PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. THE call for a new edition of this work in less than a year after its publication is an agreeable surprise to the author, and fills him with gratitude to the reading public and the many reviewers, known and unknown, who have so kindly and favorably noticed it in American and foreign periodicals and in private letters. One of the foremost divines of Germany (Dr. Dorner, in the Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie, 1877, p. 682) expresses a surprise that the idea of such an œcumenical collection of Christian Creeds should have originated in America, where the Church is divided into so many rival denominations; but he adds also as an explanation that this division creates a desire for unity and co-operation, and a mutual courtesy and kindness unknown among the contending parties and schools under the same roof of state-churches, where outward uniformity is maintained at the expense of inward peace and harmony. The changes in this edition are very few. The literature in the first volume is brought down to the present date, and at the close of the second volume a fac-simile of the oldest MSS. of the Athanasian Creed and the Apostles' Creed is added. NEW YORK, April, 1878. P. S. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. THIS edition differs from the second in the following particulars: 1. In the first volume several errors have been corrected (e. g., in the statistical table, p. 818), and a list of new works inserted on p. xiv. 2. In the third volume a translation of the Second Helvetic Confession has been added, pp. 831 sqq. NEW YORK, December, 1880. P. S. PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. THE call for a fourth edition of this work has made it my duty to give the first volume once more a thorough revision and to bring the literature down to the latest date. In this I have been aided by my young friend, the Rev. Samuel M. Jackson, one of the assistant editors of my "Religious Encyclopædia." The additions which could not be conveniently made in the plates have been printed separately after the Table of Contents, pp. xiv-xvii. The second and third volumes, which embrace the symbolical documents, remain unchanged, except that at the end of the third volume the new Congregational Creed of 1883 has been added. Creeds will live as long as faith survives, with the duty to confess our faith before men. By and by we shall reach, through the Creeds of Christendom, the one comprehensive, harmonious Creed of Christ. P. S. NEW YORK, May, 1884. PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. THIS edition is a reprint of the fourth, without any changes. NEW YORK, January, 1887. THE ECUMENICAL CREEDS. § 6. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE ECUMENICAL CREEDS. THE CREEDS OF THE GREEK CHURCH. § 11. THE SEVEN ECUMENICAL COUNCILS. § 12. THE CONFESSIONS OF GENNADIUS, A.D. 1453 § 13. THE ANSWERS OF THE PATRIARCH JEREMIAH TO THE Luther- 8 9 43 46 • 50 § 14. THE CONFESSION OF METROPHANES CRITOPULUS, A.D. 1625 |