fact, to have been formed gradually in the African church, some of its formulæ being met with towards the close of the seventh century; but it did not exist as a whole until the age of Charlemagne, nearly five centuries after the council of Nicæa. That was an age in which, if the doctrine of the divine nature was truly stated, the doctrines of justification by grace and of the new birth by the Spirit were obscured. Semi-Pelagianism was more and more invading the Church; literary and scientific culture, decried by the monks as belonging to paganism, was becoming rare; the state, not content with deciding on the exterior relations of the Church, published edicts on the articles of faith or of doctrine; miracles were alleged to be wrought by relics; the bishops of Rome assumed the title of universal bishop, a title branded by Gregory the Great as antichristian; the controversy about images was especially agitating men’s minds; both the Church and the state were in the utmost confusion; the bishops took up arms against the lords; the clergy, both regular and secular, were without culture and without discipline; and, in one word, Christianity had lost the life which was peculiarly its own. It was, doubtless, the existence of this melancholy condition of society at the period in which the _Quicunque_ was formed that induced Calvin to make reservations, and to declare that it was to the belief in one only God that he made oath, and not to the belief of Athanasius, whose creed no genuine Church would have accepted.[521] [Sidenote: SYNOD OF BERNE.]