OUTSIDE THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
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itself. But this is wholly alien to the temper of Greek and Latin Christianity, as it manifests itself from the fourth century onward. According to the Creeds which to this day we recite, the inter-relation of the Trinity and the events of the Passion constitute the faith of the Church. Nor is this view confined to formal ecclesiastical documents.
"Firmly I believe and truly
God is Three, and God is One;
And I next acknowledge duly
Manhood taken by the Son."
So runs the beginning of Gerontius' dying confession in J. H. Newman's poem, and it only expresses in modern verse what the Church of the Empire would have us confess as the essence of the Christian Religion[1].
Not that Aphraates did not acknowledge the
- ↑ For a contrast to Aphraates in Syriac literature see Philoxenus, Discourse ii 32 (Budge's Eng. Tr., p. 29). There are, it should be noticed, traces of a (baptismal) Symbol in Aphraates, e.g. "He is the First-born Son, the offspring of Mary … He suffered, lived again, ascended into the height … He is the Judge of dead and living, who shall sit on the Throne" (xiv 39).
3—2
