carne secundum fidem symboli baptizatis et electis ad sacerdotium in nomine Patris et Fili et Spiritus Sancti tota fides, tota uita, tota ueneratio est."

With this passage we may compare a fragment of esoteric teaching, his Benedictio super fideles, which begins with a quotation from Hilary's prayer, "Sancte Pater, omnipotens Deus," but falls away from the lines of his thought in the following sentence: "Tu enim es Deus, qui . . . unus Deus crederis, inuisibilis in Patre, uisibilis in Filio et unitus in opus duorum Sanctus Spiritus inueniris."

The accusation of Orosius in his Commonitorium,1 that Priscillian omitted the et in the Baptismal Formula, is true as to the substance of his teaching, if not in the letter. He never uses the word Trinity, and it does not appear that he acknowledges the distinction of persons in the Godhead behind the manifestation of threefold power (trina potestas).

The same mist of vagueness obscures the outlines of his Christological teaching. The following passage is plainly Apollinarian. Tract VI. § 99: "Denique Deus noster adsumens carnem, formam in se Dei et hominis, id est diuinæ animæ et terrenæ carnis adsignans, dum aliud ex his peccati formam, aliud diuinam ostendit esse naturam, illudque arma iniquitatis peccato, hoc iustitia arma demonstrat in salutem nostram uerbum caro factus."

We are not concerned here with the events of his life, his consecration as bishop, the controversies which followed upon the propagation of his teaching, his appeal to the Bishops of Rome and Milan, Damasus and Ambrose, the final tragedy of his appeal to the usurper Maxentius, a suicidal step which led to his condemnation on political rather than religious grounds. He was, however, executed on the charge of heresy, being the first to suffer this fate which he had proposed for others, and many saintly minds were grieved. Certainly it brought no gain of peace to the Church, for he was venerated as a martyr, and the sect increased everywhere. We have

1 Orosius, ad Aug.: "Trinitatem autem solo uerbo loquebatur, nam unionem absque ulla existentia aut proprietate adserens sublato 'et' Patrem, Filium Spiritum Sanctum hunc esse unum Christum docebat."

seen, in the case of Bacchiarius, how great was the suspicion of all monks coming from Spain. When language so inaccurate as the passages quoted above was declared with vehemence to be Catholic teaching, there was need for vigilance. And there was need of a summary of Catholic belief on the Trinity and the incarnation, which should lay due stress on the responsibility of the intellect in matters of faith, and at the same time do justice to the moral aspect of these problems, and prove that faith worketh by love, only "they that have done good shall go into life eternal." The Quicunque exactly meets these requirements. May it not have been written for the purpose?

There is another side to Priscillian's teaching on which it is not possible to speak with any confidence, but it must be mentioned in justice to his opponents. I refer to his leaning towards Manicheism and Gnosticism. Against his emphatic denial of such heresies must be set the plain proofs of his acquaintance with many recondite forms of such errors, and with apocryphal literature in which they are taught. His doctrine of the elect throws light on his setting Holy Church before Holy Spirit in the creed, and suggests his connection with some theosophic sect. The prominence which he gives to the sufferings of Christ may be explained away, if, like Mani, he attributed to them only a symbolical meaning.1 It must be remembered that the Western Manicheans of the fourth and fifth centuries made much more parade of Christian teaching than those of the East.

Orosius charges him with explaining S. Paul's words, Col. ii. 14, "the handwriting of the ordinances," as "the bond in virtue of which the soul was imprisoned in the body, and made subject to sidereal influences." It seems to have been supposed that the powers brought the different parts of the body into relation to the signs of the zodiac, while the soul was influenced by the twelve heavenly powers, represented under the names of the twelve patriarchs. There are vague hints in Tracts VI., VIII., X. of these doctrines.

Tract VI. § 111: "Inter duodecim milia signatorum patriarchum numeris mancipati."

1 Neander, Hist. iv. p. 509 (Trans.).

Tract VII. § 117: "Perpetua luce contecti peccatorum supplicia respuere et requiem possimus habere iustorum per Iesum Christum."

Such words seem simply to imply that the soul is mystically purged by fellowship with the higher world, and enabled to defy (respuere) the punishments of sins. This is the sort of teaching which would encourage secret immorality among those who imagined themselves safe by election. It was the suspicion of evil-doing which ruined Priscillian and his cause, however far he may have been from countenancing such conclusions. The only remedy is to proclaim, as is done with no uncertain sound both by the Creed of Damasus and the Quicunque, the doctrine of a Future Judgment, when "all shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works."

§ VI. DATE AND AUTHORSHIP

My conclusions from all these considerations differ but little from those of Waterland. They seem to point to the decade 420-430 as the period when the creed must have been written.

Kattenbusch1 would push the date ten years further back.

1 Theol. Lit. Z. 1897, p. 144: "Das Charakteristische an der Formel ist ihre cigenthümlich kunstmässige Gestalt. Man kann sie eine "Dichtung" heissen. In feierlich bemessener, gravitätischer Form präzisirt sie die 'catholica fides.' Sic hat kein Metrum, wohl aber einen unverkennbaren Rhythmus. In ihrer rhetorisch plerophorischen Art spricht sie speciell den trinitarischen Gedanken vielleicht kühner und consequenter aus, als es der Theologie noch geläufig war. Man sieht sich ja nothwendigerweise an die Gedanken erinnert, die Augustin ausgeführt hat. Es kann aber ein Vorurtheil sein, wenn man meint, das Quic. setze die augustinische Trinitätsconstruktion als solche voraus. Die Formel lässt sich füglich auch begreifen als eine Vorläuferin der Spekulation des Augustin. Mir scheint, in der That, als ob Augustin sie bereits kenne. Nicht als ob er sie irgendwie als eine ‘Autorität, betrachte. Aber wenn sie in Lerinum entstanden sein sollte, kann sie bald auch in afrikanischen mönchischen Kreisen bekannt geworden sein. Es hat für mich mehr Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass dem Augustin einzelne ihrer Ausdrücke oder Sätze im Gedächtniss gehaftet haben und ihm gelegentlich in die Feder geflossen sind, als dass der Autor der Formel aus den Stellen, die u. a. Burn nachweist, seine überraschend ähnlichen oder geradezu gleichlautenden Wendungen geschöpft haben sollte."

ΙΟ

He does not consider that its relationship to the theology of Augustine stands in the way. He would even regard it as antecedent to Augustine's speculations. It seems to him possible that Augustine knew it, and that the parallel passages scattered over his works represent reminiscences. It does not follow that he would regard it as an authority.

I have often wondered whether the following sentence in Augustine, de Trin. I. v. 5, referred to a formal profession: "But in this matter (i.e. the Catholic faith) some are disturbed when they hear that the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and yet that they are not three Gods but one God." I do not know of any other passages which would bear out Kattenbusch's suggestion, and the reference in this case seems to me too weak to bear the weight of so important an argument. It comes to this. If the main portion of part i. clauses 7-19, which one has been accustomed to think of as pre-eminently Augustinian, and which (as I have shown, p. 138) distinguishes the Quicunque from the other professions of faith quoted in this chapter, is not the fruit of Augustine's influence upon the author, but exercised, on the contrary, a constraining influence upon Augustine, the Church owes an unacknowledged debt of gratitude to a mind superior to that of the great African thinker. Surely this is an incredible hypothesis, since we find no trace of such influence on Victricius or Vincentius. Vincentius was possibly prejudiced against Augustine, and we find no parallels to these clauses in the Commonitorium; but no prejudice, as far as we know, would exist in his mind against a Gallican writer, and he desired to set forth the fulness of the Trinity (Trinitatis plenitudo), which is just what these clauses do. The genius of Augustine had no rivals, and we may be thankful, for the advance which he made in the interpretation of the doctrine of Divine Personality was only won at the cost of bitter pains, revealed to us in his heart-searching Confessions.

The supposed dependence of the author of the Quicunque on Augustine leads us to set the date of the publication of his Enchiridion, c. 420, as the earliest possible date of the Qui

cunque. The parallels to the second book "against Maximinus," published c. 427, are of less importance. His lectures on S. John were written in 416, and in the same year he finished his work on the Trinity.

The absence of any reference to Nestorianism gives us the lower limit c. 430. There is a good deal of truth in Kattenbusch's observation, that expositions of faith must usually be assumed to be up to date, whereas commentaries on creeds and expositions of faith tend to stop with the latest heresy against which their authors find arguments in the creed of their subject.

The question of authorship is not so easy to define. There are three modern claimants,—-Victricius, Vincentius, and Honoratus. I consider Vigilius of Thapsus,1 or his double, out of court.

The chief claim put forward for Victricius by Harvey2 was the fact that he was accused of Apollinarianism or something like it, and that he wrote a Confessio, which has been lost. Yet we gather from the full account given by Paulinus, and the parallel passage in the de Laude Sanctorum, that it only partially corresponded to the Quicunque; roughly speaking, to clauses 4, 6, 15, 28, 29, 30. We have no right to dogmatise on the omission of parellels to other clauses. We do not know for certain what else it contained. But on the whole we seem to be justified in rejecting the theory of his authorship, unless some MS. should be found connecting the creed with him in any more definite way.

The theory that Vincentius was the author has been ably advocated by Ommanney. Nothing that I have written about the priority of the creed to the Commonitorium need hinder one from regarding the creed as an earlier work of Vincentius. There is no question of his knowledge or of his ability. But these general considerations do not amount to proof, and there are others which may be said to counterbalance them. "He was a poet-theologian, and the Quicunque represents rather the grammar than the poetry of theology. His intellect was imaginative rather than analytical, and there is true poetry 2 On the Creeds, ii. p. 577.

1 See Appendix B.