the being, nature, perfection, and Creatorship of God. The second part is an affirmation of the orthodox doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

Bishop Burnet remarks that it is proper that the tenet of faith in the Godhead should appear first in a Confession, for the reason that it is the doctrine out of which all other doctrines grow. Men, however, in correct thinking begin with that in which the idea of God is contained—namely, their own consciousnessbut it is true that the doctrine of God is the first and the noblest of all doctrines. The Twenty-Five Articles are not a systematic theology, but a historical writing which briefly describes the challenged beliefs of the true Church in all ages and its protests against heresies and superstitions. The order in which they stand exactly describes the history of the Christian polemics to which they relate. "The number is that of a man," and not of a vision or a studied statement.

1. "There is but one living and true God." This is Jehovah; not the Father only, but the Son and the Holy Ghost-one. "One God" was the Church's early protest against the polytheism of the classic peoples— Greeks, Romans, and Asiatics—with whom it earliest met. This belief in one God was its inheritance from Judaism. "A living God" was its destructive cry against the "dumb idols" of the heathen. "The true God" was the exaltation of Jehovah into that lonely, glorious isolation of reverent thought whereunto no other suggestion of deity or supremacy might approach.

2. "Everlasting, without body or parts." The religion and the philosophical thought of Greece and

Rome, which were the early contestants of Christianity, admitted that the age of the Olympian gods was to end. "Great Pan is dead!" was a cry which shivered from "Calpe unto Caucasus." At such a time Christianity boldly declared its faith in the endless life and reign of Jehovah. Nor was it slow to ascribe a reason. for this faith. It was cited in the creed of the spirithood of the "living and true God"-God "without body or parts." The Anglican Article adds "or passions." The fanciful gods of the classic heathen were anthropomorphic-that is, they were supposed to have bodies. -hands, feet, taste, appetites, and passions-like men. The true God is a Spirit, pure, imponderable-a thought which overwhelms, as does that of immeasurable space.

3. "Of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness." These are the nature and attributes of Jehovah—not all, but affirmative of all; a part standing for the whole. "Infinite power" awes into reverence every thought, answers every doubt, and confirms the faith of the believer. "Infinite power" is power everywhere--power in the eternal past, power in the eternal future, power absolute, undivided.

4. "Of infinite wisdom." There is no past or future in God's knowledge, but an eternal present; there are no qualifications or limitations of his knowledge, but it is absolute, everywhere, always. He does not choose but know all things, past and present; he could not choose to be ignorant. It is his nature to know. The scholastic theology which for its own use or defense once dealt in the subtlety as to whether God chose to foreknow or not to foreknow this or that future event

did but juggle with truth and dishonored the Most High.

5. "Of infinite goodness." There is no moral attribute, thinkable or unthinkable, that is not involved in the goodness of God. "Infinite goodness!" Volumes could not express more! Love, mercy, longsuffering, gentleness, kindness-"the glorious gospel of the blessed God"-are wrapped up in that matchless phrase. The value of a creed is in that conciseness which does not sacrifice the necessary and particular affirmation. In the Christian household there has never been a question of the mercy of God. The evangel abounds with its story. "His mercy endureth forever." Why beat the scriptural ingots into foil and film for a confession? The word suffices-he is infinitely good. By this token let this symbol be tried.

6. "The Maker and Preserver of all things, visible and invisible." According to pagan faiths, the world was made by chance or was the work of contending and antagonistic spirits, the gods themselves springing from the earth, sea, or air. But the Church in its Confession avows its belief that all worlds, all heights and depths were created by the "one living and true God," and that he continually preserves his work through the exercise of "infinite power." The doctrine of the Creatorship is absolute. A personal God planned, supervised, and executed the work of creation. The fact that he is a God of law, and that the theory of this law may be extended to include the most modern terms of evolution and biology, only enhances the doctrine of an intelligent Personality in creation. The master mechanic who oversees a great

machine shop with a thousand lathes, drills, and hammers is a greater intelligence than the tinker who makes rude thills and plowshares for the peasantry.

7. "In [the] unity of this Godhead there are three Persons." This is the Trinity. The parts of this Article up to this point are the echo of the Church's early contest with pagan idolatry. From this point to the end it is the sum of the Church's contest with the first great heresy within its own body. That heresy. was Arianism, which denied the divinity of the Son, and therefore the truth of the Trinity.' The Scriptures treat the Trinity as they do the existence of God. It is part of the great First Truth, and is purely a matter of faith. The facts which make both the existence of God and the Trinity a necessity are divinely revealed. The putting of these facts into a unity is faith. The term "Trinity" refers to the three Persons in their separate beings and office; "unity" refers to the identity of their substance.

8. "Of one substance, power, and eternity." This phrase means that the three Persons are equally God, each "very and eternal God”—“God of God," as in the Athanasian Creed. The Father has all power, the Son has all power, the Holy Ghost has all power. The Father always was, the Son always was, the Holy Ghost always was, and each shall always be.

9. "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." The

1Frequent observations have been indulged on the lack of pertinency in the title of the First Article. It is due to the overtowering importance of the Arian controversy in the Nicene Age. The title testifies to the antiquity of the Article.

Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, the Holy Ghost is not the Son; he is not the Father. Each Person is complete, and yet the three make one Nature and Being in the Godhead. An eternal Father necessitates an eternal Son, and this eternal relation necessitates the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost. It is indeed difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between eternal begetting and eternal proceeding. The one relation is that of generation; the other, that of communion.

ARTICLE II.

OF THE WORD OR SON OF GOD WHO WAS MADE VERY MAN.

The Son who is the Word of the Father, the very and eternal God, of one substance with the Father, took man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin; so that two whole and perfect natures-that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood-were joined together in one person never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very man, who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice not only for original guilt but also for actual sins of men.

This is the Article of the Incarnation. The Second Person of the Trinity is the Son-the only-begotten of the Father in a double sense, as God and as Man. His divine Sonship is eternally in the nature of the Father; his human Sonship came through a miracle of the Holy Ghost.

All the Creed critics divide this Article into three parts: (1) That which treats of the divine nature of Christ; (2) that which treats of his Incarnation; and (3) that which treats of his atoning sufferings and death.