to a considerably earlier period than the age in which the earliest of them was written. A work would never have been admitted into Psalters or have been required to be learnt by heart by the clergy unless it had a long history behind it, and had come down from comparatively early days; nor would commentaries have been written on a new and unauthoritative work. We are therefore driven to postulate for the Creed a date many years before the eighth or even the seventh century; and when we find that there exist a number of coincidences of language between the Creed and a series of representative writers from the fifth to the eighth century (precisely similar in character to allusions made by later writers when the Creed was definitely regarded as an authoritative work), we can scarcely doubt that the writers in question were quoting from the Creed itself, even though they do not specify it by name.

Thus (6) it appears to be quoted by Denebert, Bishop of Worcester, in a profession of faith belonging to the year 798; by the Fathers assembled at the Council of Toledo in 633; by Cæsarius, Bishop of Arles (502-42); by Avitus, Bishop of Vienne (490518); by Vincentius of Lerins (450). Indeed, so close are the coincidences between portions of the Creed and the works of Cæsarius and Vincentius, that it has been maintained in the case of the former by Dom Morin, and of the latter by Ommanney, that they point not so much to familiarity with the Creed as to actual authorship of it. Besides these coincidences with the

works of well-known writers, there is also a remarkable fragment of a sermon on the Creed by an unknown writer, which remains in a manuscript of the eighth century, into which it was copied from a manuscript which the writer says that he found at Treves. The sermon itself is obviously much older than the manuscript in which the copy of a portion of it has come down to us, and is generally placed in the sixth or seventh century.

The greater number of these testimonies are valuable as showing not merely the great antiquity of the Creed, but also the respect with which it was regarded by churchmen, and the recognised position which it occupied long before the days of Charlemagne. Some of them, if they stood alone, might be regarded as inconclusive; but taken together they are absolutely inconsistent with a date so late as the eighth or even the seventh century, even if it be held that they fail to prove that the Creed is as early as the first half of the fifth century, to which Waterland assigned it. We are then left to the internal evidence, and here the matter stands very much where Waterland left it. The Creed is certainly later than Augustine, for had it been the case (as has been suggested) that Augustine borrowed from it, there would surely have been some definite allusion to it somewhere in his voluminous writings. It is, however, perhaps not conclusively established that it was written before the rise of the Nestorian heresy. Ommanney holds that it 'reproduces the terminology of the Nestorian epoch,'1 and there 1 Critical Dissertation, p. 361.

are clauses in it which may well be thought to be aimed at this heresy. On the other hand, it is difficult to think that it can be later than the rise of Eutychianism (which was condemned at Chalcedon in 451), for terms condemnatory of this heresy are entirely wanting in it. There is indeed one expression occurring in it which might plausibly be pressed into the service of Eutychianism: One not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God.' And it is probable that an author who wrote after the rise of the heresy of Eutyches, which taught the absorption of the manhood or human nature of Christ into the Godhead, would have avoided language which, though in itself perfectly orthodox, might readily lend itself to an Eutychian interpretation. On the whole, we can scarcely arrive at any more definite conclusion than this. The Quicunque vult cannot have been written before 420. It is very possibly earlier than 450. It cannot be later than the sixth century. Between these limits its author must be sought. Everything points to the south of Gaul as the place of its composition. Various names have been suggested: Cæsarius, Bishop of Arles (470-542), by Dom Morin;1 Vincent of Lerins (450), by the late

1 Le Symbole d'Athanase et son premier témoin Saint Césaire d Arles. Revue Bénédictine, Oct. 1901. In this article Dom Morin certainly brings very strong arguments from style in favour of Cæsarius, to whom, if he was not the actual author, the Creed was evidently 'a household word.' It is also pointed out that Cæsarius was in the habit of placing at the head of his works the name of the author from whom he quoted, or whom he followed; and it is thought that in this

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Mr. Ommanney;1 and Honoratus, Bishop of Arles, and founder of the famous monastery and school of Lerins (d. 429), by Dr. Burn;2 but the evidence does not appear to be sufficient to warrant us in arriving at a definite conclusion. We must rest content with knowing the quarter whence this venerable document comes, and the approximate date to which it belongs.

way the name of Athanasius may have become attached to the document. On the whole the case for Cæsarius appears to be stronger than that for either of the others mentioned above.

1 Critical Dissertation, p. 378 seq.

2 Introduction to the Creeds, p. 148.

§ 2

The Use made of the Athanasian Creed
by the Church

THE Quicunque vult occupies a unique position among the formularies of the Church in that it is at once a Creed, a canticle, and an exposition of or sermon on the Creed. These different characters are all marked by the various titles which it bears in mediæval manuscripts of it. It is sometimes spoken of as symbolum, more often as fides, the faith, a term which is also frequently applied to the Nicene Creed, and which is practically the equivalent of our English word 'the Creed.' But, although it is a Creed, an expression of the Church's faith in the Trinity and Incarnation, it stands in no relation to the baptismal Creed. It does not begin in the usual way as a personal profession of faith, I believe; the first person rarely occurs in it; nor does it follow the ordinary structure of Creeds with their three paragraphs on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In form it is a canticle rather than a Creed. Its balanced clauses and measured rhythm mark it out as something to be sung. It is sometimes styled 'the