25 MAY 1878, Page 23

CURRENT LITERATURE.

The Creeds of Christendom, with Translations. By Professor Schaff. (Hodder and Stoughton.)—Thcso volumes, which form part of a theo- logical and philosophical library, specially designed for colleges and universities, will be useful to a numerous class of students, and wo may add, to the ecclesiastical historians of the future. In one of the volumes we have the creeds of the Greek and Latin Churches. From the con- fessions of St. Peter and St. Thomas, which fall under the head of " Scriptural Confessions," we are brought down through the ante- Nicene and Nicene creeds, the (Ecumenical, Roman, Greek, and Russian creeds, to the fourteen theses of the Old Catholic Union Conference with Greeks and Anglicans in 1874. Under this Roman creeds, we have the recent decree on the Immaculate Con- ception, the Papal Syllabus of 1864, with its exhaustive condemnation of so-called modern errors and heresies, and last, the decrees of the Vatican Council of 1870. The author occasionally appends a few notes, and he gives us explanations of the technical terms persona and immensus in the Athanasian Creed, which are not quite adequately rendered in the existing version. Another volume contains the Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches, beginning with the Augsburg Con- fession, in 1530, and concluding with the nine Articles of the Evan- gelical Alliance. Wo have the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of

England, which, if they cannot be exactly described as a creed, seem to have a fitting place in this volume, which the author has certainly done his best to make as complete as possible. It is perhaps a question whether it was worth while to include obscure confessions of faith drawn up by American Baptist ministers, but we must remember that Professor Schaff is himself a theological professor in a New York College. The volumes before us have the merit of bringing together a vast amount of matter in a compendious form.