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course of the Nestorian and Monophysite controversies in the fifth. 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, as is well known, has by this time become 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 as holding the omnipresence of our Lord's Manhood, and in a particular case sanctioned bigamy. Calvinism, again, in various distinct countries, has become Socinianism, and Calvin 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.

§ 7.

The Fifth Test; Logical Sequence.

Though it is a matter of accident in what order or degree developments of a common idea will show themselves in this or that place, particular minds or communities taking different courses, yet on a large field they will on the whole be gradual and orderly, nay, in logical sequence. It may be asked whether a development is itself a logical process; and if by

this is meant a conscious reasoning from premisses to conclusion, of course the answer must be in the negative. An idea grows in the mind by remaining there; it becomes familiar and distinct, and is viewed in its relations; it suggests other ideas, and these again 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 recognising 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 analysing his statements and ascertaining their dependence one on another. And thus he is led to regard Q 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 then present themselves not without an intelligible order. Then logic has its function, not of discovery, but of propagation; analogy, the nature of the case, antecedent probability, application of principles, congruity, expedience, are some of the methods of proof on 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 o immediate purpose; minds develope step by step, without looking behind them or anticipating their goal, and without either intention or promise of

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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.

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 Solomon brought his merchandize from Tartessus or some Indian port. Rationalism is the preference of reason to faith; but one does not see how it can be faith to adopt the premisses, and unbelief to accept the conclusion.

For instance, let us take a definition which some years since was given of rationalism. To rationalize is "to ask improperly how we are to account for certain things, to be unwilling to believe them unless they can be accounted for, that is, referred to something else as a cause, to some existing system, as harmonizing with them or taking them up into itself. . . . Rationalism is characterised by two peculiarities, its love of systematising, and its basing its system upon personal experience or the evidence of sense." If this be rationalism, it is totally distinct from development; to develope is to Tracts for the Times, No. 73, § 1, init.

receive conclusions from received truth, to rationalize is to receive nothing but conclusions from received truths; to develope is positive, to rationalize is negative; the essence of development is to extend belief, of rationalism to contract it.

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 strangers, in any true sense, both to the ideas in question and to their development.

Thus, the holy Apostles would know without words 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 liabilities 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 political logic, that it is needless to do more than allude to 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

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

A specimen of logical development, most-interesting, though most painfully so, 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." 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 present 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 instru- ment 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

1 Pusey on German Rationalism, p. 21, note.

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