Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/598

CREEDS formations of the early and mediaeval church terminate. Nor is it to bo forgotten of the three so-called " Catholic " creeds, that only one of them is in the broadest sense " Catholic " or " QEcumenical." Neither the " Apostles nor the " Athacasian " Creed is known to the Greek or Oriental Church, which remained faithful to the faith " settled by the Holy Fathers " at Nicaea, or at least to the faith as subsequently enlarged to its present form (with the exception of the " filioque " clause). No doubt, in the East as well there were in circulation many expositions of the Nicene doctrine, called forth by the same doctrinal necessities as prevailed in the West. The proceedings of the Second Council of Nicaea (787), to which we have already adverted, sufficiently show this. But none of these expositions attained to any general acceptance, or rose as in the West to the same authoritative level as the ancient creed. It remained alone in its eminence, protected by the denunications which the third council, which assembled at Ephesus in 431, directed against clergymen or laymen " who shall dare to compose any other creed." Of all Christian creeds, therefore, the Nice-no or Niceno-Constan- tiuopolitan is the only really "Catholic" or oecumenical creed, deliberately discussed and adopted by the represen tatives of the universal church. The two others associated with it itl the services of the Western Church have not only never had acceptance beyond the range of that church, but are very gradual growths within it, without any definite parentage or deliberate and consultative authority. They emerge gradually during many centuries from the confusions and variations of Christian opinion, slowly crystallizing into definite shape ; and such authority as belongs to them is neither primitive nor patristic. It is the reflected assent of the later church in the West, and the.uncritical patronage of a comparatively ignorant age, which have alone elevated them to the same position as the faith defined at Nicaea, which is the only truly Catholic or universal symbol of the universal church. V. After the Reformation a new era of creed-formations, or confessions of faith, set in. The process of exposition out of which we have seen the " Athanasian " symbol to have gradually risen, became once more urgent, not only in the disrupted branches of the church, which were called into existence by the activity of the several Reformers, but also in the Roman Church, from which the churches of the Re formation were broken off. As we said at the outset, we cannot do more here than present a summary of the many confessions which then sprung up. And here, as in the previous part of this article, the best principle of arrange ment will be the chronological, not merely because this order is most suitable to our plan, but because it really Bhbds most light on the formation of the several documents, and alone brings them into rightly intelligent relation to one another. We will hardly be able to do more than enumerate the titles and the dates of the multiplied confes sions of the Reformed churches. But even this will be more than the English reader can readily find elsewhere in a complete form. 1. The confessions of the Lutheran Church claim the first attention in chronological order. The first of these is the Confessio Augustana, or Confession of Augsburg, compiled by Melanchthon, and presented in German and Latin to the Emperor Charles V., in 1530, in the name of the evangelical states of Germany. It consists of twenty-one articles, beginning (1) De Deo ; (2) De Peccato Originis ; (3) De Filio Dei ; (4) De Justificatione, &c. ; and ending (21) De Cultu Sanctorum. The articles are terse and sig nificant, and express with clearness and brevity the doctrinal position of the Lutheran Church. In addition to the twenty-one more positive articles, there are seven of a more controversial character, treating of the ecclesiastical abuses which Lutheranism had corrected, or, as they are called,- Abwsvs mutatos, viz., (1) De Utraque Specie ; (2) De Con- jugio Sacerdotum ; (3) De Missa ; (4) De Confessione ; (5) De Discrimine Ciborum ; (6) De Votis Monachorum ; and (7) De Potesfate Ecclesiastica. Secondly, immediately following the Confession of Augsburg appeared the Apologia Confessionis AugustancR, also prepared by Melanchthon, in reply to a professed confutation of the original document by certain Roman Catholic divines. The Apology follows the order of the confession, but sometimes several articles are grouped together when referring to one main topic ; and the Apology is thus divided into only sixteen sections, although greatly more extended, nearly five times larger, in fact, than the Confession itself. To these two primary documents were afterwards added, thirdly, the Articles of Smalkald Articula Smalcaldici prepared by Luther himself in 1536, and signed at Smalkald by an assembly of evan gelical theologians, and, fourthly, the Formula Concordicc, composed in 1576 after considerable doctrinal divisions had broken out in Lutheranism. This latter document was not so universally accepted as the others by the Lutheran churches, but it has always been reckoned along with them as of confessional authority. To these remain to be added Luther s two catechisms, which have also a confessional position among the Lutherans. The Catechismns Major and the Catechism/us Minor were both issued in 1529, and take their place in the list of symbolic books betwixt the Smalkald Articles and the Formula Concordiaa. The collective documents are issued as a Concordia, or Liber Concordia?, printed with the three older creeds in advance, and together they sum up the confessional theology of Lutheranism. 2. The course of the Reformation, as is well known, evoked not only the ecclesiastical but the dogmatic activity of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Council of Trent, reckoned by that church as the eighteenth oecumenical council, was summoned in the end of 1545, in order to formulate more distinctly the doctrinal position of Roman Catholicism in opposition to Protestantism. This council sat at intervals for eighteen years, from the 13th December 1545 to the 4th December 1563, sometimes at Bologna, but chiefly at Trent. Its results are arranged in the forms of twenty-five sessions, each session generally dealing with an important head of doctrine in the shape of a "decretum," followed, but not always, by a series of " canons," " ut omnes sciant, non solum quid tenere et sequi, sed etiam quid vitare et fugere debeant." Hence the title under which the results of the synod are known " Canones et Decreta Sacrosancti CEcumenici Concilii Tridentini." The Professio Fidei Tridentince, which was drawn up under Pius IV. (1564), and the Catcchismus Romanns, published under the authority of his successor Pius V. (1566), are considered by the Roman Catholic Church as symbolical writings of the second rank. 3. Passing to the confessions of the Reformed churches, we encounter more symbolic documents than there are churches. Niemeyer s Collectio Confessionum in Ecclesiis Reformatis Publicatarum contains twenty-eight confes sions, the most important of which may be classified as follows : (a) Pre-Calvinian : the Confessio Tetrapolitana, or the confession of the four cities, Strasburg, Constance, Meiringen, and Landau, composed by Martin Bucer in twenty-three articles, and presented to the Emperor Charles V. in 1530, the same year as the Augsburg Confession was presented ; the Confessio Basiliensis, supposed to be drawn up by Myconius at Basel in 1534; and the Con fessio Helvetica, prepared in the same city by a company of theologians, amongst whom were Bullinger and My conius, and presented to the Lutheran divines assembled

at Smalkald in 1537; and (b) Post-Calvinian : tho