it, and the reason and the fact must alike be found, where alone they both exist, in the Word of God. The facts are not therefore dead facts, ending with themselves, but living facts, full of meaning and power, and linking themselves on to other influences. The truths relative to the three Persons of the Godhead and the history of their dealings with mankind contain the whole economy of salvation, the entire length and breadth of the faith. To say that God the Father creates, God the Son redeems, and God the Holy Ghost sanctifies, is to express in few words the human side as well as the Divine side of salvation. The Divine side is the engraving on the seal, and the human side is the impression made by it. The engraved seal portrays the operations of the indivisible Trinity; but press it upon the heart, and it throws up in reverse the whole story of the human sin, ruin, and suffering it was the purpose of the indivisible Trinity to remedy.

The articles of the Nicene Creed contain therefore the faith of the Church, and all more minute and detailed Confessions are but enlargements and explanations of them. They may be true or false, Scriptural or unscriptural, ancient or modern, but they all take their matter from these articles. If they be true and orthodox, as the Athanasian Creed for instance, they do not assert one idea not already involved in the articles of the Nicene Creed. If they are untrue and heterodox, they are either additions to them or perversions of them. These articles are the germinal principles out of which all other Confessions spring, and by which, in the judgment of the Church, they are to be measured, as the articles themselves are to be measured by the final test of the Word of God.

I have already said that the dogmas of the Nicene Creed are all contained beyond a question in the Articles of Religion of the Church of England. They also constitute the basis of every other Confession known in the Church.

In our own country they are embodied more or less fully in the Westminster, Irish, and Scotch Confessions, and in the Confessions of the Baptists, Congregationalists, Anabaptists, and Quakers. On the Continent they enter into the Waldensian, Augustinian, Tetrapolitan, Saxon, Bohemian, Helvetic, Belgian, and Polish Confessions. In the East they are embodied in the " orthodox doctrine of the Apostolic Eastern Church;" and lastly, in the West, in the Romish Confession contained in the Creed of Pope Pius IV.

In reviewing the whole range of extant Church Confessions, about forty in number [9], although some of them exist in a very fragmentary form, one thing is worthy of a passing remark. It is that the later creeds, those for instance of the sixteenth century,-a century, as was natural, prolific in Confessions,—are intimately related to the earliest creeds by their precise assertion of the dogmatic character of the Scriptural faith. All creeds are necessarily dogmatic. But the early creeds and the later creeds agree in referring their dogmatic character specifically to the authority of the written word. During the middle ages the assertion of this principle was dropped, and, later still, Church authority took its place. The Reformation again brought the true principle into prominence, and rested dogma on its proper basis, the Divine authority of the Christian revelation.

It is true that, in many of the Confessions referred to, the definitions and explanations widely differ from those of other creeds; but this very fact gives to the testimony itself its irrefragable cogency. There is method in the diversity. With the exception of the Eastern and Roman Churches, all the other Confessions agree in essentials and differ only in circumstantials: in other words, their faith is the same, and they only differ on questions of Church government and discipline. Beneath an apparent discrepancy there exists a real substantial identity. With the

Eastern and Roman Churches it is different: there the differences are in essentials and the resemblances in circumstantials. With the exception of the claim of Church supremacy, the three bodies-the Church of England, the Eastern Church, and the Church of Rome-mainly agree in circumstantials, but they widely and vitally differ in essentials. Accepting the same articles, they interpret and define them so differently that they really become different dogmas, as wide apart as light and darkness. But it must be recollected, that while these two Churches corrupt the faith with dogmas rejected by the Protestant Churches, they teach all that the Protestant Churches teach. Up to a certain point-the point defined in the Nicene Creedthe objects of belief are identical. Within these limits, therefore, lies the one immutable creed of the Church of all ages, "the faith once delivered to the saints."

Now let the whole body of dogmatic truth as taught in the visible Church of Christ, whether it be true or whether it be false, be considered together. Whatever we may think of the doctrine, let us view the whole as one stream; then let us trace it backward to its fountainhead, and see what happens. The process is the same as tracing a river to its source. We wish to know whence it derives its waters; we therefore trace it carefully up the stream, and note where every branch separates, to the right hand or to the left. No stream that falls in along the course can form any part of the original waters; we therefore let it alone, and steadily pursue the central current, till we reach the spot where it flows out of the broad lake or the precipitous mountain's side. Let us do the same thing with the dogmatic teaching of the Church; we shall then see which branch traces its original furthest back and forms part of the parent stream.

We scarcely commence the process before one doctrine is separated from the mass and falls behind us. The dogma

of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary reaches no further back than our own memories [10]. Steadily tracing the course of time backwards, the dogma of purgatorial fire branches off about the middle of the sixteenth century, and dies away as a formal doctrine about the middle of the twelfth [11]. In the early part of the fifteenth century the mutilation of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, by taking away the cup from the laity, disappears [12]. A little further back, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, we find transubstantiation for the first time dogmatically taught, and in another two or three centuries all traces of it are lost again [13]. In the twelfth century five of the seven sacraments disappear, and the two “ ordained by Christ Himself" alone survive [14]. In the ninth century the power of canonization for the first time falls into the stream of doctrine, although the tendency to saint-worship and to incipient Mariolatry reaches further backward [15]. In the beginning of the sixth century the Papal supremacy is left behind, and with it the last formal trace of the corrupt dogmas of the East and the West [16].

We have reached a date still distant from the Council of Nice. Nearly three hundred years must be traced back till then. Yet we have already left behind all that separates us from the Greek and Roman Churches. We have seen at what dates their doctrines one by one arose, and where they fell into the central stream. We now stand far above them, and yet the river itself has become no scanty stream, no trickling brook, weak and shallow. It yet flows on, a river of truth, deep, broad, and strong, only the swifter because the banks have narrowed on either side. Still we trace it back, the faith of our own beloved Church and the faith of the Nicene Fathers flowing together, a stream of truth one and indistinguishable.

And now we have reached Nicæa, and yet we have

not arrived at the fountain-head. Thirteen creeds or fragments of creeds still lie between us and the first parent spring of all, bearing the same general character, reflecting the same truths. Further back therefore flows the river. The original spring is still beyond us; although every voice now loudly proclaims where it is, and what. Still we take no man's word, but from saint to saint carefully trace the current to its source. Further back than the time of Irenæus the line of descent for a brief period becomes comparatively obscure. Intimations of a formal definite creed may be found in Ignatius, Clemens Romanus, Polycarp, and Justin Martyr, but they are fragmentary and uncertain. The period is like some reach of the earthly stream, where, amid the precipitous rocks and overhanging woods, its exact course cannot be positively traced. A little further on and the full river breaks into view again. We tread with reverent hearts and holy fear, for we are close to the fountain-head. We are looking into the first century of the Christian era, and here we find the abysmal depth whence the glorious river flows. It may be traced yet further back indeed even than this, but it is through secret channels, through type and symbol and ceremony and prophecy, with the clear light of day breaking upon it here and there; rather like a river flowing underground than like a river in the full light of day, challenging by the strength of its first rush and the loud music of its flowing depths the eyes and ears of men. We are looking into the first century. Let us as it were go round, and get, so to speak, at the back of the cavernous profound whence the stream of truth rushes into the daylight. Let us go back to the year 750 of Rome, and behold! the open river is not. Somehow in that mysterious century it has its earthly birth. Here, explain it how you will, here, for an historical certainty, the faith begins. This admits of no denial. The proofs that the articles of the Nicene Creed are deduced