actual service, succeeded in establishing itself securely in the baptismal liturgy itself. Thus far the popular theory whose credentials we are examining may be considered to have justified itself. The warning was given, however, at the beginning that its vindication, even so far as concerns the period subsequent to the fourth century, would have to be subject to certain reservations. The first of these is that, for the early centuries at any rate, the declaratory creed was not the only nor the most