prelate to be either utterly without counsel as the rest were, or in a common perplexity to shew himself alone secure. Wherefore, as many as remained he earnestly exhorted to prevent portended calamities, using those virtuous and holy means wherewith others in like case have prevailed with God. To which purpose he perfecteth the Rogations or Litanies before in use, and addeth unto them that which the present necessity required. Their good success moved Sidonius bishop of Auvergne to use the same so corrected Rogations, at such time as he and his people were afflicted with famine, and beseiged with potent adversaries. For till the empty name of the empire came to be settled in Charles the Great, the fall of the Romans' huge dominion concurring with other universal evils, caused those times to be days of much affliction and trouble throughout the world. So that Rogations or Litanies were then the very strength, stay, and comfort of God's Church. Whereupon in the year five hundred and six it was by the council of Aurelia decreed, that the whole

Church should bestow yearly on the feast of Pentecost three days in that kind of processionary service. About half a hundred years after, to the end that the Latin churches, which all observed this custom, might not vary in the order and form of those great Litanies which were so solemnly everywhere exercised, it was thought convenient by Gregory the first and best of that name to draw the flower of them all into one.

As therefore Litanies have been of longer continuance than that we should make either Gregory or Mamercus the author of them, so they are of more permanent use than that now the church should think it needeth them not. What dangers at any time are imminent, what evils hang over our heads, God doth know and not we. We find by daily experience that those calamities may be nearest at hand readiest to break in suddenly upon us, which we in regard of times and circumstances may imagine to be farthest off. Or if they do not indeed approach, yet such miseries as being present all men are apt to bewail with tears,

vent.

the wise by their prayers should rather preFinally, if we ourselves had a privilege of immunity, doth not true Christian charity require that whatsoever any part of the world, yea any one of all our brethren elsewhere, doth either suffer or fear, the same we account as our own burden? What one petition is there found in the whole Litany, whereof we shall at any time be able to say, that no man living needeth the grace or benefit therein craved at God's hands?

SECTION XXXIII.

OF THE CREEDS OF THE CHURCH, ESPECIALLY THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

WE have from the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ received that brief confession of faith which hath been always a badge of the church, a mark whereby to discern Christian men from infidels and Jews. This faith received from the apostles and their disciples,

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(saith Irenæus) the Church though dispersed throughout the world, doth notwithstanding keep as safe as if it dwelt within the walls of some one house, and as uniformly hold as if it had but one only heart and soul; this as consonantly it preacheth, teacheth, and delivereth, as if but one tongue did speak for all. As one sun shineth to the whole world, so there is no faith but this one published, the brightness whereof must enlighten all that come to the knowledge of the truth." "This rule," saith Tertullian, Christ did institute; the stream and current of this rule hath gone as far, it hath continued as long, as the very promulgation of the Gospel."

Under Constantine the emperor, about three hundred years and upward after Christ, Arius, a priest in the church of Alexandria, a subtle witted and a marvellous fair-spoken man, but discontented that one should be placed before him in honour, whose superior he thought himself in desert, became through envy and stomach prone unto contradiction, and bold to broach at the length that heresy, wherein the

Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, contained but not opened in the former creed, the coequality and coeternity of the Son with the Father, was denied. Being for this impiety deprived of his place by the bishop of the same church, the punishment which should have reformed him did but increase his obstinacy, and give him occasion of labouring with greater earnestness elsewhere to entangle unwary minds with the snares of his damnable opinion. Arius in a short time had won to himself a number both of followers and of great defenders, whereupon much disquietness on all sides ensued. The emperor, to reduce the Church of Christ unto the unity of sound belief, when other means whereof trial was first made took no effect, gathered that famous assembly of 318 bishops in the council of Nice, where besides order taken for many things which seemed to need redress, there was with common consent, for the settling of all men's minds, that other confession of faith set down which we call the Nicene Creed; whereunto the Arians themselves who were present subscribed also, not that they