Explore "The Athanasian Creed. (1865.)" by James Thomson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On Christmas day, as on all other chief holidays of the year, the ministers and congregations of our National Church have had the noble privilege and pleasure of standing up and reciting the creed commonly called of St. Athanasius. The question of the authorship does not concern us here, but a note of Gibbon (chapter 37) is so brief and comprehensive that we may as well cite it: -- "But the three following truths, however strange they may seem, are _now_ universally acknowledged. 1. St. Athanasius is not the author of the creed which is so frequently read in our churches. 2. It does not appear to have existed within a century after his death. 3. It was originally composed in the Latin tongue, and consequently in the western provinces. Gennadius, patriarch of Constantinople, was so much amazed by this extraordinary composition, that he frankly pronounced it to be the work of a drunken man. " (This Gennadius, by the bye, is the same whom Gibbon mentions two or three times afterwards in the account of the siege and conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, a.d. 1453).
Whoever elaborated the Creed, and whether he did it drunk or sober, the Church of England has made it thoroughly her own by adoption.