a I B RAR.Y 
 
 OF THE 
 UNIVLRSITY 
 Of ILLINOIS
 
 : ;KW 

 
 Cl)e Htbanasian Creed. 
 
 SPEECH BY THE LATE MARQUIS OF 
 
 SALISBURY. 
 
 In view of the recrudescence of attacks on this 
 venerable Symbol of the Catholic Faith, it may 
 be interesting at this time to reprint the speech 
 made by the late Lord Salisbury at -the great 
 Meeting organized by the English Church Union 
 and held at St. James's Hall on Jan. 31st, 1873. 
 
 The Marquis qf Salisbury (who was received with great 
 cheering), said : The resolution which I have to move is — 
 
 That this Meeting earnestly deprecates, as fraught with danger to the 
 preservation of Christian truth throughout the world, any mutilation of 
 the Athanasian Creed, or any alteration of its status in the Book of 
 Common Prayer. 
 
 The position of things with which we have to deal is this — 
 an ancient Creed (which we now know dates from the sixth 
 century) representing with exact fidelity the words and phrases 
 of the greatest uninspired champion the Christian Church ever 
 produced, round which the faith and devotion of thirty genera- 
 tions of Christians have entwined themselves — this Creed has 
 come down to our time, and for the first time in the history of 
 Europe it is proposed to offer an affront to it. We have to ask 
 ourselves what are the reasons on which this course is taken, 
 what are the grounds which can be alleged in its behalf, and
 
 what are the dangers which it reveals ? Of course, there have 
 been many different courses proposed to be adopted with 
 reference to this Creed. On the part of those who, partly from 
 their own feelings, but I think more often with the desire of 
 averting a supposed popular feeling which perhaps after all did 
 not exist, complain of this Creed, a great variety of changes 
 have been suggested ; but in the main they have resolved 
 themselves into two. One of them is that which has been 
 unhappily supported by some ^Bishops of our Church, and 
 which I am bound to say has commended itself undoubtedly to 
 a few excellent men, and that is the mutilation of the Creed. 
 To me that has always seemed the most inadmissible proposi- 
 tion that could possibly be made (cheers). There is not only 
 that consideration upon which the chairman has so forcibly 
 remarked, that this Creed is the inheritance of the whole 
 Catholic Church, and no part of the Church can take upon 
 itself to tamper with its words ; but there is also the fact that 
 these clauses, speaking of the retribution of guilty unbelief, only 
 express a doctrine which is expressed with quite as much 
 distinctness and force in other parts of the formularies of the 
 Church. Until you can get rid of the Eighteenth Article, the 
 one anathema which the gentle spirit of our Reformers allowed 
 them to insert in the formularies of faith — the Article w^hich 
 states that " they are to be had accursed that presume to say 
 that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he 
 professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to 
 that law and the light of nature," — you will not get rid of the 
 objection which these gentlemen feel to the warning clauses of 
 the Athanasian Creed. Therefore the whole object which they 
 have in view would not be met except by far more drastic 
 measures than they venture to propose. I do not like to speak 
 of the purely theological objections, for I know there are those 
 coming after me who can dwell with a great deal more force 
 than I can upon the terrible danger of teaching in this age of 
 scepticisrn that dogma is a matter of small account, and that 
 men may safely tamper with their faith. I do not dwell on 
 that ; but do not suppose I pass it by because I lightly regard 
 its importance, but because I greatly regard my own incapacity 
 to deal with such a theme. Look, then, at the matter in a
 
 humbler but more practical view. If you propose in any 
 way to alter or mutilate the Athanasian Creed, who is to do it ? 
 (cheers). Convocation will not (loud cheers). Then it must 
 be done by the House of Commons (" oh, oh ! "). Any one 
 who has been privileged to hear the way in which discussions 
 in committee, on any important proposition, are carried on in 
 the House, will not feel that it will tend much to the advance of 
 Christian edification if the highest doctrines of our faith are 
 submitted to amendments and counter amendments, divisions 
 and cross divisions, in that highly honourable, but somewhat 
 combative, assembly (a laugh). Yet that is what you will be 
 driven to if it is allowed for one moment that the Legislature 
 of its own mind, and without any support or sanction from the 
 Church, is to undertake the task, before which synods of 
 Churchmen have shrunk, of framing new formulas of faith for 
 the acceptance of the Christian Church. I, therefore, put 
 aside the question of altering the Creed apart from theological 
 objections. I put it aside as a thing that in the present con- 
 stitution of the EngHsh Government, in the present relations 
 between the Church and the State, it would be impossible to 
 do. Then we come to the other proposition — the proposition 
 which has the sanction of Lord Shaftesbury's name, and which 
 was supported by a memorial he procured in the course of the 
 summer. The proposal is that the Creed should be banished 
 from the service of the Church — not, as I understand, dismissed 
 altogether from the Church's consideration, but put upon a 
 kind of retired list (laughter) — put, as a gentleman in the 
 gallery observes, upon half-pay, and in that condition left upon 
 the formularies of the Church. Now, have these 7,000 gentle- 
 men who signed the memorial really asked themselves what 
 their objection really is ? It cannot be an objection to substance, 
 because if it was an objection to substance it could not 
 possibly have been signed by any clergy of the Established 
 Church. We know that the clergy have all stated in the most 
 solemn way, and so have many besides the clergy, that this 
 Creed is most thoroughly to be received and believed, for it 
 may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture 5 
 and we know that they are all not only pious but honourable 
 men ; and it is perfectly inconceivable that they should join in
 
 an objection to the substance of that which they have pro- 
 nounced to be perfectly consonant with Holy Scripture. But 
 not only that — the very course they propose to pursue shows 
 that they do not object to the substance of the Creed : because 
 it is to be left among the formularies, only it is not to be 
 recited in church ; in other words, if they object to the sub- 
 stance, they are prepared to say that that may be announced 
 to the world as the belief of a body of Christians which 
 that body of Christians dare not say in the presence of 
 Almighty God in church. That is an inconceivable proposi- 
 tion, and I think it is impossible to come to any other 
 conclusion but that these 7,000 gentlemen — (A Voice : 
 " 3,000 ") — these 3,000 gentlemen then — I beg their pardon 
 for exaggerating their number — object to nothing but the 
 form of the Creed. Well, now, I have read a great number 
 of objections to the form of the Creed, I might almost call 
 them cavils, and what has struck me in respect of them all is, 
 that though they show much learning and great ingenuity, they 
 are all marked by an utter want of breadth. They are the 
 criticisms not of men accustomed to deal with large masses of 
 mankind, but rather the fastidious criticisms of men accustomed 
 to deal with literary productions. I was much struck with 
 the fact that in this memorial of 3,000 there were several peers, 
 many members of Parliament, and many persons well known 
 in London, but there was a very beggarly array of church- 
 wardens (cheers). There was, in fact, a large assemblage of 
 the rich and educated, but of the other portions of the laity 
 very little account seems to have been taken. I am not myself 
 adverse in secular matters to a certain flavour of aristocratic 
 doctrine, but I never dreamt of such Toryism as would imagine > 
 that the objections of peers and members of Parliament to an 
 article of faith was more valuable than that of humbler laymen. 
 But there is a lesson to be drawn from this peculiar proportion. 
 It struck me on reading it that it was a proportion not dissimilar 
 from that which St. Paul observed when he contemplated the 
 ranks of the early Christian converts, and possibly for the 
 same reason ; but, at all events, it shows us that these 
 criticisms and objections which are levelled at the Creed are 
 not of a kind which can commend themselves to the broad 
 
 '&.
 
 views of the mass of men. The mass of men do not understand 
 these fastidious objections to mere form. They think of sub- 
 stance, and of substance only. They do not inquire whether 
 this Article may be possibly offensive to the Greek Church. 
 They do not ask whether that Article may represent a view of 
 the Divine hypostasis later than the Nicaean : they do not 
 enter into subtleties of that kind ; but these broad facts are 
 present to their minds — they know this Creed has come down 
 through many centuries associated with the most sacred 
 doctrines of the Christian Church ; they know it was taken by 
 the Reformers whose names they venerate, and from whose 
 fellowship they would not be lightly parted, and put in the fore- 
 front in order to mark, at a moment when faith was sorely 
 tried, the intensity of the adhesion of the Church of England 
 to this, the foundation of our faith. They know that under the 
 shadow of this Creed have rested minds as learned and hearts 
 as holy as any Church has ever produced ; they know that 
 through the three centuries that have elapsed since this Creed 
 was put into the common service of our Church tiumbers of 
 men, generations of Christian men, certainly not less devoted 
 and less holy than those amongst whom we live, have been 
 perfectly satisfied to receive this Creed ; and they now know 
 that it has been attacked, in the first instance, mainly under 
 the urgency and at the desire of men to whom all dogmatic 
 teaching is an abomination. Well, then, if you give it up, do 
 you imagine they will think it is on account of a criticism of 
 mere form ? Do you imagine they will not see the substance 
 behind the form, and that they will not conclude that the 
 Church that deserts a position that has been held so long is 
 really indifferent to the doctrine which that Creed contains ? I 
 am astounded, I confess, at the levity with which many men 
 seem to have regarded the effects that will follow from the 
 course which they recommend with respect to this Creed. 
 They seem to imagine that tender consciences are all upon one 
 side. They seem to think that a man may be very sensitive to 
 words in a Creed which he thinks are too strongly expressed, 
 but that it is impossible that any man should be sensitive if an 
 affront is put upon the main article of the faith which he holds. 
 That is the danger which we have to fear. There are two
 
 courses which may be pursued. It is barely possible that 
 Parliament may interfere with this Creed ; it is barely possible 
 that the Church may give it up (" never, never "). If Parlia- 
 ment were to interfere with it the evil would be very great. 
 Supposing it were to remove the Creed from the Prayer Book 
 and prohibit its use in church, I fear that the prohibition would 
 be disregarded (great cheering) in such a vast number of 
 instances that Parliament would be puzzled to execute its own 
 decrees. If, on the other hand, the option, as it is called, of 
 abandoning it were given, it would introduce a new parting 
 line into the Church, a new cause of bitterness and antagonism 
 between parish and parish, new controversies, new acrimonies, 
 new sources of paralysis to the efforts by which alone religion 
 and civilisation can be carried into the masses of ignorance 
 with which we have to deal. But 'the interference of Parlia- 
 ment would be a far lighter evil than the possible submission 
 and desertion of the Church. It is a small matter comparatively 
 that consciences would be wounded, and deep resentments 
 would be excited, and probably a formidable schism would be 
 created ; it is a small matter compared with that frightful evil 
 that men would come to look upon the Church as having 
 deserted her sacred mission, and having sunk, in their minds, 
 to the level of those Protestant communities abroad — at Geneva 
 and in Paris — where the faith which the Athanasian Creed 
 proclaims has been openly abandoned. Such a result might 
 have been obtained by the help of those scrupulous consciences 
 whom we respect, though we regret their efforts ; but it would 
 not be the scrupulous consciences that would reap the ultimate 
 results. Behind the thin line of scrupulous consciences we 
 see the vast forces of unbelief. The scrupulous consciences 
 would win the battle ; the forces of unbelief would gather the 
 spoils of victory (great cheering). But I need not pursue that 
 theme. I feel that it cannot be (renewed cheers), I am sure 
 that the experience of the last few months has taught Church- 
 men and politicans alike that this is not a subject to be lightly 
 tampered with. I feel certain, at least, of this — from all that 
 in public or in private I have seen, that if at this time, and at 
 such a bidding, under such threatening circumstances, with 
 infidelity raging around our walls — if this standard of our faith
 
 is in any degree resigned, it will not be by the will or with the 
 consent of the Church, but it will be done by external forces 
 alone ; and that to the end the Church will be faithful to the 
 heritage that has been handed down to her from olden times 
 (loud cheers). 
 
 Another noteworthy feature of this great 
 meeting was the reading of the following letter 
 written to the Rev. Canon MacColl by the 
 Rev. Charles Kingsley : — 
 
 Eversley Rectory, Winchfield, January 31. 
 
 Dear Mr. MacColl — I am, to my regret, unable to be 
 present at the Meeting to-night. But I cannot let it pass with- 
 out asking leave to express my strong sympathy with its object. 
 
 I have long held that the general use and understanding of 
 the Athanasian Creed by the Church of England would exercise 
 hereafter (as it has exercised already) a most potent and 
 salutary influence, not only on the theology, but on the ethics, 
 and on the science, physical and metaphysical, of all English- 
 speaking nations. 
 
 I believe that that influence was never more needed than 
 now since the great French Revolution of the last century ; 
 and I am therefore the more jealous at this moment of the 
 safety of the Athanasian Creed. 
 
 I feel for, though I cannot feel with, the objections of many 
 excellent persons to the so-called Damnatory Clauses. But I 
 believe that those objections would die out were the true and 
 ancient Catholic doctrine concerning the future state better 
 known among us ; and therefore, in the event of an explanatory 
 rubric being appended to the Creed in our Prayer Book, I 
 should humbly pray that it may express, or at least include 
 and allow, that orthodox and salutary doctrine. — Believe me, 
 yours, with sincere good wishes, 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 London: THE ENGLISH CHURCH UNION, 
 35, Wellington Street, Strand, W.C.
 
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 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 
 
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