Notes. By keeping this faith whole and undefiled, must be meant that a man should believe and profess it without adding to it or taking from it. * * * First, for adding. What if an honest plain man, because he is a Christian and a Protestant, should think it necessary to add this article to the Athanasian Creed;—I believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be a divine, infallible and complete rule both for faith and manners. I hope no Protestant would think a man damned for such addition; and if so, then this Creed of Athanasius is at least an unnecessary rule of faith.
Answer. That is to say, it is an addition to the Catholic Faith to own the Scriptures to be the rule of faith; as if it were an addition to the laws of England to own the original records of them in the Tower.
This Notary manages his cause most weakly, and Sherlock
fibs
him like a scientific pugilist. But he himself exposes weak parts, as in p. 27. The objection to the Athanasian Creed urged by better men than the Notary, yea, by divines not less orthodox than Sherlock himself, is this: not that this Creed adds to the Scriptures, but that it adds to the original
Symbolum Fidei
, the
Regula
, the
Canon
, by which, according to the greater number of the