril and Augustine [Cyril Hieros. Cat, v.12; Aug. Serm. ad Catech, i.] lay stress on the prohibition to commit it to writing. 
It was to be written in the heart only. This strong feeling lasted on to the fifth century. Peter Chrysologus, Archbishop of Ravenna, taught:

"Let the mind hold and the memory guard this pledge of hope, this decree of salvation, his symbol of life, this safeguard of faith, lest vile paper depreciate the precious gift of the divinity, lest black ink obscure the mystery of light, lest an unworthy and profane hearer hold the secret of God."
[Serm.59.]

His rhetoric strikes one as artificial and inflated, and marks the period when the custom died out. It is not possible to assign a precise date to its origin, which was probably contemporaneous with the first use of fixed forms in the second century.

II. The History of the Term "Symbolum"

The use of a distinctive name for the Baptismal Creed marks the beginning of a new stage in its history; but it is not easy to determine when that stage was reached. As in the New Testament, such a phrase as "the Faith" referred rather to the subject-matter of teaching than to any form; so, in subsequent history, we must beware of giving too precise a meaning to terms like Justin Martyr's παρειλήφαμεν, δεδιδάγμεθα, μεμαθήκαμεν, or even to phrases of Irenaeus:

I.9.4, τὸν κανόνα τῆς ἀληθείας;
I.22.1, regulam ueritatis;
III.3.1, traditionem apostolorum.

There is a controversy, as yet unsettled, as to the meaning of the term Rule. 
Some writers maintain that the creed itself, the bare form, was the Rule of Faith; others, that the Rule was the enlarged interpretation of the creed, though the creed would certainly be the groundwork of the interpretation. [Kattenbusch, ii.p.81,]

Certainly Irenaeus included in his Rule of Truth some articles not yet added to the Roman Creed, which he probably knew. Nor are they found in the Creed of Gaul, when it comes to light in the fourth century,
e.g. III.4: "Maker of heaven and earth," taught with an anti-Gnostic reference.

Tertullian, however, proves a much more definite use of a fixed form, identified with the Rule of Faith common to the Churches of Rome and Africa, as a tessera, or token of fellowship.

The illustration is derived from the tessera hospitalitatis, an earthenware token, which two friends divided and passed on to their descendants, making the duty of friendship hereditary. 
Tertullian's words may refer to the way in which the creed was used as a badge of a Christian's profession, admitting him to social meals in churches where he was a stranger.

This seems to be the root-idea of the term symbolum also as a Christian phrase. The word is used by Tertullian several times, but only in two passages with any reference to baptism or the use of a formal creed. He calls baptism symbolum mortis, where the word is easy to explain as a sign or sacrament in our sense. And he challenges Marcion, as a merchant in spiritual wares, to show the symbolum or token of their genuineness,

adv. Marc. v.1:
"Quamobrem, Pontice nauclere, si nunquam furtiuas merces uel illicitas in acatos tuas recepisti, si nullum omnino onus auertisti uel adulterasti, cautior utique et fidelior in dei rebus, edas uelim nobis, quo symbolo susceperis apostolum Paulum, quis ilium tituli charactere percusserit, quis transmiserit tibi, quis imposuerit, ut possis eum constanter exponere."

Kattenbusch [ii. p. SO, n.43.] points out that the term had affinities to the terms sacramentum and regula.

It is indeed doubtful if the term had a technical sense in Tertullian's time, but it is plain that it was on the point of acquiring one. 
Cyprian, in his letter to Magnus, arguing against the validity of Novatianist baptism, deals with the objection that these "schismatics used the same symbol and law of the symbol and questions," [Ep. ad Magn.: "symbolum et lex symboli et quaestiones,"] where the phrase "law of the symbol" appears to refer to the creed. But Firmilian of Cappadocia, in his letter to Cyprian, uses the term symbolum Trinitatis of the Baptismal Formula, so that it is not quite safe to appropriate the word symbolum as it stands in Cyprian's sentence for the complete creed.

The questions to which Cyprian refers are plainly the short interrogative creed put to the candidates at the very moment of baptism, which we find coexisting with the longer declaratory form certainly from the third century. Perhaps it is to such a form that Tertullian refers,

de Cor. Mil. 3: "Dehinc ter mergitamur amplius aliquid respondentes quam Dominus in euangelio determinauit."

Many more of these forms might be quoted, [Hahn,³ pp.34-86.] but with the exception of the short Creed of Cyril it is impossible to believe that any of them represent earlier forms than the declaratory creeds to be connected with the Churches to which they belong. [On this ground I differ from Lumby, p.18.]

In the fourth century the term symbolum was firmly established in the West, and was identified by Augustine with the Rule of Faith, though Cyril still clung to the simpler name "the Faith." The interpretations which began to gather round the term, by their very variety prove its antiquity. The most important in after times was founded on the confusion of σύμβολον with συμβολή = collatio. 
The creed was regarded as a collation or epitome of doctrine contributed by the twelve apostles. 
This explanation, founded on the legend of the apostolic origin of the creed, was given by Rufinus and Cassian, and was most popular in later expositions.

[De Incarnatione Uerbi, VI.iii.;
"Collatio autem ideo, quia in unum collate ab Apostolis Domini, totius catholicae legis fide, quicquid per uniuersum diuinorum uoluminum corpus immensa funditur copia, totum in symboli colligitur breuitate perfecta."]

But Rufinus comes nearer to the truth when he explains it as indicium or signum, a token of orthodox belief, the watchword of the Christian soldier.

[In Symb. Apost.:
"Symbolum enim Graece et indicium dici potest et collatio, hoc est, quod plures in unum conferunt. Id enim fecerunt apostoli in his sermonibus, in unum conferendo unusquisque quod sensit. ... Idcirco istud indicium posuere, per qnod agnosceretur is qui Christum uere secundum apostolicas regulas praedicaret. Denique et in bellis ciuilibus hoc obseruari ferunt: quoniam et armorum habitus par, et sonus uocis idem, et mos unus est, atque eadem instituta bellandi, ne qua doli subreptio fiat, symbolo distincta unusquisque dux suis militibus tradit, quae Latine 'signa' uel indicia nuncupantur; ut si forte occurrerit quis de quo dubitetur, interrogatus symbolum, prodat si sit hostis uel socius."]

The title symbolum apostolorum was first used by S. Ambrose, and occurs in the letter of the Council of Milan, which was possibly drawn up by him [Opera, v.p.292.]. S. Jerome also wrote of the symbolum fidei ... quod ab apostolis traditum. [Ad Pammach, c. loann. Hier. Opera, ii.col.380.] In some old MSS. the form symbolum apostolicum is found, but it is not so common as the other (which occurs in the Bangor Antiphonary, seventh century).

It is more probable that the belief suggested the name. The plain title symbolum continued to be used for a long time side by side with it.

Thus Niceta explains it as the covenant made with the Lord, as a summary of Christian mysteries collected from the Scriptures for the use of the unlearned, like a crown set with precious stones.

["Retinete semper pactum, quod fecistis cum domino, id est hoc symbolum, quod coram angelis et hominibus confitemini. Pauca quidem sunt uerba, sed omnia continent sacramenta. De totis enim scripturis haec breuitatis causa collecta sunt, tanquam gemmae pretiosae in una corona compositae, ut, quoniam plures credentium literas nesciunt, uel, qui sciunt, per occupationes saeculi scripturas legere non possunt, habeant sufficientem sibi scientiam salutarem."]

Faustus of Riez, though it is possible that he has some sentences of Niceta in mind, gives a different derivation from the use of the plural symbola, contributions to a common feast, gathered by the Fathers of the Churches for the good of souls.

[Hom. i. ed. Caspari, Anecdota, i.p.315:
"Sicut nonnullis scire permissum, est, apud ueteres symbola uocabantur, quod de substantia collecti in unum sodales in medio conferebant ad solemnes epulas, ad coenae communes expensas. Ita et ecclesiarum patres, de populorum salute solliciti, ex diuersis uoluminibus scripturarum collegerunt testimonia diuinis grauida sacramentis. Disponentes itaque ad animarum pastum salubre conuiuium, collegerunt uerba breuia et certa, expedita sententiis, sed diffusa mysteriis, et hoc symbolum nominauerunt."]

The legend of apostolic origin, attached in the first instance to the Old Roman Creed, was naturally transferred to its later form, and was received without question in mediaeval times.

III. Our use of our Apostles' and Nicene Creeds

Listen to the Mirfield Community chant the Nicene Creed. Music details HERE.

Besides the universal use of the Apostles' Creed as the Baptismal Creed of Western Christendom, it has been used in the Hour Offices since the ninth century [Amalarius, de Eccl. Offic. iv.2, M.S.L, 105, 1165.]. Its voluntary use at such times was very ancient. Bede reminds Egbert that S. Ambrose exhorted the faithful to recite it at Matins as an antidote to the poison of the devil by night and day [Hadden and Stubba, iii.p.316.]. Thus it passed at our Reformation into our Daily Offices, and was included in the Catechism put into the hand of every child. Its value for educational use is increased by the fact that it allows the teacher freedom of detailed exposition. 
It does not attempt to narrate the whole history of the Lord Jesus, when He went in and out among His people; nor to furnish "a character sketch," which would be as impossible as painters have found it to paint His face. For frequent liturgical use it meets our need, in that it is not crowded with subjective impressions. The same thing is true of our Nicene Creed, considered generally as a form of Apostles' Creed. Even the added theological clauses have no taint of modern subjectivity.

The Apostles' Creed "paints before our eyes in broad outline the wonderful works of God, which, as long as we cherish them in faith and apply them to ourselves, will as little grow old and wearisome as the rising and setting of the sun every day on which God permits us to see the beauty of His works." [Zahn, Das ap. Symbol., p.101.]

In Eastern Christendom the Nicene Creed has superseded every other form as a Baptismal Confession, and as the Creed of Communicants in the Liturgies. From the former point of view it is interesting to point out characteristics in which this as an Eastern Creed differs from Western forms. It gives reasons for facts stated,

e.g. Who for us men and for our salvation came, crucified also for us, rose ...
according to the Scriptures, One baptism for the remission of sins.
[Gibson, The Thirty nine Articles, i.p.303.]

It preserves the word " One" in the first Article, which the Western archetype (R) has lost, and it adds "Maker of heaven and earth," words which, amid the conflicts of Gnostic speculations, were soon needed in the East, though they serve a catechetical rather than controversial purpose.

From the latter point of view, since this use of a theological creed has spread into the West (Toledo 589, Rome c.1000) [Swainson, p.136.], something must be said of the present day usefulness of theological creeds.

Such usefulness is of two kinds, negative and positive; the first local and transitory, the second universal and lasting. As a signpost in days of controversy, such a creed may be set, like the first Nicene Creed, to repudiate partial and rationalising explanations of Christ's perfect Godhead or perfect Manhood. 
As Mr. Balfour has clearly stated [Foundations of Belief, p.279.],

"the Church held that all such partial explanations [as the great heresiarchs attempted] inflicted irremediable impoverishment on the idea of the Godhead which was essentially involved in the Christian revelation. 
They insisted on preserving that idea in all its inexplicable fulness; and so it has come about that, while such simplifications as those of the Arians, for example, are so alien and impossible to modern modes of thought that if they had been incorporated with Christianity they must have destroyed it, the doctrine of Christ's Divinity still gives reality and life to the worship of millions of pious souls, who are wholly ignorant both of the controversy to which they owe its preservation, and of the technicalities which its discussion has involved."

This is not all. The formula which was found to exclude the Arian hypothesis, and is at all times available for that purpose, may also be used to aid worship, to guide the prophets of each new generation, who see the old truths in a new light.

We may know our way about a district fairly well, and not be able to draw a map of it. Yet with a map how much more definite will be the advice which we can offer to wayfarers. A theological creed is like a map, a survey of a certain region of thought drawn with a sense of proportion. Our Nicene Creed witnesses to "the spiritual power of a complete belief," complete because it interprets the Gospel history with due regard to the proportion of faith.

We cannot ask to be as if the old controversies had never been, as if through 1800 years no one had ever asked a question. If we could start as some would wish, as S. Cyril himself wished in his early days, with the Bible, and the Bible only, we know, from the experience of every town parish priest, that the old errors would reappear in the form of new questions, and we should have to traverse again the same dreary wilderness of controversy from implicit to explicit dogma, from "I believe that Jesus is the Lord" to the confession that the Only-begotten Son of the Father is of one substance with the Father.

IV. Our Use of the Athanasian Creed

It is difficult to estimate the usefulness of this creed in the present day, without suffering from some bias of judgment through impressions produced by study of its early history. Yet its dogmatic value is really independent of historical theories as to its origin. Men so unlike as Charles Kingsley and John Henry Newman were united by a common admiration of its theological teaching without reference to its history. Neither from the Anglican nor from the Roman point of view does it matter in what century the creed was written, or its clauses received their final polish. They were concerned solely with the question, "Is it a true analysis of Christian experience?" History alone cannot decide this. 
Its proper task is to show us the original home of the creed, the changing figures and groups of the men who first voiced its measured rhythms, whose hopes and fears changed like lights and shadows on the landscape of their common Church life. That task ended, it is for theology to complete the argument and bear witness to the truth of its teaching as the common heritage of the Church since the days when her unity was unbroken, and, despite trial and tribulation, her cup of joy was full.

At least, it may be hoped that the bitterness, too often caused by extraneous considerations, which has been imported into modern controversies, may be in some measure allayed by the triumph of the theory that the author belonged to the school of Lerins. For Lerins was a true home of saints and confessors. Her sons did not prefer peace to truth. The very reproach of semi-Pelagianism, which rested upon some of her most honoured names, witnessed to the fact that they had sought to keep on that via media which is seldom the way of peace. The revealed truths of Free Will and Grace are rooted in what seemed to the apostles an insoluble mystery [Rom.ix.20; Phil.ii.12.], and the merit of Faustus and Caesarius, so far as their teaching was anti-Augustinian, consisted in an honest endeavour to do justice to the obscurer aspect of a difficult problem. 
It is really the same problem under changed conditions of thought which faces us in our present inquiry. The responsibility of intellect in matters of faith was then acknowledged without question. It was the responsibility of man for conduct which was in dispute. In an interesting letter (Ep. 5), Faustus discusses the question whether believers in a United Trinity can be eternally lost. His correspondent Paulinus was concerned to know, not whether those who live a good moral life, but fall into intellectual error, should perish, but whether those who profess a correct creed will be saved in spite of sins against morality. Faustus replies, that "in Divine things not only is a plan of believing required, but also of pleasing." A baptized person must remember that he is the temple of God, and he quotes 1 Cor.iii.17:

"If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy."

The whole tone of the letter is sympathetic and spiritual. It shows a mind as far removed from a barren scholastic orthodoxy as from an undisciplined readiness to believe "anything good." And it enables us to guess how Faustus would have interpreted the damnatory clauses of the Quicunque, in relation to a heresy like that of Priscillian. In all ages the tendency of such an esoteric doctrine of election is to encourage secret immorality, however sternly its author may have upheld moral law. And the teaching of the Catholic Church, to which both Faustus and the Quicunque witness, does not subordinate moral law to metaphysical arguments, but claims the highest truth of the Christian religion as the strongest motive power of a good life.

From this point of view let us approach the question of the so-called damnatory clauses of the creed. They do not judge any individual case. They assert only the principle that a man's faith influences his conduct, and that he must be judged by conduct. Falsity to faith must inevitably bring blemish on his character, and his conduct will show it. This is not a mere dogma of the Church, since Carlyle has written:

"When belief waxes uncertain, practice becomes unsound";

and Emerson:

"A man's action is the picture-book of his creed."

As Dean Hook used to say, the only really damnatory clause is the 39th:

"And they who have done good shall go into life eternal, and they who in deed have done evil into eternal fire."

We should be false to the stern side of the Lord's teaching if we said less. And the truth expressed is quite independent of our interpretation of the words "eternal" or "fire." The question is one of fact. Every Christian believes in future punishment. Bishop Butler has shown that it is a fundamental doctrine of natural religion. In any age men may interpret such teaching in a more or less materialistic manner, but the mistaken form in which they receive it does not undermine the position which it holds either in revealed or in natural religion.

The reply is sometimes urged that the second clause goes beyond the limits thus assigned to monitory teaching: "Which faith except everyone shall keep whole and undefiled without doubt he shall perish eternally." It is said that in this clause we condemn Arius and other heretics, and all who are prevented by conscientious scruples from using the creed.

This is not so. The grammatical connexion of this clause to the preceding is that of a simple relative sentence. It is not the principal sentence. 
The result of printing the creed as a canticle has been to force into prominence what is a subordinate idea. It has been truly said that "the Church has her long list of saints. 
She has never inserted one name in any catalogue of the damned." The clause asserts only that disloyalty to faith must lead to spoiling of character, and thus to the eternal perishing from which in our Litany we pray to be delivered. 
As to Arius, we judge not before the time. 
As to the scruples of those who cannot accept the faith in the form here presented, we reply that it is not the creed which is taught to all the baptized, nor the creed which is recited by communicants. 
Assent to it, with the other creeds, is required only from Church teachers on the ground that they ought thoroughly to be received and believed,

"for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture." [Art. viii.]

No one who believes every word of the Apostles' Creed is condemned by the Athanasian Creed, which, to speak technically, requires an implicit rather than explicit assent to its definitions; or, to speak popularly, assent to the facts of Christian experience rather than interpretations of those facts, faith in Divine Persons, faith in the Divine Christ. 
It is maintained that the interpretations are logical. A man may illogically refuse to accept them while he accepts the facts. 
Faith, not logic, will save him. 
Does he believe in the Blessed Trinity? His Catechism will teach him that out of the Apostles' Creed. 
Does he believe in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, that Christ crucified is to us who are being saved the power of God? This is the present salvation spoken of in the second clause, and the point of view is grace, of which he is not ignorant, nor from which has he fallen. He is at one with the author of the creed, who leads up to his main statement in clause 3:

"Now the Catholic faith is this,"

not that we define or dogmatise unduly, but

"that we worship One God in Trinity."

Most unjustly has this creed been pilloried as containing "man's dogma of damnation." The words are quoted from an exquisite tale of Indian life called "The Old Missionary," by Sir William Hunter, which has been sold by thousands. Such an expression could only be used rightly of a particular tenet such as Calvin's doctrine of Predestination. 
But the objections are not always thus based on moral principles. To the spirit of easy-going indifferentism, which is the besetting sin of a self-indulgent age, morality and the creed are alike stumbling-blocks. " Morality is so icy, so intolerant; its doctrines have the ungentlemanlike rigour of the Athanasian Creed."
[An objection quoted by the Archbishop of Armagh, Epistles of S. John, p.263.] Such a judgment is profoundly anti-Christian, and is contradicted by the whole tenour of the New Testament.

A more serious objection is founded on the supposed necessity of explaining away the meaning of the author when his words are qualified. It is said that the clergy can put their own gloss on them, but cannot explain them in plain English to plain people, who must regard so much qualification as a more or less dishonest attempt to evade the literal meaning. This objection has no real weight.

"It is an acknowledged principle in the interpretation of the damnatory language of Scripture regarding unbelief, that it is to be understood with conditions: the same rule of interpretation applies to the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed. The omission of conditions is one of those expedients of which language has frequently availed itself for the sake of convenience, - making absolute statements when that which qualifies them is left to be understood."
[Mozley, Lectures and Theological Papers, p.194.]

We agree that the commands "Give to him that asketh of thee" and "Resist not evil" require qualification. "
And just as moral instruction requires its liberty of speech, and has modes of statement which must not be tied to the letter, so has judicial and condemnatory language." [Mozley, ib.] People say,"We will have the Bible, and the Bible only." It is precisely in the Bible language that the difficulty lies; and if the letter of the grammar gives an artificial and false sense in Scripture, it cannot give the natural sense in the creed.

Many drastic proposals have been made for the alteration of these clauses, for what Dean Goulburn called in a trenchant phrase "the mutilating or muffling of the creed." It is proposed to cut them out. 
What assembly short of a General Council would have the right to treat thus a formulary sanctioned by use during a thousand years in the whole Church Catholic? It would establish a new and unheard of precedent. Again, it is proposed to do away with the rubric and the creed, or relegate it to obscure retirement with the Thirty-nine Articles. The American and Irish Churches have done this. Of the former it has been said [Mozley, Lectures and Theological Papers, p.191.] that "the American Church shelved the creed at a time when people did not go very accurately into the meaning of what they did, and only aimed at a certain convenience in excluding anything which had an explanation wanted for it." This cannot be said of the Irish Church, by whose General Synod the question was fully debated. Strong disapproval of the step was expressed by some of her foremost theologians. [E.g. the present Archbishop of Armagh.] Time has not yet justified the wisdom of these Churches, and similar proposals in the Church of England were met and successfully resisted. Laymen combined with clergy to defend the creed. They said with truth that the question concerned them.

The proposal made by Bishop Lightfoot, that the rubric should be altered from "shall" to "may," leaving the use on the appointed days to the discretion of the clergy, would give relief in some cases where a genuine difficulty exists, because the congregations are not prepared for it. 
But it is open to the objection, which is really insuperable, that a congregation could be denied what they regarded as a privilege at the caprice of an individual.

No such objection could, however, be made to the proposal that the clergy should be permitted by episcopal authority to read it to their congregations rather than with them when this was desired. This, as we have seen, was the primitive congregational use, and such permission would bring our practice into strict conformity with that of the undivided Church Catholic. It sometimes offends one's sense of reverence to hear this solemn statement of the mysteries of our faith chanted too sonorously by a choir, or gabbled by Sunday-school children. Its solemn warnings need to be received rather with silent awe than either recited or sung in a jubilant tone.

Among the words which the late Archbishop Benson addressed to the last Diocesan Conference over which he presided, were the following:

"I want to know whether our English people are really so stupid. I do not believe that they are. ... I have heard many sermons preached against the Athanasian Creed by some who would be glad now to have their utterances forgotten, but I never did hear a sermon preached to explain in simple language to a village congregation the Athanasian Creed, except once, and that was by Charles Kingsley, who, with tears running down his face, explained like a man the Athanasian Creed to his poor people at Eversley."
[Reported in the Guardian of July 22, 1896, p.1161.]

To conclude - the usefulness of this creed is, like that of the Nicene Creed, negative and positive. 
We may say with Waterland [P.247.]:

"As long as there shall be any men left to oppose the doctrines which this creed contains, so long will it be expedient, and even necessary, to continue the use of it in order to preserve the rest."

The expansion of the English Church in the last fifty years aids us to confirm the argument with such testimonies as the following. Bishop Cotton of Calcutta, who went to India prejudiced against the creed, found that he was mistaken,

"for the errors rebuked in the Athanasian Creed resulted from tendencies common to the human mind everywhere." [Charge, 1863.]

But this negative use is less important than the other, to use it as a subject for devout meditation, as being in Hooker's words

"a most Divine explication of the chiefest articles of our Christian belief." [Works, ed. Keble, ii.p.187.]

He thought it worthy

"to be heard sounding in the Church of Christ, whether Arianism live or die."

And the fact that we connect it with S. Augustine rather than S. Athanasius, in so far as the writer uses forms of thought which S. Augustine had made part of the common heritage of Christian theology, does not alter the case. 
The special characteristic of the theology of the creed is in the first part, and it is there that the influence of S. Augustine is most clearly seen. 
Led on in his strivings after self-knowledge, of which the Confessions give so vivid a record, he was enabled to analyse the mystery of his own triune personality, and illustrate it with psychological images.

"I exist and I am conscious that I exist, and I love the existence and the consciousness; and all this independently of any external evidence."

He carried on a step further S. Hilary's argument from self-consciousness, and applied it to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit,

"the first to draw out the thought of the Holy Spirit as the bond of union, the coeternal Love, which unites the Father and the Son."

Thus he rises to the thought of God,

"whose triunity has nothing potential or unrealised about it; whose triune elements are eternally actualised, by no outward influence, but from within; a Trinity in Unity."
[Illingworth, Personality, Human and Divine, p.74.]

This teaching embodied in the Quicunque supplements the teaching of the Nicene Creed, and we therefore value it as possessing permanent and positive usefulness.

The history of the Te Deum brings our subject to a fitting close. 
Listening to its solemn strains, we seem to retrace our steps from the developed doctrine of the Blessed Trinity to the simple historical faith in Jesus as the Lord, who has "overcome the sharpness of death." But no longer with weary steps, mounting up with wings as eagles, borne up by the power of the poet's insight to the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

When we look at the sun with the naked eye, we seem to see a dark spot. 
We know that it does not exist there, because through a darkened glass we see no such thing. 
In the same way we may use the creeds as the darkened glass of thought, to assure us that if our spiritual sight were stronger all seeming contradictions would vanish in the clear light of truth. They help us to worship without the continual distraction of definition, to believe that we live and work in the light of His Eternal Presence whose love can make hard tasks light and rough paths smooth, and with the vision of peace cause sorrow and sighing to flee away.

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