rate, and consequently the opinions they rested upon it were not true. They confounded in God the substance with the proper character of the divine personality, the essential procession of the Spirit with His mission in the world.[1] Leo III., although he gave a hearing to their arguments, did not show himself any more favourable to the addition, nor even to the chaunting of the creed in the services of the Church.
Nevertheless, the Creed continued to be chaunted with the addition in Spain and in all the countries subject to Charlemagne. Rome only adopted that practice at the commencement of the eleventh century, (about 1015,) at the request of the Emperor Henry, but she seemed to agree with the other Western churches as to the substance of the doctrine. It was thus that Photius could justly reproach the Roman Church as well as other Western churches with admitting an innovation in the faith. After having been deposed by Nicholas, and after himself condemning that Pope, he sent to the Eastern Patriarchs a circular letter, in which he thus expresses himself upon the question of the Filioque:[2]
"Besides the gross errours we have mentioned, they have striven, by false interpretations and words which
- ↑ This confusion is at the bottom of all the arguments of the Western theologians to this day. In support of their errour, they rely upon certain texts in which the Fathers speak only of the divine substance common to the three persons, and make no mention of the essential character of the personality in each of them. This character in the Father is that of being the sole principle of the Son by generation, and of the Spirit by procession. Such is the doctrine of the Church, including the Roman Church herself. She admits that the Father is the sole principle in the Trinity, and that such is the character of His personality, without perceiving that she contradicts herself in making of the Son another principle in the Trinity by her addition of Filioque, since she makes the personal action of the Son the same as that of the Father in the procession of the Holy Ghost.
- ↑ [The editor always permits the Abbé to speak for himself and for the Greeks, but it must not be inferred that he admits the justice of all that is here quoted from Photius, nor even of all which the Greeks still charge on those who retain the Filioque. The truth is, the Filioque is of no authority at all in the Creed, considered as the Creed. This is confessed by Anglicans; but it is retained in the Liturgy as true in itself, and true in a sense not at all conflicting with the Greek Orthodoxy.]
