History of the Creeds – F J Badcock

Today’s free book is F.J. Badcock’s History of the Creeds. My thanks to Book Aid for making a copy of this public domain title available for digitisation.

No student of the history of liturgies can afford to neglect the evidence furnished by baptismal Creeds. These were an intrinsic, though only an occasional, part of the liturgy, and in the absence of direct evidence to the contrary, evidence which is not forthcoming until the seventh century, it is a fair presumption that the type of Creed would be an index of the type of liturgy in use; and thanks to many sermons and instructions on the Creed we possess a far more detailed knowledge of the local baptismal Creed than we do of the remainder of the rite during the first five hundred years of the Christian religion.

In consequence of this I have felt myself at liberty to introduce a far larger bulk of liturgical matter and thereby to defend myself against the criticisms of the reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, who thought that I had exaggerated the liturgical influence of the patriarchate of Antioch.

Preface to Second Edition, p.xi.

Francis John Babcock [1869-1944], The History of the Creeds, 2nd edn. London: SPCK, 1938. Hbk. pp.282. [Click here to visit the download page for this title]

Table of Contents

• Preface to the Second Edition
• The Author to The Theological Student on How to Read His Book

1. Introductory
2. Creeds and their Classifications
3. Early Eastern Creeds
4. Eastern Baptismal Creeds of the Fourth Century
5. The Creeds of Niceta of Remesciana and Jerome
6. Western European Creeds
7. How Creeds Grow
8. The Early Baptismal Creed of Rome
9. The Enlargement of the Roman Creed
10. The Textus Receptus, T
11. The Title Symbolum Apostolorum. The History of a Legend
12. The Nicene Creed: Its Original Composition
13. Its Enlargement
14. The Later History
15. The Quicumque Vult
16. The “Communion of the Saints” as an Article of the Creed

• Index
• Map