A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

In the sacred Scripture there is no mention but of two sorts of men, whereof some believe, so that they are saved; some believe not, and they are damned. (Mark xvi. 16; John iii. 18.) But neither the Church, nor the individual rehearsing the creed, is responsible for these denunciations. It is a formulary which happens to express suitably and well the exact opinions of the Church of England, in regard to the two great mysteries of the Trinity and incarnation, as far as they can be understood. True it is, indeed, that in her eighth Article she asserts, that the three creeds, Nicene, Athanasian, and that which is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, “ought thoroughly to be received and believed, for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.” And has the Church of England no right to make this declaration? Is she to be the only society of Christians that shall not have permission to assert that her faith is the right faith? What dissenter from the Church of England would hesitate to assume this liberty? Who is there that scruples to speak thus exclusively of his own mode of thinking? Can anything be more candidly or unexceptionably stated, than her confidence that these creeds ought to be believed, because they may be proved by warrants of holy writ? In saying this, does she preclude any man from examination? Does she lock up the volume of holy writ? She appeals solely to Scripture for the truth of her doctrine, leaving all who oppose her to the mercies of God. She does not presume to say with those, whose cause has lately been strangely popular, and whose language in a sister kingdom is such to this day, that whoever presumes to separate from her, “eo ipso illis nulla est speranda salus!” She does not even venture to assert, with the celebrated reformer Calvin, whose famous Institutes were written on the model of the Apostles’ Creed, and who must, no doubt, have had a view, in saying it, to his own peculiar Church, “extra ecclesiæ gremium,” &c.; “out of the bosom of the Church there is no hope whatever of salvation, or remission of sins.” We may surely be permitted to admire that strange course of things, and confusion of circumstances, that have lately conspired to render those popular whose principles are truly exclusive and intolerant; and the Church in some respects unpopular, which is as truly tolerant. Her language is constantly the same, and perfectly apostolic: “Search the Scriptures.” “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”—Nares on the Creeds.

Let the gates of our communion be opened as wide as is consistent with the gospel of Christ; yet surely those will stand excluded, who hold errors expressly condemned in that gospel, and which that gospel was particularly and purposely wrote to guard against.—Randolph on the Trinity.

The commissioners in 1688, thirty eminent divines, appointed to review and correct the liturgy, close the rubric they had prepared in the following words,—“And the condemning clauses (viz. in the Athanasian Creed) are to be understood as relating only to those who obstinately deny the substance of the Christian faith.”

It is no hard matter for witty men to put very perverse senses on Scripture to favour their heretical doctrines, and to defend them with such sophistry as shall easily impose upon unlearned and unthinking men; and the best way in this case is, to have recourse to the ancient faith of the Christian Church, to learn from thence how these articles were understood and professed by them; for we cannot but think, that those who conversed with the apostles, and did not only receive the Scriptures, but the sense and interpretation of them, from the apostles, or apostolical men, understood the true Christian faith much better than those at a farther remove; and therefore, as long as we can reasonably suppose this tradition to be preserved in the Church, their authority is very venerable.—Sherlock on the Trinity.

These contentions were cause of much evil, yet some good the Church hath reaped by them, in that they occasioned the learned and sound in faith to explain such things as heresy went about to deprave. And in this respect the Creed of Athanasius, concerning that truth which Arianism so mightily did impugn, was both in the East and West Churches accepted as a treasure of inestimable price, by as many as had not given up even the very ghost of belief. That which heresy did by sinister interpretations go about to pervert in the first and most ancient apostolical creed, the same being by singular dexterity and plainness cleared from those heretical corruptions, partly by this creed of Athanasius. These catholic declarations of our belief, delivered by them who were so much nearer than we are unto the first publication thereof, and continuing needful for all men at all times to know, these confessions, as testimonies of our continuance in the same faith to this present day, we rather use than any other gloss or paraphrase devised by ourselves, which, though it were to the same effect, notwithstanding could not be of the like authority and credit.—Hooker.

The doctrinal part of the creed has been called a “bulwark;” and if it be maintained, it should be maintained as a fortification. In time of peace, the inconvenience of keeping up fortifications occasions their being sometimes neglected, but when war breaks out afresh, every one is clamorous in blaming the imprudence of such neglect. If we are at peace now with the powers which would attack us where our creed would be our defence, we are always liable to be at war with them again. We have seen how naturally all the heresies condemned in the creed arise, when men once become eager in solving the difficulties of the Trinity and the incarnation; and such eagerness might at any time arise, or any revolution, or great disturbance, or confusion; and in case of renewed attacks, our present creed would be a much better defence than any new one that would be made at the time it was wanted.—Hey’s Lectures.

What the consequence may be, should we part with our creed, may easily be inferred from what followed upon the dropping a single word (consubstantial, or, as expressed in our English creed, “being of one substance with the Father”) out of the [Nicene] creed at the Council of Ariminum. The Catholics, being deceived by the great and earnest importunity of the Arians for unity and peace, were at last prevailed upon. The word consubstantial was left out; and the Arians boasted over all the world, that the Nicene faith was condemned and Arianism established in a general council. It is candour, when good Catholics are divided about words, to bring them to a right understanding of one another, which will set them at peace and unity again. But it is tameness to give up the main bulwarks of the faith to fallacious adversaries and designing men, whose arts and aims, however disguised, are always known to strike at the foundation of religion.—Bingham and Wheatly.

To the sceptic, the Arian, and the Socinian, we do not expect to find such a creed acceptable, because it was designed to restrain the fantastic and pernicious opinions started on their part upon the subjects contained in it. But every firm and steady believer may still, and indeed ought to, hold high the value of the only creed delivered to us from antiquity, which states that first and great principle of Christian revelation, the importance and necessity of a just faith. Upon us, the ministers of the Church, especially, it is incumbent, as occasions offer, to explain and illustrate its design and uses to the more unlearned, as well as to obviate the crude exceptions made against its doctrines or language, to derive its due weight of authority from the venerable antiquity of its origin, and to draw an argument of its merits from the universal approbation with which it has been received. Who would not tremble at the proposal of laying waste a fence, which in any degree hath afforded protection to what was obtained for us at so inestimable a price; and of inviting, by a voluntary surrender of our present security, renewed instances of insult, in repeated and incessant attacks to be made upon the terms and obligations of our Christian covenant?—Bp. Cleaver.

There are no kinds of heretics but hope to make the vulgar understand their tenets respectively, and to draw them aside from the received faith of the Church: and, therefore, it behoves the pastors of the Church to have a standing form to guard the people against any such attempts. The Christian Churches throughout the world, ever since the multiplication of heresies, have thought it necessary to guard their people by some such forms as these in standing use amongst them. And they are not so much afraid of puzzling and perplexing the vulgar by doing it, as they are of betraying and exposing them to the attempts of seducers, should they not do it. The common people will be in no danger of running either into Sabellianism, or tritheism, if they attend to the Creed itself, (which fully obviates and confutes both those heresies,) instead of listening to those who first industriously labour to deceive them into a false construction of the Creed, and then complain of the common people’s being too apt to misunderstand it.—Waterland.

Those in authority should be very cautious how they give in to such schemes as, under the plausible pretence of pruning our vine, and reforming things in their own nature indifferent and alterable, would by degrees overturn our whole establishment.—Randolph on the Trinity.