But it is all of one order, and in time it will all go. Not the Athanasian Creed's damnatory clauses only, but the whole Creed; not this one Creed only, but the three Creeds,—our whole received application of science, popular or learned, to the Bible. For it was an inadequate and false science, and could not, from the nature of the case, be otherwise.
And now we see how much that clergyman deceives himself, who writes to the Guardian: 'The objectors to the Athanasian Creed at any rate admit, that its doctrinal portions are truly the carefully distilled essence of the scattered intimations of Holy Scripture on the deep mysteries in question,—priceless discoveries made in that field.' When one has travelled to the Athanasian Creed along the gradual line of the historical development of Christianity, instead of living stationary all one's life with this Creed blocking up the view, one is really tempted to say, when one reads a deliverance like that of this clergyman: Sancta simplicitas! It is just because the Athanasian Creed pretends to be, in its doctrine, 'the carefully distilled essence of the scattered intimations of Holy Scripture,' and is so very far from it, that it is worthless. It is 'the carefully distilled essence of the scattered intimations of Holy Scripture' just as that allegory of the two swords was. It is really a mixture,—for true criticism, as it ripens, it is even a grotesque mixture,—of learned pseudo-science with popular Aberglaube.
But it cannot be too carefully borne in mind that the real 'essence of Holy Scripture,' its saving truth, is no such criticism at all as the so-called orthodox dogma attempts and attempts unsuccessfully. No, the real essence of Scripture is a much simpler matter. It is, for the Old Testament: To him that ordereth his conversation right shall be shown the salvation of God!—and, for the New Testament: Follow
