the creed the instant they got the upper hand in 381?  And such a revision!  The elaborate framework of Nicaea is completely shattered, and even the keystone clause ’of the essence of the Father’ is left out.  Moreover, (2.) there is no contemporary evidence that they did revise it.  No historian mentions anything of the sort, and no single document connected with the council gives the slightest colour to the story.  There is neither trace nor sign of it for nearly seventy years.  The internal evidence (3.) points the same way.  Deliberate revision implies a deliberate purpose to the alterations made.  Now in this case, though we have serious variations enough, there is another class of differences so meaningless that they cannot even be represented in an English translation.  There remains (4.) one more argument.  The spurious Nicene creed cannot be the work of the fathers of Constantinople in 381, because it is given in the Ancoratus of Epiphanius, which was certainly written in 374.  But if the council did not draw up the creed, it is time to ask who did.  Everything seems to show that it is not a revision of the Nicene creed at all, but of the local creed of Jerusalem, executed by Bishop Cyril on his return from exile in 362.  This is only a theory, but it has all the evidence which a theory can have—­it explains the whole matter.  In the first place, the meaningless changes disappear if we compare the spurious Nicene creed with that of Jerusalem instead of the genuine Nicene.  Every difference can be accounted for by reference to the known position and opinions of Cyril.  Thus the old Jerusalem creed says that the Lord ’sat down at the right hand of the Father;’ our ‘Nicene,’ that he ‘sitteth.’  Now this is a favourite point of Cyril in his Catecheses—­that the Lord did not sit down once for all, but that he sitteth so for ever.  Similarly other points.  We also know that other local creeds were revised about the same time and in the same way.  In the next place, the occurrence of a revised Jerusalem creed in the Ancoratus is natural.  Epiphanius was past middle life when he left Palestine for Cyprus in 368, and never forgot the friends he left behind at Lydda.  We are also in a position to account for its ascription to the council of Constantinople.  Cyril’s was a troubled life, and there are many indications that he was accused of heresy in 381, and triumphantly acquitted by the council.  In such a case his creed would naturally be examined and approved.  It was a sound confession, and in no way heretical.  From this point its history is clearer.  The authority of Jerusalem combined with its own intrinsic merits to recommend it, and the incidental approval of the bishops at Constantinople was gradually developed into the legend of their authorship.

[Sidenote:  The rest of the canons.]