en
universally received among Christians; and experience already indicates,
what the lapse of time will prove,--that no creed will be permanent. If
the most ancient of creeds, commonly called the Apostles', be named in
answer to the last remark, let it be remembered that the first version
of this formulary given by Irenaeus, and the subsequent ones by
Tertullian, Cyril of Alexandria, and others, were as widely different
from those now in use as from each other. Widely different versions of
this creed are used in the Catholic Church and the Church of England;
and those who subscribe to the same form of words understand those words
variously. The permanence of this most ancient of creeds is in name
only; and the name itself is a false assumption.

Creeds cannot be permanent and universal, unless the language of which
they consist is also permanent and universal; which no language has ever
been. There is no test by which it can be proved that any two minds
affix precisely the same meaning to the commonest terms; while we have
abundant evidence that very abstract terms (such as abound in creeds)
convey very different notions to different minds. Thus, if the terms of
a language were absolutely immutable, and if one language prevailed over
the whole earth, there would still be room for a variety of
interpretations of anything expressed in that language. But the
mutations which time occasions in every tongue, and the necessity of
translation and re-translation, increase a thousandfold the chances of
such a variety, and indeed render it absolutely unavoidable.

It is well, therefore, that the truths of religious doctrine cannot be
made one with the language in which any age or nation chooses to clothe
them, as that language is necessarily mutable. And it would be well if
believers were henceforth and for ever to desist from the attempt to
connect what is mutable with what is immutable, that which is perishable
with that which is immortal, by requiring the present age to adopt the
language of the past, and providing for a similar adoption by the
future. If they wish the spiritual _conceptions_ of former ages to be
perpetuated, this may best be done by changing the _terms_ as their
meanings become modified, and not by retaining them the more
pertinaciously, the more varied are the conceptions they originate. If
the Gospel itself had been inseparably connected with any form of
language, or embodied in anything but facts, it would