CHAPTER X. APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH YOTE OF A TRUE DEVELOPMENT. ANTICIPATION OF ITS FUTURE. It has been set down above as a fifth argument in favour of the fidelity of developments, ethical or political, if the doctrine from which they have proceeded has, in any early stage of its history, given indications of those opinions and practices in which it has ended. Supposing then the so-called Catholic doctrines and practices are true and legitimate developments, and not corruptions, we may expect from the force of logic to find instances of them in the first centuries. And this I conceive to be the case : the records indeed of those times are scanty, and we have little means of determining what daily Christian life then was : we know little of the thoughts, and the prayers, and the meditations, and the discourses of the early disciples of Christ, at a time when these professed developments were not recognized and duly located in the theological system ; yet it appears, even from what remains, that the atmosphere of the Church was, as it were, charged with them from the first, and delivered itself of them from time to time, in this way or that, in various places and persons, as occasion elicited them, testifying the presence of a vast body of thought within it, which one day would take shape and position. by the Crucified, for so the Lord came to the cross, being made obedient even unto death ;" ; but it wils reserved for modern times to furnish the perfect illustration of this virtue, and to receive the full blessing which follows it. The great Society, which bears no earthly name, still more secular in its organization, and still more simply dependent on the See of St. Peter, has been still more distinguished than any Order before it for the rule of obedience, while it has compensated the danger of its free intercourse with the world by its scientific adherence to devotional exercises. The hermitage, the cloister, the inquisitor, and the friar were suited to other states of society; with the Jesuits, as well as with the religious Communities, which are their juniors, usefulness, secular and religious, literature, education, the confessional, preaching, the oversight of the poor, nuissions, the care of the sick, have been chief objects of attention ; great cities have been the scene of operation : bodily austerities and the ceremonial of devotion have been made of but secondary importance. Yet it may fairly be questioned, whether, in an intellectual age, when freedom both of thought and of action is so dearly prized, a greater penance can be devised for the soldier of Christ than the absolute surrender of judgment and will to the command of another. Rosweyile. V. P. p. 618. by St. Antony and St. Pachomius; and after centuries of disorder, another function of early Monachism, for which there had been little call for centuries, the defence of Catholic truth, was exercised with singular success by the rival orders of Doninicans and Franciscans. St. Benedict had come as if to preserve a principle of civilization, and a refuge for learning, at a time when the old framework of society was falling, and new political creations were taking their place. And when the young intellect within them began to stir, and a change of another kind discovered itself, then appeared St. Francis and St. Dominic to teach and chastise it; and in proportion as Monachism assumed this public office, so did the principle of penance, which had been the chief characteristic of its earlier forms, hold a less prominent place. The Tertiaries indeed, or meinbers of the third order of St. Francis and St. Dominic, were penitents; but the friar himself, instead of a penitent, was made a priest, and was allowed to quit cloister. Vay, they assumed the character of what called an Ecumenical Order, as being supported by begging, not by endowments, and being under the jurisdiction, not of the local Bishop, but of the Holy See. The Dominicans too came forward especially as a learned body, and as entrusted with the office of preaching, at a time when the mind of Europe seemed to be developing into infidelity. They filled the chairs at the Universities, while the strength of the Franciscuns lay among the lower orders. may be 5. At length, in the last era of ecclesiastical revolution, another principle of early Monachism, which had been but partially developed, was brought out into singular prominence in the history of the Jesuits. “ Obedience," said an ancient abbot, “is a monk's service, with which he shall be heard in prayer, and shall stand with confidence CHAPTER X. APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH NOTE OF A TRUE DEVELOPMENT. ANTICIPATION OF ITS FUTURE. It has been set down above as a fifth argument in favour of the fidelity of developments, ethical or political, if the doctrine from which they have proceeded has, in any early stage of its history, given indications of those opinions and practices in which it has ended. Supposing then the so-called Catholic doctrines and practices are true and legitimate developments, and not corruptions, we may expect from the force of logic to find instances of them in the first centuries. And this I conceive to be the case : the records indeed of those times are scanty, and we have little means of determining what daily Christian life then was : we know little of the thoughts, and the prayers, and the meditations, and the discourses of the early disciples of Christ, at a time when these professed developments were not recognized and duly located in the theological system ; yet it appears, even from what remains, that the atmosphere of the Church was, as it were, charged with them from the first, and delivered itself of them from time to time, in this way or that, in various places and persons, as occasion elicited them, testifying the presence of a vast body of thought within it, which one day would take shape and position. § 1. Resurrection and Relics. As a chief specimen of what I am pointing out, I will direct attention to a characteristic principle of Christianity, whether in the East or in the West, which is at present both a special stumbling-block and a subject of scoffing with Protestants and free-thinkers of every shade and colour: I mean the devotions which both Greeks and Latins show towards bones, blood, the heart, the hair, bits of clothes, scapulars, cords, medals, beads, and the like, and the miraculous powers which they often ascribe to them. Now, the principle from which these beliefs and usages proceed is the doctrine that Matter is susceptible of grace, or capable of a union with a Divine Presence and influence. This principle, as we shall see, was in the first age both energetically manifested and variously developed ; and that chiefly in consequence of the diametrically opposite doctrine of the schools and the religions of the day. And thus its exhibition in that primitive time becomes also an instance of a statement often made in controversy, that the profession and the developments of a doctrine are according to the emergency of the time, and that silence at a certain period implies, not that it was not then held, but that it was not questioned. 2. Christianity began by considering Matter as a creature of God, and in itself“ very good.” It taught that Matter, as well as Spirit, had become corrupt, in the instance of Adam; and it contemplated its recovery. It taught that the Highest had taken a portion of that corrupt mass upon Himself, in order to its sanctification. It taught that, as a firstfruits of His purpose, He had purified from all sin that very portion of it which IIe took into His Eternal Person, and thereunto had taken it from a Virgin Womb, which |