11.  The Shepherd of Hermas, as the work current under the name of Hermas is called, consists of three books—­his Visions, his Commands, and his Similitudes.  The four visions are received through the ministry of an aged woman, who is the church of Christ.  The twelve commands and ten similitudes are received from one who appears to him “in the habit of a shepherd, clothed with a white cloak, having his bag upon his back, and his staff in his hand,” whence the title The Shepherd of Hermas.  All these are intended to unfold the truths of Christianity with its doctrines and duties.  The writer has a most luxuriant imagination.  In reading his books, particularly the first and the third, one sometimes finds himself bewildered in a thicket of images and similitudes, some of them grotesque and not altogether congruous.  Yet the work throws much light on the religious ideas and tendencies of its age.

The ancients speak doubtingly of the authority of this work.  Origen, whom Eusebius and Jerome follow, ascribes it to the Hermas mentioned in the epistle to the Romans (chap. 16:14); though it does not appear that he had any other ground for this than the identity of the name.  The Muratorian canon names as its author Hermas the brother of Pius bishop of Rome.  According to this, which is the more probable view, the date of its composition would be about the middle of the second century.

V. THE APOSTLES’ CREED.

12.  We put this among the remains of the apostolic fathers, not because there is any doubt as to its containing the substance of the doctrines taught by the apostles, but because, as is generally admitted, it did not receive its present form at their hand.  “Though not traceable in its present shape before the third century, and found in the second in different longer or shorter forms, it is in substance altogether apostolic, and exhibits an incomparable summary of the leading facts in the revelation of the triune God from the creation of the world to the resurrection of the body; and that in a form intelligible to all, and admirably suited for public worship and catechetical use.”  Schaff, Hist.  Chris. Church, pp. 121, 122.

VI.  APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS AND ACTS.

13.  These are very numerous.  Under the head of Apocryphal Gospels.  Tischendorf has published twenty-two works; under that of Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, thirteen.  To the student of church history they are not without value; for they illustrate the origin of many ancient traditions and some ritual observances.  But if we look to their intrinsic character, they may be described as a mass of worthless legends abounding in absurd and puerile stories.  The contrast between the miracles which they relate and the true miracles recorded in the canonical gospels and Acts is immense, and such as makes the darkness of these spurious writings more visible.  The