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exactly correspond, it seems clear that the doctrine of each several versicle of the Creed is comprised in the Definitions; and that the aim of the Latin writer and the Greek Fathers was one and the same, to guard the faithful against the same class of errors. Not that we suppose the compiler of the Creed to have seen the Definitions of Chalcedon: if he was Hilary of Arles, he died a short time before the assembling of that Council; and at all events, as Waterland and others have observed, he followed the modes of statement which he found in the Latin Fathers, whether his elders or contemporaries; and there is no proof, or reason to suppose, that this Creed was translated from any Greek original. The resemblance is here insisted on as a mark of the time when the Creed appears to have been composed and it seems to us capable of almost certain demonstration, that as the Nicene Creed represents the decisions of the two first General Councils, so this embodies the sense of the two which next succeeded, whose authority the Church has ever held in equal honour.

Among other arguments for the date which Waterland fixes. for this Creed, is one which requires a short notice. He observes, after Le Quien, that the familiar and easy comparison, "As the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and Man is one Christ," was much made use of by the Catholics from the time of Apollinaris to that of Eutyches exclusively. But no sooner did the Eutychians wrest the comparison to their own sense, pleading for one nature in Christ, as the soul and body make one man, than the Catholics discontinued the use of this similitude; or, if they mentioned it, either disputed against it, or guarded and qualified it with cautions and restrictions.

We do not know how far this argument is correctly taken from Le Quien; for his words, as quoted by Waterland in his note, do not speak of Eutyches, but of Severus and the Monophysites a full half-century later. It is certainly not correct to say, that this similitude was not employed against the Eutychians: for St. Leo, the great champion of the orthodox party, himself employs it, and nearly in the words of the Creed: "Cur inconveniens aut impossibile videatur, ut videlicet Verbum et Caro atque Anima unus Jesus Christus, et unus Dei Hominisque sit Filius, si caro atque anima, quæ dissimilium naturarum sunt, unam faciunt, etiam sine Verbi incarnatione, personam?"-Epist. xi. ad Julian. Coensem. The fact is, however, that the errors of Photinus, Apollinaris, Nestorius, and Eutyches, had such a mutual connexion, and were so involved in each other, that we find the

& Hist. of Athan. Creed, c. vii. p. 249.

Fathers of Ephesus and Chalcedon continually introducing the mention of them all jointly, and so repeating the arguments of earlier writers against the two former, that it would be impossible, without other evidence, to determine merely by this resemblance the date of a disputed Treatise. For instance, as St. Athanasius and St. Augustin speak of the doctrine of Apollinaris as making a quaternity in the blessed Trinity, so do Vincentius, and Capreolus of Carthage, of the doctrine of Nestorius'. And Eutyches was expressly charged with imitating Apollinaris by the Imperial Letters relating to the Chalcedonian Council, and by both Eastern and Western Fathers R.

What makes it still more difficult to found any argument on the insertion of this versicle in the Creed, and the supposition that it would have been omitted after the rise of the Eutychians, is, that St. Cyril of Alexandria was also accused by the Oriental Bishops of favouring the error of Apollinaris,—a charge repeated with more zeal than discretion by a foreign Protestant of the last century, who thought proper to write as a patron of the Nestorians". Now, according to Waterland's argument, St. Cyril ought to have used the same caution, which the opponents of the Monophysites are said to have used afterwards, "to have grown strangely averse to this similitude, and rarely to have used it." But scarcely any of the Fathers uses it more frequently, and this even when he is refuting the charge of Apollinarianism, or Eutychianism by anticipation, of which he had been accused'. must therefore conclude, that the similitude had not lost its use; still less was "condemned," or rejected, after the time of Eutyches.

We

Le Quien, whom Waterland here follows, may very probably refer to such passages as one in Facundus, Bishop of Hermianum, in the middle of the following century. Pro Defens. Trium Capitt. Lib. i. c. 6. That writer does indeed examine the use, which the Eutychians, or Semi-Eutychians, made of this similitude; but he by no means allows that it is available for their purpose. "Videamus si, quemadmodum fidunt, vel secundum sapientiam mundi constare illis sua ratio potest. Dicunt igitur, sicut ex duabus naturis, id est anima et carne, una composita est humana natura, sic ex Deitate et humanitate una composita est Christi natura: et ideo ex duabus quidem, sed non in duabus

Athan. ad Epict. c. 10, 11. St. Augustin, Serm. cxxx. 3, et alibi. Capreolus

ad Vital. et Constant. 3. Vincent. Commonit. 13. 16.

8 Edict. Valentin. et Martian. Flavian. Epist. ad S. Leon. Gesta de Nomine Acac. e. 1.

? La Croze, Christianisme des Indes, vol. i. p. 24, 25.

1 S. Cyrill. Alex. Epist. vol. v. P. ii. B. p. 73; 133; 136, 7, 8, ed. Aubert.

naturis Christum confitemur. Equidem nulla causa est, cur etiam unusquisque homo in duabus negetur esse naturis, in carne scilicet atque anima. Quæ tamen quia et una ex duabus composita, recte hominis naturam dici certissimum est;, potuit enim hominis anima in unam naturam cum sua carne componi: de Christi vero Divinitate inconvertibiliter simplici, non sine ingenti blasphemia dicitur, quod in unam naturam cum suscepta humanitate componi potuerit." And he concludes a little further on: "Nihil igitur Eutychiani humanæ naturæ adjuvantur exemplo, ut unam asserant Christi esse naturam." A conclusion, surely, to which every sound mind must come upon this question. The similitude must be always as good as it was at first for clearing the truth to an orthodox believer. But the Eutychian, to apply it to his purpose, must be also a base materialist in his view of humanity, and maintain, against all true philosophy, that a compound nature may be made simple 2.

To pass to another argument. It was impossible that Waterland should not have noticed the close resemblance between several of the versicles of this Creed, and the phrases collected principally in one chapter of the Commonitory of Vincentius,a resemblance which had induced some previous critics to attribute the Creed to Vincentius himself. Waterland accounts for this resemblance by supposing Vincentius to have borrowed from the Creed3. It is perhaps as much open to conjecture, that the compiler of the Creed copied from Vincentius. But as neither supposition is capable of proof, leaving this as an undecided question, it is yet a circumstance which may aid us in fixing the age of the Creed. For the doctrinal statements in Vincentius are not scattered up and down, as they are in the writings of the earlier Fathers, but arranged together in an order not unlike that of the Creed itself, showing that some such definitions, point by point, were now thought necessary for the security of the Church's faith. Now Vincentius confessedly wrote to warn the faithful against the errors of Nestorius; and if the second part of his treatise had been extant in a perfect state, it would probably appear that his principal design was to support the authority of the Council of Ephesus, which he tells us was held three years before he wrote. But if Vincentius and the compiler of

2 Questions on this subject are collected by Leontius of Byzantium, a writer of the seventh century, Canisii Thesaur. tom. i. p. 625. Cardinal Bellarmine objected to the similitude as defective; but he is well answered by Dr. Thos. Jackson, b. vii. sect. iii. c. 30. "If every resemblance of this or other sacred mystery, which is any way defective, were liable to exception, the Church should do well to give a general prohibition, that no man should attempt to make any."

3 Hist. of Athan. Creed, c. viii, sub fin.

the Creed exhibit this close resemblance of doctrinal statement in form and matter, the probability is that they also wrote with the same purpose, and both after the Nestorian heresy was publicly known.

It may be worth observation, that Vincentius in this part of his treatise, where he speaks of the two substances of our Lord, lays down the doctrine of the "consubstantiality with us" as fully and particularly as it is to be found in any subsequent Creed. "Ita igitur in uno eodemque Christo duæ substantiæ sunt; sed una divina, altera humana; una ex Patre Deo, altera ex matre virgine; una coæterna et æqualis Patri, altera ex tempore et minor Patre; una consubstantialis Patri, altera consubstantialis matri, unus tamen idemque Christus in utraque substantia." c. 13. Compare this with the versicle of the Creed, "Deus ex substantia Patris ante sæcula genitus: Homo ex substantia matris in sæculo natus:"-does it appear that the compiler of the Creed was not acquainted with the "critical phrase" before noted? His statement is altogether the same with that of St. Leo, and therefore good as well against the Eutychians as the Nestorians: "Novus Homo, factus in similitudinem carnis peccati, nostram suscepit vetustatem, et consubstantialis Patri, consubstantialis esse dignatus est et matri, naturamque sibi nostram solus a peccato liber univit." Epist. xiii. ad `Pulcheriam Augustam.

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Lastly, Waterland's own supposition, that the Creed was the work of Hilary of Arles, makes his theory of the time, at which he tries to prove it to have been written, the more singular. Hilary appears to have died, according to an Epistle of St. Leo, some time in the month of August, A.D. 449. He had therefore lived to witness all the progress of the controversy about Nestorius, and had heard of the commencement of Eutyches. The reasons which Waterland has adduced for believing him to be the compiler of the Creed, are certainly not improbable; but it is far from probable that he should have compiled it without reference to the dangerous doctrines, which, during the last twenty years of his life, were agitating the Church from Spain and Africa to Syria and Mesopotamia. In short, as was observed in the outset, we seem to want all adequate motive or occasion for the production of the Creed, if it has reference only to the effete heresy of Apollinaris: if it was put forth against those who were reviving the memory of what was past, and adding to it more disastrous subtilties of their own, the cause is

4 S. Leo, Epist. cvi. Vid. Pagi, ii. 298.

apparent. And, what is more important, it proves that the origin of this Creed was, like that of the earlier formulary of Nice and Constantinople, owing to a time of public necessity in the Church. Hence, if it was first drawn up, as it seems to have been, for the use of the Catholics of Gaul, it was not long before it became a common symbol to all the Churches in the West; and, from its close agreement with the definitions of Chalcedon, may justly be esteemed as coming down to us with the authority of the united Church of the first ages.

Among the arguments for assigning it to Hilary, Waterland remarks on the fact, that "Vincentius and he were contemporaries and countrymen, both of the same monastery in the isle of Lerin, much about the same time; so that it is natural to suppose that they should fall into the like expressions, while treating on the same things; or that Vincentius might affect to copy from so great a man as Hilary, when writing on the same subject." On this last clause we have just before noted, Waterland having elsewhere assumed it as a fact. We might suggest, as another difficulty, that Vincentius seems to have been the elder of the two, and to have died first, if we are to believe Gennadius; but this may be a doubtful point. The case however is this. We have a certain date for the treatise of Vincentius, A.D. 434. We have no certain date for the Creed, nor certain information who was the compiler of it. Hilary is recorded to have written a treatise, which Honoratus, his biographer, calls a precious Exposition of the Creed" and this is the strongest argument in his favour, joined to his well-attested learning, eloquence, and high character. This Exposition is lost, unless it be the identical symbol of which we are speaking, called by the Church "The Creed of St. Athanasius."

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One thing it seems obvious to suggest, though we do not recollect to have met with it as a suggestion of any writer on this subject. The Creed, whether it originated with Hilary or Vincentius (and the balance of evidence seems to rest between them), was in all probability composed by some of the disciples of the religious home at Lerin. It was composed in the form of a psalm or antiphon, to be chanted in the public service, according to the use, which from the time of Ambrose had been received in all the Latin Churches. This again seems to mark its purpose and original as a means of security to the faith of the Christian

Gennadius says, that Vincentius died in the reign of Theodosius II. and Valentinian III.; Hilary, in the reign of Valentinian and Marcian. Tiro Prosper's Chronicle places the death of Hilary in the last year of Theodosius, or A.D. 450. • "Symboli Expositio ambienda." Quoted by Waterland.

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