This is the name given to the doctrine held by numbers of Christians to

the effect that all men, and also the devil and fallen angels, will be

forgiven and will ultimately share eternal bliss.  Most, if not all

Universalists are also Unitarians, denying the orthodox teaching of the

Trinity, and denying the Deity of Christ.  The word 'all' is taken to mean

'all without exception', over against the more limited view which is

expressed by the words 'all without distinction'.

This word is looked upon by a keen Protestant sometimes with suspicion,

as though it necessarily indicates the Roman Catholic Church.  The Greek

word katholikos is found in classical Greek and means 'universal'.  The word

seems to have been applied to the Christian Church to contrast it with the

Jewish, which was national, and is traceable to an epithet used of the Church

up to the time of the apostle's Creed.

This name comes from the Latin supra lapsum 'before the fall', and was

given to those Calvinists who held that God, independently of the good or

evil works of man, preordained the fall by absolute decree.  It is excluded

from all Reformed confessions, as implying that God is the Author of sin.

Dr. J. Gill in his A Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity Vol. 1, page

299, gives a fair examination of this terrible doctrine.  Infralapsarians

indicates that section of Calvinists, who hold that God created the world for

His own glory, and chose a certain number for salvation, but foreseeing the

sinfulness of others, doomed them from the beginning to eternal punishment.

Articles dealing with Election1,6; Predestination3 etc., should be consulted

by the interested reader.  The terms are not much in use today, but as they

are met in the works of earlier divines, a word of explanation may be of

Creed.  These are formal confessions of faith, so called from the word

credo 'I believe'.  The apostles' Creed a.d. 390.  Rufinus, a priest of

Aquileia a.d. 390, tells us that the creed used in the church of Aquileia,

added after the words 'The Father Almighty', 'Invisible and Impassible'

(impassible meaning 'not able to suffer'), by inserting the clause 'He

descended into hell', and by ending with the phrase 'the resurrection of this

body'.  A copy of the Roman Creed, almost identical with this, has been found

written in Greek, but in Saxon characters, about the year 703.  The Nicene

creed is so called from the fact that the General Council met at Nicaea, a.d.

325.  Owing to the teaching of Arius, the clause 'of one substance with the

Father' was added.  A similar necessity led the General Council of

Constantinople (a.d. 381) to supplement the Nicene creed with the words 'and

in the Holy Ghost'.  The Athanasian Creed, although designated by this name

in the proceedings of the Council of Antioch (a.d. 670), is probably by a

Latin writer.  This creed was formulated in the atmosphere of fierce

controversy, where some features are more likely to be stressed than they

would if compiled in a cooler frame of mind.  (See the article Person, p.

139, for the comments on this particular item of the creed).

Dogma.  'The history of the present application of this word is

curious.  It is derived from the Greek dokein "to seem", and therefore

signifies that which seems true to any one -- an opinion.  It thus becomes

applied to philosophic opinions; and as the opinions of philosophers were

held in respect, it came to signify opinions delivered with authority,