r that the Church should appear to class the ridiculous
fable of the discovery of the cross with facts so awfully important as
the Nativity, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of her
Lord, [490]

The Athanasian Creed caused much perplexity. Most of the Commissioners
were equally unwilling to give up the doctrinal clauses and to retain
the damnatory clauses. Burnet, Fowler, and Tillotson were desirous to
strike this famous symbol out of the liturgy altogether. Burnet brought
forward one argument, which to himself probably did not appear to
have much weight, but which was admirably calculated to perplex his
opponents, Beveridge and Scott. The Council of Ephesus had always been
reverenced by Anglican divines as a synod which had truly represented
the whole body of the faithful, and which had been divinely guided in
the way of truth. The voice of that Council was the voice of the Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church, not yet corrupted by superstition, or
rent asunder by schism. During more than twelve centuries the world
had not seen an ecclesiastical assembly which had an equal claim to the
respect of believers. The Council of Ephesus had, in the plainest terms,
and under the most terrible penalties, forbidden Christians to frame or
to impose on their brethren any creed other than the creed settled by
the Nicene Fathers. It should seem therefore that, if the Council of
Ephesus was really under the direction of the Holy Spirit, whoever
uses the Athanasian Creed must, in the very act of uttering an anathema
against his neighbours, bring down an anathema on his own head, [491]
In spite of the authority of the Ephesian Fathers, the majority of the
Commissioners determined to leave the Athanasian Creed in the Prayer
Book; but they proposed to add a rubric drawn up by Stillingfleet, which
declared that the damnatory clauses were to be understood to apply only
to such as obstinately denied the substance of the Christian Faith.
Orthodox believers were therefore permitted to hope that the heretic
who had honestly and humbly sought for truth would not be everlastingly
punished for having failed to find it, [492]

Tenison was intrusted with the business of examining the Liturgy and
of collecting all those expressions to which objections had been made,
either by theological or by literary critics. It was determined to
remove some obvious blemishes. And it would have been wise in the
Commissioners to stop here. Unfortunate