sufficient for the condition of their departed friends. The burial-places of the world henceforth became what they were first called in the Catacombs or at least first 1 called on an extensive scale" cemeteries," that is, "sleeping-places."

The idea of

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3. There is one other word which occurs frequently after the mention of "peace," and that is, "Live in God," or "thou shalt live in God," or mayimmortality. est thou live in God," or "thou livest in God." This is the yet farther step from simple innocence, from Oriental resignation. That is the early. Christians' expression of the ground of their belief in immortality. We might perhaps have expected some more precise allusion to the sacred name by which they were especially called, or to some of those Gospel stories of which we do, at least in the third century, find representations in their pictures. But in these epitaphs it is not so. They were content in the written expression of their belief to repose their hopes in the highest name of all.

These simple words" Vive in Deo" and "Vivas in Deo - sometimes it is "Vive in Bono ” — describe what to them was the object and the ground of their existence for the first three centuries. They last appear in the year 330, and after that appear no more again till quite modern times, in express imitation of them, as for example in the beautiful epitaph on the late lamented Duke John of Torlonia, in the Church of St. John Lateran. As a general rule, nowhere now, either in Roman Catholic or Protestant churches, do we ever see these once universal expressions of the ancient hope. They have been superseded by more definite, more detailed, more positive statements. Perhaps if they were now used they would be thought Deistic, or Theistic, or Pan

1 Mommsen says that the words koчμŋτýρɩov, accubitorium, are not exclusively Christian. But for practical purposes they are so.

theistic, or Atheistic. But when we reflect upon them, they run very deep down into the heart both of philosophy and of Christianity. They express the hope that, because the Supreme Good lives forever, all that is good and true will live forever also. They express the hope that because the Universal Father lives forever, we can safely trust into His loving hands the souls of those whom we have loved, and whom He, we cannot help believing, has loved also.

Perhaps the more we think of this ancient style of epitaph, we shall find that it is not the less true because now it is now never written; not the less consoling because it is so ancient; not the less comprehensive because it is so simple, so short, and so childlike.

VI. Let us briefly sum up what has been said on these representations of the early Christian belief.

1. They differ widely in proportion, in selection, and in character, from the representations of belief which we find in the contemporaneous Christian authors, and thus give us a striking example of the divergence which often exists between the actual living, popular belief, and that which we find in books. They differ also in the same respects, though even more widely, from the forms adopted, not only by ourselves, but by the whole of Christendom, for nearly fifteen hundred years. They show, what it is never without interest to observe, the immense divergence in outward expression of belief between those ages and our own. The forms which we use were unused by them, and the forms which they used, for the most part are unused by us.

2. The substance of the faith which these forms expressed is such as, when it is put before us, we at once recognize to be true.

It might sometimes be worth while to ask whether what are called attacks or defences of our religion are

directed in the slightest degree for or against the ideas which, as we have seen, constitute the chief materials of the faith and life of the early Chistians. In a wellknown work of Strauss, entitled "The Old and New Belief," there is an elaborate attack on what the writer calls "the Old Belief." Of the various articles of that "old belief" which he enumerates, hardly one appears conspicuously in the Catacombs. Of the special forms of belief which appear in the Catacombs, hardly one is mentioned in the catalogue of doctrines so vehemently assailed in that work. The belief of the Catacombs, as a general rule, is not that which is either defended by modern theologians 1 or attacked by modern sceptics.

3. When we reflect that these same ideas which form the all-sufficing creed of the early Church are not openly disputed by any Church or sect in Christendom, it may be worth while to ask whether, after all, there is anything very absurd in supposing that all Christians have something in common with each other. The pictures of the Good Shepherd and of the Vine, the devotional language of the epitaphs — whether we call them sectarian or unsectarian, denominational or undenominational -have not been watchwords of parties; no public meetings have been held for defending or abolishing them, no persecutions or prosecutions have been set on foot to put them down or to set them up. And yet it is certain that, by the early Christians, they were not thought .vague, fleeting, unsubstantial, colorless, but were the food of their daily lives, their hope under the severest trials, the dogma of dogmas, if we choose so to call them, the creed of their creed, because the very life of their life.

1 In the Lateran Museum are two or three compartments of epitaphs classed under the head of "illustrations of dogmas." But there is only one doubtful example of any passage relating to a dogma controverted by any Christian Church.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CREED OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS.

THE formula into which the early Christian belief shaped itself has since grown up into the various creeds which have been adopted by the Christian Church. The two most widely known are that of Chalcedon, commonly called the Nicene Creed, and that of the Roman Church, commonly called the Apostles'. The first is that which pervaded the Eastern Church. Its original form was that drawn up at Nicea on the basis of the creed of Cæsarea produced by Eusebius. Large additions were made to it to introduce the dogmatical question discussed in the Nicene Council. all who pronounced the Son to be of a different Hypostasis from the Father. Another Creed much resembling this, but with extensive additions at the close, and with an omission of the anathemas, was said to have been made at the Constantinopolitan Council, but was first proclaimed at the Council of Chalcedon. It underwent a yet further change in the West from the adoption of the clause which states that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son, as well as from the Father. The creed of the Roman Church came to be called "the Apostles' Creed," from the fable that the twelve Apostles had each of them contributed a clause. It was successively enlarged. First was added the "Remission of Sins," next"the Life Eternal." Then came 2 the "Resur1 See Chapter XVI.

It concluded with anathemas on

2 This clause unquestionably conveys the belief, so emphatically contradicted by St. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 35, 36, 50), of the Resurrection of the corporeal frame.

rection of the Flesh." Lastly was incorporated the "Descent into Hell," and the "Communion of the Saints." It is observable that the Creed, whether in its Eastern or its Western form, leaves out of view altogether such questions as the necessity of Episcopal succession, the origin and use of the Sacraments, the honor due to the Virgin Mary, the doctrine of Substitution, the doctrine. of Predestination, the doctrine of Justification, the doc. trine of the Pope's authority. These may be important and valuable, but they are not in any sense part of the authorized creed of the early Christians. The doctrine of Baptism appears in the Constantinopolitan Creed, but merely in the form of a protest against its repetition. The doctrine of Justification might possibly be connected with "the Forgiveness of Sins," but no theory is expressed on the subject. Again, most of the successive clauses were added for purposes peculiar to that age, and run, for the most part, into accidental questions which had arisen in the Church. The Conception, the Descent into Hell, the Communion of Saints, the Resurrection of the Flesh, are found only in the Western, not in the original Nicene Creed. The controversial expressions respecting the Hypostasis and the Essence of the Divinity are found only in the Eastern, not in the Western Creed.

But there is one point which the two Creeds both have in common. It is the framework on which they are formed. That framework is the simple expression

It has been softened in the modern rendering into the "Resurrection of the Body," which, although still open to misconception, is capable of the spiritual sense of the Apostle. But in the Baptismal Service the original clause is presented in its peculiarly offensive form.

1 This was perhaps originally a synonym for "He was buried," as it occurs .n those versions of the Creed where the burial is omitted. But it soon came to be used as the expression for that vast system - partly of fantastic superstition, partly of valuable truth — involved in the deliverance of the early Patriarchs by the entrance of the Saviour into the world of shades.