An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

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J. Toovey, 1845 - History - 453 pages
The following pages were not in the first instance written to prove the divinity of the Catholic Religion, though ultimately they furnish a positive argument in its behalf, but to explain certain difficulties in its history, felt before now by the author himself, and commonly insisted on by Protestants in controversy, as serving to blunt the force of its primâ facie and general claims on our recognition. However beautiful and promising that Religion is in theory, its history, we are told, is its best refutation; the inconsistencies, found age after age in its teaching, being as patent as the simultaneous contrarieties of religious opinion manifest in the High, Low, and Broad branches of the Church of England. In reply to this specious objection, it is maintained in this Essay that, granting that some large variations of teaching in its long course of 1800 years exist, nevertheless, these, on examination, will be found to arise from the nature of the case, and to proceed on a law, and with a harmony and a definite drift, and with an analogy to Scripture revelations, which, instead of telling to their disadvantage, actually constitute an argument in their favour, as witnessing to a superintending Providence and a great Design in the mode and in the circumstances of their occurrence.

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Contents

I
1
II
30
IV
94
V
131
VII
203
IX
270
X
318
XI
369
XII
397

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Page 355 - And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true ; and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.
Page 345 - My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee, so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding ; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures ; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.
Page 430 - Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like ? They are like unto children sitting in the market-place, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced : we have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept.
Page 106 - Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God...
Page 421 - And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? 3 And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.
Page 355 - And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul; So that from his body were brought unto the sick, handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.
Page 39 - In time it enters upon strange territory ; points of controversy alter their bearing ; parties rise and fall about it ; dangers and hopes appear in new relations, and old principles reappear under new forms ; it changes with them, in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise ; but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often...
Page 112 - So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.
Page 328 - I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. the not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance, than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not truth in the love of it ; loves not truth for truth-sake, but for some other by-end.
Page 377 - Him, and the Son who came forth from Him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow and are made like to Him, and the prophetic Spirit...

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