book, where he writes 'I believe in the Holy Ghost, and that there is an holy Catholic Church.'1 The other change, viz. the omission of 'holy,' is almost certainly due to an attempt at criticism, for the Bishop of Edinburgh has pointed out that in several early editions of works on the Councils the Reformers would have found that the word was wrongly, as we now know -omitted from the text of the Creed. But though, as the Bishop truly remarks, if the Reformers were mistaken, they are not to be blamed for following the best lights of their day,' yet it is a misfortune that the mistake should have been allowed to remain uncorrected till the present day, as the result is the omission of one of the notes' of the Church from the Creed as recited in the Communion service. NOTE E ON 1 Cor. XV. 24-28, and THE CLAUSE 'WHOSE KINGDOM SHALL HAVE NO END' DIFFICULTY is sometimes felt in reconciling the language of the Creed with that of S. Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, where he says: "Then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For He hath put all things under His feet. But when He saith all things are put under Him, it is manifest that He is excepted, which did put all things under Him. And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.' This passage is admittedly a difficult one; but it must be noticed that the whole context implies that S. Paul's 1 Cranmer, Remains, p. 83, quoted in The Workmanship, etc., p. 108. 2 Op. cit., p. 104, and Church Quarterly Review, July 187 reference throughout is to the Son in His mediatorial capacity. His exaltation was a consequence of His Incarnation and obedience unto death (cf. Phil. ii. 8-11). All authority was 'given' to Him in heaven and earth, and therefore He sent His Apostles to make disciples of all the nations (S. Matthew xxviii. 19). When, then, this mediatorial work is concluded and the eternal purposes of the Incarnation are fulfilled, this kingdom given for special purposes will be delivered up,' and the Son will become subject to Him to whom He shall have delivered it up, and God—the Eternal and Tri-personal-will be all in all. This appears to be the meaning of the Apostle in this passage which stands quite by itself. His words ought not to be pressed further, as if, contrary to all that we should gather from the rest of Scripture, the Son in His eternal Personality would be 'absorbed' and the Tri-personality of the Godhead cease. Indeed, such a notion is inconsistent with his words, which speak of the Son not as being absorbed, but as being subject. Yet this was the theory anciently deduced by some from his words and attributed to Marcellus of Ancyra, against whose views it is historically certain that the clause 'Whose kingdom shall have no end' was inserted into the Creeds of the Eastern Church in the fourth century. The clause is intended, then, to guard the doctrine of the eternal Personality of the Son; and the kingdom' of which it speaks being not the mediatorial kingdom, but that which belongs to Him in virtue of His eternal Godhead, must necessarily remain His throughout eternity, since His is the glory and the dominion for ever and ever'-1 Peter iv. 11; Rev. i. 5, 6; v. 12, 13; cf. Rom. ix. 5; Heb. i. 8; xiii. 22, and 2 Peter iii. 18, all of which passages clearly indicate the eternal nature of the Son's dominion. There is, then, no real contradiction between the teaching of the Creed (which, it may be repeated here, adopts the very words of S. Luke i. 33) and the teaching of S. Paul, for they speak of different kingdoms-S. Paul of what is called the mediatorial kingdom, which was given to our Lord for a special purpose, the Creed of that which belongs to Him from all eternity as being essentially God and one with the Father. M |