238.
The very name of Father, applied in the Creed to the first Person, intimates the relation he bears to a Son, &c.
No doubt: but the most probable solution of the apparent want of distinctness of explication on this article, in my humble judgment, is--that the so-called Apostles' Creed was at first the preparatory confession of the catechumens, the admission-ticket, as it were ('symbolum ad Baptismum'), at the gate of the Church, and gradually augmented as heresies started up.

The latest of these seems to have consisted in the doubt respecting the entire death of Jesus on the Cross, as distinguished from suspended animation.

Hence in the fifth or sixth century the clause--"and he descended into Hades," was inserted;--that is, the indissoluble principle of the man Jesus, was separated from, and left, the dissoluble, and subsisted apart in 'Scheol', or the abode of separated souls;--but really meaning no more than 'vere mortuus est'.

Jesus was taken from the Cross dead in the very same sense in which the Baptist was dead after his beheading.
Nevertheless, well adapted as this Creed was to its purposes, I cannot but regret the high place and precedence which by means of its title, and the fable to which that title gave rise, it has usurped.

It has, as it appears to me, indirectly favoured Arianism and Socinianism.
Ib.p.