[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Can you afford me a little space in your columns to put a case to Mr. Maccoll and to ask him a question ? I heard a preacher in my parish church last Sunday thus express himself (I cannot quote bie very words, but I have no doubt that I give his meaning exactly) :—" There are some persons who get to dis- believe such doctrines as the Descent of Christ into Hell, or the Personality of the Holy Spirit, or who permit themselves to doubt the truth of the Old Testament miracles. By degrees they be- come fixed in their unbelief. They do not feel the worse for it. They are good and worthy Christians. But when they come to be judged they will be lost eternally by reason of it." These words shocked me; but they seemed to me to express, only with an unusual frankness, the genuine meaning of the Athanasian Creed. I should be glad to be told that they do not.
I will take one point—the Descent into Hell. Very few persons, I imagine, attach a definite meaning to these words. Theolo- gians differ very widely about them. I have heard that in the Apostles' Creed, as it is often recited in the Churches of America, they do not appear. Will Mr. Maccoll answer—if he can with a plain yes or no—this question ? "Do you believe that an English Churchman, brought up to believe this doctrine and deliberately rejecting it, will without doubt perish everlastingly ' ?"—I am,
Previous page
