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and who, in consequence of all this, so manage their opposition to Popery, that it becomes, in truth, a war at the same time, on the very life and substance of catholic christianity itself, in the sacred form which it has carried from the beginning. It has been well observed by a profound thinker, that no one is prepared successfully to combat a difficult error, who has not himself so entered into it, as to feel its power, and thus rise superior to it in an inward way; and so in the present case, emphatically, we may say, any argument against Romanism, must be connted weak as water, that is not made to rest on this condition. We have no patience with those who set out in their defence of Protestantism, with the assumption, open or implied, that the Roman system, as a whole, is destitute of all meaning or sense-a mass of sheer absurdity, or a pure creation of Satan. Every such assumption is arrogant and monstrous in the extreme, and is enough to destroy all confidence in any argument or declamation with which it may be joined. It is an outrage on all common sense, most disrespectful to man and God, to suppose that such a system as that presented to us in the Roman Catholic Church, the most magnificent and imposing organization the world has ever seen, at least in an outward view, should have so grown up in the bosom of christianity, towering to the very heavens in majesty, and filling the whole earth with its presence, through a long succession of centuries, and yet be at last the thin texture only of a huge diabolical lie, to which the stupid world was blindly sold for a thousand years, in the style represented by some of our nut-shell polemics. History is not so crazy as all that The gates of hell have carried no such disastrous triumph into the very heart of the christian Church. The great and good men of other days, the Bernards and Anselms of the dark ages, were not so wretchedly dumb as this sophomorical judgment would imply. The old champions of the Reformation--giants as they were themselves in intellectual and moral prowess, were not thus guilty of mistaking windmills for giants on the opposite side. It were more rational, certainly, in this case, to suspect our modern wholesale critics, who feel strong enough to prostrate Bellarmine with a harlequin's wand, as being themselves possibly the true sham, "made manifest" to all angels at least, if not to all men, by such exhibition. It is more likely, on the whole, that they are themselves in a crazy posture, mentally, than that all history over against them, should be so terribly out of joint, and the Church so hopelessly chaotic, down to their time. We have no mind at least, to listen to their oracular decisions, pronounced under such doubtful relation, and betraying such vast superiority to all difficulty or doubt. They do not understand the controversy with which they are so soon and so easily done.

Let them first comprehend the true sense of the ancient Church, and come to some sympathy with old catholic ideas, and learn some proper reverence for history, and master in a word the inward life of Romanism, as it reigns in truly pious minds, (not scouting the possibility of honest piety under any such form,) and then address themselves with insight and proof to the vindication of Protestantism, and we are prepared to give them a respectful hearing. Short of this, they do not deserve to be heard. Their false and shallow strategy serves only to betray the interest, on whose side they pretend to stand and fight.

In contrast with all such powerless assaults on Romanism, Dr. Schaff's work stands before us in the character of an earnest and vigorous plea for the principle of the Reformation. It grapples with the subject in earnest; goes to the bottom of it; allows the opposite interest every advantage which it can legitimately claim; does full justice to the truth involved in Romanism; shows all proper reverence for history and the idea of the Church; admits in full the bad points of Protestantism itself, without any attempt

Take, in illustration of the pseudo-protestant spirit here described, the following precious morceau, from the N. Y. American Protestant, for December, 1848:

"REV. DR. NEVIN AGAINST PROTESTANTISM.-The U. 8. C. Magazine publishes the discourse of Dr. Nevin, on the Spirit of Sect, under the head of Protestant Evidence of Catholicity. The argument of Dr. N., is in accordance with the views of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, and is sanctioned by them. Why should it not be, when he attempts to prove that all the Protestant sects are antichrist. Strange views are these, for a man who is without the pale of the Roman Catholic Church."

Of course the Am. Prot. has not read the tract here denounced. All goes in such a case, by intuition. Any tirade against Rome, is entitled to its reward, as such, in the way of glorification. Any word that Rome can lay hold of in its own favor, must be set down as contraband. The great offence with this tract is, its firm utterance of the article, One Holy Catholic Church, in the old sense of the Apostles' Creed; and its condemnation of the sect system as at war with the true spirit of the same. The Am. Prot. will have it, (if it mean anything,) that Protestantism is constitutionally sectarian, and that sects are not to be deplored as its curse, but gloried in as its peculiar privilege and ornament. That is, it sets Protestantism in full, plump contradiction to the whole idea of catholicity, as held by the ancient Church. The same Am. Prot. notices lately the outbreak of Rongianism in Vienna, as a revival of Religion; Ronge again in his glory; the times of Luther returned, &c. No amount of exposure, it seems, can put down the credit of this infidel movement, with a certain part of our religious press. It has a life as tough as that of Monk Leahey, which, howeve effectually killed in one place to-day, is sure to come to a glorious resurrection, through the gullibility of the popery mania, some where else to-morrow. We have no mind however, for our part, to graduate our idea of Protestantism, by the despotic censorship of any such self-constituted inquisition; whose sympathies are so widely forcign from the spirit of the ancient Church, while they fall in so readily with the frivolous rationalism of this Rongian reformation, as bearing the same divine signature with that of the immortal Martin Luther.

to cover them with disguise or excuse; and yet at the same time, valiantly wrests from the hands of the imperious foe, all the most trusted weapons of his warfare, and rescues triumphantly the cause of the Reformation from his proud grasp. It is our deliberate persuasion, that no work has appeared previously, in our American theological literature, in which is contained at once so fair and able an argument against the high-toned pretensions of the Roman Church. This will be understood hereafter, if not now. One such tract of this sort, going to the bottom of the discussion, is worth a whole cart load of the ephemeral trash on the subject of popery, which we find so industriously trumpeted on all sides, in our common sectarian press, as the quintessence of polemic power and skill. What are a score of nicknames and anecdotes to a single argument? What are a hundred appeals to popular prejudice and passion, as weighed with the smallest amount of true christian reasoning, based on true christian ground? Much noise has been made about Kirwan's Letters to Bishop Hughes, as forming an epoch in the history of the Roman Catholic controversy; and we are ready to allow them the credit of a much higher respectability than what belongs to the mass of the popu lar reading now noticed. They are characterized by great readiness, vivacity and point, and have undoubtedly carried the victory as against Bishop Hughes. But as regards true force and value for the vindication of Protestantism, they can bear no sort of comparison with this treatise of Professor Schaff. And yet the first work is lauded to the skies while the second is looked upon widely as a sort of semi-jesuitic stab to the whole cause it pretends to support. So much for the discrimination of a large portion of our Protestantism. The Romanists themselves know better. They may catch at separate concessions made in such a work as the Principle of Protestantism; but they have no mind to grapple with its argument as a whole. Such a man as Brownson, understands well enough the advantage he has, in contending with those who set out by a rejection of all truly catholic ideas, as no part of the faith once delivered to the saints; but he is sufficiently prudent also, at the same time, not to meddle with an argument which allows to these ideas their full force, while it vindicates however their true and real possession to the cause of the Reformation. This is to plant the controversy on different ground altogether. Mr. Brownson promised some time since, to take up this view of Protestantism; but like a number of Protestant critics, he has found it convenient thus far, to forget his praiseworthy purpose, occupied in his own imagination, perhaps, with more weighty

matters.

J. W. N.

THE

MERCERSBURG REVIEW.

MARCH, 1849.

NO. II.

ART. VII.-THE APOSTLES' CREED.

To understand properly the religious significance and value of this most ancient Christian symbol, we must take into consideration, first, its outward history; secondly, its constitution, or inward form; and thirdly, its material structure, or organism. All this may be regarded as forming a proper introduction to the study of its actual contents, the glorious world of truth which it throws open to our contemplation.

I. Outward History of the Creed.

The title of the symbol seems, at first sight, to refer its authorship at once to the Apostles; and it has been in fact a very widely prevalent opinion in the Church, resting in long tradition, that it came originally complete in every part, as we now have it, from their hands. In the Romanist communion, it has been looked upon almost universally indeed, as profane to call this in question; and many in the Protestant world, have made it a part of their religion to believe the same thing. The first distinct statement

VOL. I.-NO. II.

8*

of the opinion, we find in Rufinus, a church father of the fourth century; who speaks of it, however, as a common belief, handed down from an earlier time. According to this tradition, he says, the Apostles, before separating to their different fields of service, that they might not fall into any confusion subsequently, met together, and under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, by joint contribution of views, framed and adopted this compend, as a rule of faith, to be everywhere received by the infant churches. Some allusion to such joint composition, was found in the Greek name symbol itself, which signifies, primitively, a collation or throwing together of different things; and it is in conformity with the same thought, that we find the tradition elsewhere so far improved, as to refer to each Apostle, separately, a distinct article or clause of the creed, as his particular quota contributed towards its formation.

This whole opinion, however, is one which cannot be maintained with any tolerable show of success. Not only is it destitute of all positive historical foundation, but insuperable difficulties stand in the way of it on every side. No such apostolic creed or rule is mentioned in the New Testament. Some, indeed, have pretended to find it in St. Paul's "analogy or proportion of faith," Rom. xii. 6, the "good deposit" committed to Timothy, 2 Tim. i. 14, the "first principles of the oracles of God," mentioned Heb. vi. 12, the "doctrine" on which so much stress is laid by St. John 2nd Epis. v. 10, and "the faith once delivered unto the saints," as noticed by St. Jude, Ep. v. 3. But there is nothing in these passages to require any such interpretation. Still more significant is the silence of the early church writers. None of the fathers before Rufinus, Greek or Latin, make any mention of the tradition to which he refers; and in all their controversies and discussions, we meet with no appeal whatever, to any such single and fixed form of words, as of established authority from the time of the Apostles. On the contrary, the way in which they touch the subject, shows clearly that no fixed form of this sort was in existence. They refer frequently to a christian rule or canon of faith, and occasionally give us the sum of its contents; but this always with such free variation, as plainly implies that it was regarded as standing in

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