Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine — CHAPTER V. Genuine Developments contrasted with Corruptions, Part 2

SECTION IV. FOURTH NOTE.

LOGICAL SEQUENCE.

Logic is the organization of thought, and, as being such, is a security for the faithfulness of intellectual developments; and the necessity of using it is undeniable as far as this, that its rules must not be transgressed.

That it is not brought into exercise in every instance of doctrinal development is owing to the varieties of mental constitution, whether in communities or in individuals, with whom great truths or seeming truths are lodged.

The question indeed may be asked whether a development can be other in any case than a logical operation; but, if by this is meant a conscious reasoning from premisses to conclusion, of course the answer must be in the negative.

An idea under one or other of its aspects grows in the mind by remaining there; it becomes familiar and distinct, and is viewed in its relations; it leads to other aspects, and these again to others, subtle, recondite, original, according to the character, intellectual and moral, of the recipient; and thus a body of thought is gradually formed without his recognizing what is going on within him.

And all this while, or at least from time to time, external circumstances elicit into formal statement the thoughts which are coming into being in the depths of his mind; and soon he has to begin to defend them; and then again a further process must take place, of analyzing his statements and ascertaining their dependence one on another.

And thus he is led to regard as consequences, and to trace to principles, what hitherto he has discerned by a moral perception, and adopted on sympathy; and logic is brought in to arrange and inculcate what no science was employed in gaining.

And so in the same way, such intellectual processes, as are carried on silently and spontaneously in the mind of a party or school, of necessity come to light at a later date, and are recognized, and their issues are scientifically arranged.

And then logic has the further function of propagation; analogy, the nature of the case, antecedent probability, application of principles, congruity, expedience, being some of the methods of proof by which the development is continued from mind to mind and established in the faith of the community.

Yet even then the analysis is not made on a principle, or with any view to its whole course and finished results.

Each argument is brought for an immediate purpose; minds develope step by step, without looking behind them or anticipating their goal, and without either intention or promise of forming a system.

Afterwards, however, this logical character which the whole wears becomes a test that the process has been a true development, not a perversion or corruption, from its evident naturalness; and in some cases from the gravity, distinctness, precision, and majesty of its advance, and the harmony of its proportions, like the tall growth, and graceful branching, and rich foliage, of some vegetable production.

2. The process of development, thus capable of a logical expression, has sometimes been invidiously spoken of as rationalism and contrasted with faith.

But, though a particular doctrine or opinion which is subjected to development may happen to be rationalistic, and, as is the original, such are its results: and though we may develope erroneously, that is, reason incorrectly, yet the developing itself as little deserves that imputation in any case, as an inquiry into an historical fact, which we do not thereby make but ascertain,--for instance, whether or not St. Mark wrote his Gospel with St. Matthew before him, or whether Solomon brought his merchandise from Tartessus or some Indian port.

Rationalism is the exercise of reason instead of faith in matters of faith; but one does not see how it can be faith to adopt the premisses, and unbelief to accept the conclusion.

At the same time it may be granted that the spontaneous process which goes on within the mind itself is higher and choicer than that which is logical; for the latter, being scientific, is common property, and can be taken and made use of by minds who are personally strangers, in any true sense, both to the ideas in question and to their development.

3. Thus, the holy Apostles would without words know all the truths concerning the high doctrines of theology, which controversialists after them have piously and charitably reduced to formulæ, and developed through argument.

Thus, St. Justin or St. Irenæus might be without any digested ideas of Purgatory or Original Sin, yet have an intense feeling, which they had not defined or located, both of the fault of our first nature and the responsibilities of our nature regenerate.

Thus St. Antony said to the philosophers who came to mock him, "He whose mind is in health does not need letters;" and St. Ignatius Loyola, while yet an unlearned neophyte, was favoured with transcendent perceptions of the Holy Trinity during his penance at Manresa.

Thus St. Athanasius himself is more powerful in statement and exposition than in proof; while in Bellarmine we find the whole series of doctrines carefully drawn out, duly adjusted with one another, and exactly analyzed one by one.

The history of empires and of public men supplies so many instances of logical development in the field of politics, that it is needless to do more than to refer to one of them.

It is illustrated by the words of Jeroboam, "Now shall this kingdom return to the house of David, if this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem.

.

.

Wherefore the king took counsel and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, Behold thy gods, O Israel."

Idolatry was a duty of kingcraft with the schismatical kingdom.

4. A specimen of logical development is afforded us in the history of Lutheranism as it has of late years been drawn out by various English writers.

Luther started on a double basis, his dogmatic principle being contradicted by his right of private judgment, and his sacramental by his theory of justification.

The sacramental element never showed signs of life; but on his death, that which he represented in his own person as a teacher, the dogmatic, gained the ascendancy; and "every expression of his upon controverted points became a norm for the party, which, at all times the largest, was at last coextensive with the Church itself.

This almost idolatrous veneration was perhaps increased by the selection of declarations of faith, of which the substance on the whole was his, for the symbolical books of his Church."

[193:1] Next a reaction took place; private judgment was restored to the supremacy.

Calixtus put reason, and Spener the so-called religion of the heart, in the place of dogmatic correctness.

Pietism for the time died away; but rationalism developed in Wolf, who professed to prove all the orthodox doctrines, by a process of reasoning, from premisses level with the reason.

It was soon found that the instrument which Wolf had used for orthodoxy, could as plausibly be used against it;--in his hands it had proved the Creed;

in the hands of Semler, Ernesti, and others, it disproved the authority of Scripture.

What was religion to be made to consist in now?

A sort of philosophical Pietism followed; or rather Spener's pietism and the original theory of justification were analyzed more thoroughly, and issued in various theories of Pantheism, which from the first was at the bottom of Luther's doctrine and personal character.

And this appears to be the state of Lutheranism at present, whether we view it in the philosophy of Kant, in the open infidelity of Strauss, or in the religious professions of the new Evangelical Church of Prussia.

Applying this instance to the subject which it has been here brought to illustrate, I should say that the equable and orderly march and natural succession of views, by which the creed of Luther has been changed into the infidel or heretical philosophy of his present representatives, is a proof that that change is no perversion or corruption, but a faithful development of the original idea.

5. This is but one out of many instances with which the history of the Church supplies us.

The fortunes of a theological school are made, in a later generation, the measure of the teaching of its founder.

The great Origen after his many labours died in peace; his immediate pupils were saints and rulers in the Church; he has the praise of St. Athanasius, St. Basil, and St. Gregory Nazianzen, and furnishes materials to St. Ambrose and St. Hilary; yet, as time proceeded, a definite heterodoxy was the growing result of his theology, and at length, three hundred years after his death, he was condemned, and, as has generally been considered, in an Ecumenical Council.

[194:1] "Diodorus of Tarsus," says Tillemont, "died at an advanced age, in the peace of the Church, honoured by the praises of the greatest saints, and crowned with a glory, which, having ever attended him through life, followed him after his death;"[194:2] yet St. Cyril of Alexandria considers him and Theodore of Mopsuestia the true authors of Nestorianism, and he was placed in the event by the Nestorians among their saints.

Theodore himself was condemned after his death by the same Council which is said to have condemned Origen, and is justly considered the chief rationalizing doctor of Antiquity; yet he was in the highest repute in his day, and the Eastern Synod complains, as quoted by Facundus, that "Blessed Theodore, who died so happily, who was so eminent a teacher for five and forty years, and overthrew every heresy, and in his lifetime experienced no imputation from the orthodox, now after his death so long ago, after his many conflicts, after his ten thousand books composed in refutation of errors, after his approval in the sight of priests, emperors, and people, runs the risk of receiving the reward of heretics, and of being called their chief."

[195:1] There is a certain continuous advance and determinate path which belong to the history of a doctrine, policy, or institution, and which impress upon the common sense of mankind, that what it ultimately becomes is the issue of what it was at first.

This sentiment is expressed in the proverb, not limited to Latin, _Exitus acta probat_; and is sanctioned by Divine wisdom, when, warning us against false prophets, it says, "Ye shall know them by their fruits."

A doctrine, then, professed in its mature years by a philosophy or religion, is likely to be a true development, not a corruption, in proportion as it seems to be the _logical issue_ of its original teaching.

SECTION V. FIFTH NOTE.

ANTICIPATION OF ITS FUTURE.

Since, when an idea is living, that is, influential and effective, it is sure to develope according to its own nature, and the tendencies, which are carried out on the long run, may under favourable circumstances show themselves early as well as late, and logic is the same in all ages, instances of a development which is to come, though vague and isolated, may occur from the very first, though a lapse of time be necessary to bring them to perfection.

And since developments are in great measure only aspects of the idea from which they proceed, and all of them are natural consequences of it, it is often a matter of accident in what order they are carried out in individual minds; and it is in no wise strange that here and there definite specimens of advanced teaching should very early occur, which in the historical course are not found till a late day.

The fact, then, of such early or recurring intimations of tendencies which afterwards are fully realized, is a sort of evidence that those later and more systematic fulfilments are only in accordance with the original idea.

2. Nothing is more common, for instance, than accounts or legends of the anticipations, which great men have given in boyhood of the bent of their minds, as afterwards displayed in their history; so much so that the popular expectation has sometimes led to the invention of them.

The child Cyrus mimics a despot's power, and St. Athanasius is elected Bishop by his playfellows.

It is noticeable that in the eleventh century, when the Russians were but pirates upon the Black Sea, Constantinople was their aim; and that a prophesy was in circulation in that city that they should one day gain possession of it.

In the reign of James the First, we have an observable anticipation of the system of influence in the management of political parties, which was developed by Sir R. Walpole a century afterwards.

This attempt is traced by a living writer to the ingenuity of Lord Bacon.

"He submitted to the King that there were expedients for more judiciously managing a House of Commons; .

.

that much might be done by forethought towards filling the House with well-affected persons, winning or blinding the lawyers .

.

and drawing the chief constituent bodies of the assembly, the country gentlemen, the merchants, the courtiers, to act for the King's advantage; that it would be expedient to tender voluntarily certain graces and modifications of the King's prerogative," &c. [197:1] The writer adds, "This circumstance, like several others in the present reign, is curious, as it shows the rise of a systematic parliamentary influence, which was one day to become the mainspring of government."

3. Arcesilas and Carneades, the founders of the later Academy, are known to have innovated on the Platonic doctrine by inculcating a universal scepticism; and they did this, as if on the authority of Socrates, who had adopted the method of _ironia_ against the Sophists, on their professing to know everything.

This, of course, was an insufficient plea.

However, could it be shown that Socrates did on one or two occasions evidence deliberate doubts on the great principles of theism or morals, would any one deny that the innovation in question had grounds for being considered a true development, not a corruption?

It is certain that, in the idea of Monachism, prevalent in ancient times, manual labour had a more prominent place than study; so much so that De Rancé, the celebrated Abbot of La Trappe, in controversy with Mabillon, maintained his ground with great plausibility against the latter's apology for the literary occupations for which the Benedictines of France are so famous.

Nor can it be denied that the labours of such as Mabillon and Montfaucon are at least a development upon the simplicity of the primitive institution.

And yet it is remarkable that St. Pachomius, the first author of a monastic rule, enjoined a library in each of his houses, and appointed conferences and disputations three times a week on religious subjects, interpretation of Scripture, or points of theology.

St. Basil, the founder of Monachism in Pontus, one of the most learned of the Greek Fathers, wrote his theological treatises in the intervals of agricultural labour.

St. Jerome, the author of the Latin versions of Scripture, lived as a poor monk in a cell at Bethlehem.

These, indeed, were but exceptions in the character of early Monachism; but they suggest its capabilities and anticipate its history.

Literature is certainly not inconsistent with its idea.

4. In the controversies with the Gnostics, in the second century, striking anticipations occasionally occur, in the works of their Catholic opponents, of the formal dogmatic teaching developed in the Church in the course of the Nestorian and Monophysite controversies in the fifth.

On the other hand, Paul of Samosata, one of the first disciples of the Syrian school of theology, taught a heresy sufficiently like Nestorianism, in which that school terminated, to be mistaken for it in later times; yet for a long while after him the characteristic of the school was Arianism, an opposite heresy.

Lutheranism has by this time become in most places almost simple heresy or infidelity; it has terminated, if it has even yet reached its limit, in a denial both of the Canon and the Creed, nay, of many principles of morals.

Accordingly the question arises, whether these conclusions are in fairness to be connected with its original teaching or are a corruption.

And it is no little aid towards its resolution to find that Luther himself at one time rejected the Apocalypse, called the Epistle of St. James "straminea," condemned the word "Trinity," fell into a kind of Eutychianism in his view of the Holy Eucharist, and in a particular case sanctioned bigamy.

Calvinism, again, in various distinct countries, has become Socinianism, and Calvin himself seems to have denied our Lord's Eternal Sonship and ridiculed the Nicene Creed.

Another evidence, then, of the faithfulness of an ultimate development is its _definite anticipation_ at an early period in the history of the idea to which it belongs.

SECTION VI. SIXTH NOTE.

CONSERVATIVE ACTION UPON ITS PAST.

As developments which are preceded by definite indications have a fair presumption in their favour, so those which do but contradict and reverse the course of doctrine which has been developed before them, and out of which they spring, are certainly corrupt; for a corruption is a development in that very stage in which it ceases to illustrate, and begins to disturb, the acquisitions gained in its previous history.

It is the rule of creation, or rather of the phenomena which it presents, that life passes on to its termination by a gradual, imperceptible course of change.

There is ever a maximum in earthly excellence, and the operation of the same causes which made things great makes them small again.

Weakness is but the resulting product of power.

Events move in cycles; all things come round, "the sun ariseth and goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose."

Flowers first bloom, and then fade; fruit ripens and decays.

The fermenting process, unless stopped at the due point, corrupts the liquor which it has created.

The grace of spring, the richness of autumn are but for a moment, and worldly moralists bid us _Carpe diem_, for we shall have no second opportunity.

Virtue seems to lie in a mean, between vice and vice; and as it grew out of imperfection, so to grow into enormity.

There is a limit to human knowledge, and both sacred and profane writers witness that overwisdom is folly.

And in the political world states rise and fall, the instruments of their aggrandizement becoming the weapons of their destruction.

And hence the frequent ethical maxims, such as, "_Ne quid nimis_," "_Medio tutissimus_," "Vaulting ambition," which seem to imply that too much of what is good is evil.

So great a paradox of course cannot be maintained as that truth literally leads to falsehood, or that there can be an excess of virtue;

but the appearance of things and the popular language about them will at least serve us in obtaining an additional test for the discrimination of a _bonâ fide_ development of an idea from its corruption.

A true development, then, may be described as one which is conservative of the course of antecedent developments being really those antecedents and something besides them: it is an addition which illustrates, not obscures, corroborates, not corrects, the body of thought from which it proceeds; and this is its characteristic as contrasted with a corruption.

2. For instance, a gradual conversion from a false to a true religion, plainly, has much of the character of a continuous process, or a development, in the mind itself, even when the two religions, which are the limits of its course, are antagonists.

Now let it be observed, that such a change consists in addition and increase chiefly, not in destruction.

"True religion is the summit and perfection of false religions; it combines in one whatever there is of good and true separately remaining in each.

And in like manner the Catholic Creed is for the most part the combination of separate truths, which heretics have divided among themselves, and err in dividing.

So that, in matter of fact, if a religious mind were educated in and sincerely attached to some form of heathenism or heresy, and then were brought under the light of truth, it would be drawn off from error into the truth, not by losing what it had, but by gaining what it had not, not by being unclothed, but by being 'clothed upon,' 'that mortality may be swallowed up of life.'

That same principle of faith which attaches it at first to the wrong doctrine would attach it to the truth; and that portion of its original doctrine, which was to be cast off as absolutely false, would not be directly rejected, but indirectly, _in_ the reception of the truth which is its opposite.

True conversion is ever of a positive, not a negative character."

[201:1] Such too is the theory of the Fathers as regards the doctrines fixed by Councils, as is instanced in the language of St. Leo.

"To be seeking for what has been disclosed, to reconsider what has been finished, to tear up what has been laid down, what is this but to be unthankful for what is gained?"

[201:2] Vincentius of Lerins, in like manner, speaks of the development of Christian doctrine, as _profectus fidei non permutatio_.

[201:3] And so as regards the Jewish Law, our Lord said that He came "not to destroy, but to fulfil."

3. Mahomet is accused of contradicting his earlier revelations by his later, "which is a thing so well known to those of his sect that they all acknowledge it; and therefore when the contradictions are such as they cannot solve them, then they will have one of the contradictory places to be revoked.

And they reckon in the whole Alcoran about a hundred and fifty verses which are thus revoked."

[201:4] Schelling, says Mr. Dewar, considers "that the time has arrived when an esoteric speculative Christianity ought to take the place of the exoteric empiricism which has hitherto prevailed."

This German philosopher "acknowledges that such a project is opposed to the evident design of the Church, and of her earliest teachers."

[202:1] 4. When Roman Catholics are accused of substituting another Gospel for the primitive Creed, they answer that they hold, and can show that they hold, the doctrines of the Incarnation and Atonement, as firmly as any Protestant can state them.

To this it is replied that they do certainly profess them, but that they obscure and virtually annul them by their additions; that the _cultus_ of St. Mary and the Saints is no development of the truth, but a corruption and a religious mischief to those doctrines of which it is the corruption, because it draws away the mind and heart from Christ.

But they answer that, so far from this, it subserves, illustrates, protects the doctrine of our Lord's loving kindness and mediation.

Thus the parties in controversy join issue on the common ground, that a developed doctrine which reverses the course of development which has preceded it, is no true development but a corruption; also, that what is corrupt acts as an element of unhealthiness towards what is sound.

This subject, however, will come before us in its proper place by and by.

5. Blackstone supplies us with an instance in another subject-matter, of a development which is justified by its utility, when he observes that "when society is once formed, government results of course, as necessary to preserve and to keep that society in order."

[202:2] On the contrary, when the Long Parliament proceeded to usurp the executive, they impaired the popular liberties which they seemed to be advancing; for the security of those liberties depends on the separation of the executive and legislative powers, or on the enactors being subjects, not executors of the laws.

And in the history of ancient Rome, from the time that the privileges gained by the tribunes in behalf of the people became an object of ambition to themselves, the development had changed into a corruption.

And thus a sixth test of a true development is that it is of a _tendency conservative_ of what has gone before it.

SECTION VII. SEVENTH NOTE.

CHRONIC VIGOUR.

Since the corruption of an idea, as far as the appearance goes, is a sort of accident or affection of its development, being the end of a course, and a transition-state leading to a crisis, it is, as has been observed above, a brief and rapid process.

While ideas live in men's minds, they are ever enlarging into fuller development: they will not be stationary in their corruption any more than before it; and dissolution is that further state to which corruption tends.

Corruption cannot, therefore, be of long standing; and thus _duration_ is another test of a faithful development.

_Si gravis, brevis; si longus, levis_; is the Stoical topic of consolation under pain; and of a number of disorders it can even be said, The worse, the shorter.

Sober men are indisposed to change in civil matters, and fear reforms and innovations, lest, if they go a little too far, they should at once run on to some great calamities before a remedy can be applied.

The chance of a slow corruption does not strike them.

Revolutions are generally violent and swift; now, in fact, they are the course of a corruption.

2. The course of heresies is always short; it is an intermediate state between life and death, or what is like death; or, if it does not result in death, it is resolved into some new, perhaps opposite, course of error, which lays no claim to be connected with it.

And in this way indeed, but in this way only, an heretical principle will continue in life many years, first running one way, then another.

The abounding of iniquity is the token of the end approaching; the faithful in consequence cry out, How long?

as if delay opposed reason as well as patience.

Three years and a half are to complete the reign of Antichrist.

Nor is it any real objection that the world is ever corrupt, and yet, in spite of this, evil does not fill up its measure and overflow; for this arises from the external counteractions of truth and virtue, which bear it back; let the Church be removed, and the world will soon come to its end.

And so again, if the chosen people age after age became worse and worse, till there was no recovery, still their course of evil was continually broken by reformations, and was thrown back upon a less advanced stage of declension.

3. It is true that decay, which is one form of corruption, is slow; but decay is a state in which there is no violent or vigorous action at all, whether of a conservative or a destructive character, the hostile influence being powerful enough to enfeeble the functions of life, but not to quicken its own process.

And thus we see opinions, usages, and systems, which are of venerable and imposing aspect, but which have no soundness within them, and keep together from a habit of consistence, or from dependence on political institutions; or they become almost peculiarities of a country, or the habits of a race, or the fashions of society.

And then, at length, perhaps, they go off suddenly and die out under the first rough influence from without.

Such are the superstitions which pervade a population, like some ingrained dye or inveterate odour, and which at length come to an end, because nothing lasts for ever, but which run no course, and have no history; such was the established paganism of classical times, which was the fit subject of persecution, for its first breath made it crumble and disappear.

Such apparently is the state of the Nestorian and Monophysite communions; such might have been the condition of Christianity had it been absorbed by the feudalism of the middle ages; such too is that Protestantism, or (as it sometimes calls itself) attachment to the Establishment, which is not unfrequently the boast of the respectable and wealthy among ourselves.

Whether Mahometanism external to Christendom, and the Greek Church within it, fall under this description is yet to be seen.

Circumstances can be imagined which would even now rouse the fanaticism of the Moslem;

and the Russian despotism does not meddle with the usages, though it may domineer over the priesthood, of the national religion.

* * * * * Thus, while a corruption is distinguished from decay by its energetic action, it is distinguished from a development by its _transitory character_.

4. Such are seven out of various Notes, which may be assigned, of fidelity in the development of an idea.

The point to be ascertained is the unity and identity of the idea with itself through all stages of its development from first to last, and these are seven tokens that it may rightly be accounted one and the same all along.

To guarantee its own substantial unity, it must be seen to be one in type, one in its system of principles, one in its unitive power towards externals, one in its logical consecutiveness, one in the witness of its early phases to its later, one in the protection which its later extend to its earlier, and one in its union of vigour with continuance, that is, in its tenacity.

FOOTNOTES:

[172:1] Commonit.

29. [173:1] Milman, Christ.

[174:1] De Deo, ii.

4, § 8. [184:1] Ch. xlix.

[193:1] Pusey on German Rationalism, p. 21, note.

[194:1] Halloix, Valesius, Lequien, Gieseler, Döllinger, &c. , say that he was condemned, not in the fifth Council, but in the Council under Mennas.

[194:2] Mem.

Eccl.

tom.

viii.

p. 562. [195:1] Def.

Tr.

Cap.

viii.

init.

[197:1] Hallam's Const.

Hist.

ch. vi.

p. 461. [201:1] Tracts for the Times, No. 85, p. 73. [Discuss.

p. 200; _vide_ also Essay on Assent, pp. 249-251. ] [201:2] Ep.

162. [201:3] Ib.

p. 309. [201:4] Prideaux, Life of Mahomet, p. 90. [202:1] German Protestantism, p. 176. [202:2] Vol. i.

p. 118. CHAPTER VI.

APPLICATION OF THE SEVEN NOTES TO THE EXISTING DEVELOPMENTS OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.