CHAPTER VIII.

THE TRANSLATION OF THE APOSTLES' CREED.

N dealing with the Creeds our Reformers appear

current text of the Apostles' Creed, as it was found in the pre-Reformation service-books of England. But in the case both of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds we shall find reason for believing that they examined, and, as they thought, amended the texts as these were found in the old English Missals and Breviaries.

The Apostles' Creed. It would be impossible here to discuss the interesting questions connected with the origin and early history of the (so-called) Apostles' Creed. It must suffice to say that it is of great antiquity, and, in the shape we have it, is a product of Western Christianity. The Creed was known to the people of England in their vernacular tongue from remote times; and we possess a large number of versions of it in Anglo-Saxon and early English.*

The belief that the Creed was composed by the Apostles lingered long in England, and finds expression in the works of some of our eminent

* Several of these will be found printed in HEURTLEY'S Harmonia Symbolica.

divines. But it is worth observing that in the authoritative dogmatic formularies of our Church we find the Reformers using language that suggests that no decision had been arrived at by them on that subject. In the Articles of Religion (1552) we find in Article vii. (corresponding to viii. in our present Thirty-nine Articles) the following:-"The three Creeds, Nicene Creed, Athanasius' Creed, and that which is commonly called the Apostles' Creed, ought thoroughly to be received," etc. Indeed, down to 1662 the Creed is not in the English Prayer Book styled "the Apostles' Creed." This wise reticence may be favourably contrasted with the foolishly - uncritical statement of the Catechism (commonly known as the Catechism of the Council of Trent)* published by order of Pope Pius V. for the use of parish priests in the Roman communion, where we read that the holy Apostles, "under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit," divided the Faith into twelve articles, and that this profession of the Faith, "composed by themselves," they called symbolum. As early as 1548 Cranmer, with excellent good sense, remarked of the statement "that the Creed, which is commonly and universally used to be said by the common people, was made by the twelve apostles," that though "it may be so," "yet it is a great offence to the clergy to affirm for certain the thing that is to themselves uncertain."+ The sentiment here expressed is reflected, as we have

* Catechismus ex decreto Concilii Tridentini ad Parochos, Pii V. Pont. Max. jussu editus (1566), Pars I. c. i. qq. 2, 3.

+ Remains and Letters (P.S.), p. 515.

seen, in the Articles of 1552, and perhaps also in the avoidance of the term "Apostles' Creed" in the Prayer Book till 1662.

Questions as to the correct translation of the Apostles' Creed are more numerous than might be at first supposed. Thus, for example—

I. Those interested in theology are aware that some theologians draw a distinction between the sense of Credo in Deum and such expressions as Credo Deum and Credo in Deo. The distinction is probably unreal; but it was, perhaps, an attempt to indicate the supposed pregnant sense of the former that suggested the renderings "I bileve into God Fader almygti . . . . and into Jesu Crist, his onli Sone" in a fourteenth-century rendering.* The English tongue obviously does not tolerate such a construction, which only puzzles without enlightening.

2. It was certainly sweet old English, and perhaps conveyed the sense better to the unlettered people, when we find the reference to the Mother of our Lord, in certain of the early versions of the Creed, expressed in the words "born of Marie Maiden," or "of the Maiden Marie." But by the sixteenth century "the Virgin Mary" was a wellestablished phrase.

3. The name of the Roman governor under whom the Saviour suffered was rendered as "Ponce Pilate," a form retained from the earlier popular versions of the Creed; and so it stood at Matins as late as 1662. In the Creed too, as given in the Catechism, the little boys and girls of England down to the same date * HEURTLEY, 96.

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learned to speak of " Ponce Pilate." Canon Simmons assures us that "Ponce Pilate" is a form which still lingers in English cottages.* But even in 1549 there seemed to be an inclination towards the form which has now become general among English-speaking people; for we find "Pontius Pilate" in the Nicene Creed of 1549, and even ("Poncius Pilate ") in the Apostles' Creed, as given in its interrogative shape, in the order for Public Baptism. The quaint "Ponce Pilate" was a consistent attempt to give both the Latin words an English form. "Pontius Pilatus" is consistent, and so is "Ponce Pilate"; but the now securely established "Pontius Pilate" is, when we think of it, as faulty as "Marcus Antony" or

"Horace Flaccus."

4. How was descendit ad inferos to be translated? Here every English translator had to face the difficulty presented by the fact that we have but one word to render the two biblical terms "Hades" and "Gehenna." The scriptural locus classicus on this article of the Creed is Acts ii. 27, 31. No doubt it required some boldness on the part of the Revisers of the English New Testament in 1881 to substitute "Hades" for the familiar word "hell" in this place; but they were fully justified in what they did. It is far better where the gravest interests of truth are concerned, to use a word that at least does not mislead, though it may not enlighten, and may only provoke the question, "But what does it mean?" Had the Reformers adopted here a similar course many stormy clouds of misapprehension and vexatious

* Lay Folks' Mass-Book (Early English Text Society), p. 223.

controversy would never have arisen. It is only right, however, to remember that they had something to say by way of excuse. They were not translating the Creed for the first time; it had been, in one version or another, in the mouths of the people for centuries, and I suppose in every Anglo-Saxon and English version, certainly in all those with which I am acquainted, the word "hell" is to be found in this place. And the common belief, which finds expression in the old "mystery plays" of the "Harrowing of Hell," gave a wider sense to the word than it possesses in the beliefs of those who use the word "hell" in the exclusive sense of the place of the lost.

When the American Church first entered on the task of revising the Prayer Book, it was proposed (in the General Convention of 1785) to omit this article altogether. In June, 1786, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York wrote to say that they "saw with grief" . . . that in the Apostles' Creed "an article is omitted, which was thought necessary to be inserted with a view to a particular heresy, in a very early age of the Church, and has ever since had the venerable sanction of universal reception." Yet, in spite of this protest, the first authorised Prayer Book of the American Church contained the permissive rubric, "Any churches may omit the

* The plural "hellis” (Prymer, circ. A.D. 1400, printed by Maskell) and "helles" (in a fifteenth-century Prymer, also printed by Maskell) seems to be an attempt to render the plural "inferos," even as in the same documents in the fifth article we read "from deaths" (a mortuis); and in the sixth "heavenes" appears to be a rendering of the plural "coelos."