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THEREFORE since we have, as I fancy, already in all the former books
with the weight of sacred testimonies, given a complete answer to the
heretic who denies God, now let us come to the faith of the Creed of
Antioch and its value. For as he was himself baptized and regenerated in
this, he ought to be confuted by his own profession, and (so to speak) to
be crushed beneath the weight of his own arms, for this is the method, that
as he is already convicted by the evidence of holy Scripture, so now he may
be convicted by evidence out of his own mouth. Nor will there be any need
to bring anything else to bear against him when he has clearly and plainly
convicted himself. The text then and the faith of the Creed of Antioch is
this. "I believe in one and the only true God, the Father Almighty,
Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
His only begotten Son, and the first-born of every creature, begotten of
Him before all worlds, and not made: Very God of Very God, Being of one
substance. with the Father: By whom both the worlds were framed, and all
things were made. Who for us came, and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was
crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried: and the third day He rose
again according to the Scripture: and ascended into heaven, and shall come
again to judge the quick and the dead," etc. In the Creed which gives
the faith of all the Churches, I should like to know which you would rather
follow, the authority of men or of God? ThoUgh I would not press hardly or
unkindly upon you, but give the opportunity of choosing whichever
alternative you please, that accepting one, I may deny the other: for I
will grant you and yield to you either of them. And what do I grant, I ask?
I will force you to one or other even against your will. For you ought, if
you like, to understand of your own free will that one or other of these is
in the Creed: if you don't like it, you must be forced against your will to
see it. For, as you know, a Creed (Symbolum) gets its name from being a
"collection." For what is called in Greek "s'umbolos" is termed in Latin
"Collatio." But it is therefore a collection (collatio) because when the
faith of the whole Catholic law was collected together by the apostles of
the Lord, all those matters which are spread over the whole body of the
sacred writings with immense fulness of detail, were collected together in
sum in the matchless brevity of the Creed, according to the Apostle's
words: "Completing His word, and cutting it short in righteousness: because
a short word shall the Lord make upon the earth." This then is the
"short word" which the Lord made, collecting together in few words the
faith of both of His Testaments, and including in a few brief clauses the
drift of all the Scriptures, building up His own out of His own, and giving
the force of the whole law in a most compendious and brief formula.
Providing in this, like a most tender father, for the carelessness and
ignorance of some of his children, that no mind however simple and ignorant
might have any trouble over what could so easily be retained in the memory.
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