Against the Gregorian authorship, supported as it is by such eminent and independent scholars, one must be slow to contend. But in fact there is no great similarity between the hymn before us and those of Gregory. The great Pope is not a great poet. He has not written one hymn which has really endured. The _Audi benigne Conditor_ is quoted freely, and the _Rex Christe, factor omnium_ received Luther’s highest approbation. But these and other hymns from his pen are imitations of Ambrose—almost slavish imitations. The lofty and grand largeness of the _Veni, Creator_ is wanting to them all. The argument, good as it may seem, is only negative. The inference is that the hymn was written by him—nothing more. On the same grounds we might as well go back to old George Fabricius and give it into the hands of Ambrose as he did. The truth is that Gregory’s writings do not contain it, and why they should not, if he were its actual author, it is hard for any one to understand. But we are not at the end of the inquiry yet. We positively know certain facts. These are: That the earliest mention of the hymn is in the _Delatio S. Marculfi_, A.D. 898; that it is found in the breviaries of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries; that its author was a skilled theologian and probably a master of the Greek language; that he was a poet in the true sense and therefore quite certain to have written other hymns and poems; that it was so soon and so generally adopted as to prevent any corruption of its text; that all these ascriptions of it to this or that person are nothing but tradition; and, finally, that the hymn has such spiritual worth and power as to mark it for the production of a devout as well as scholarly mind. All these requirements are met in Rabanus Maurus, Bishop of Mainz, pupil of Alcuin, and laureate after Alcuin and Theodulphus.