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 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.

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 the measure of the teaching of its founder. The great Origen died after his many labours 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. "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;"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

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

2 Mem. Eccl. tom. viii. p. 562.

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." 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."

Logical sequence, then, is a fifth characteristic of developments, which are faithfully drawn from the ideas to which they profess to belong.

$8.

The Sixth Text; Preservative Additions.

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 prejudice, the acquisitions gained in its previous history. 1 Def. Tr. Cap. viii. init.

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.

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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 a test for the discrimination of a development of an idea from its corruption.

A true development, then, may be described as one which is conservative of the course of development which went before it, which is that development and something besides: 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.

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

1 Tracts for the Times, No. 85, p. 73. A remark follows about Roman Catholics and the primitive faith, which may be better applied to the Roman faith and those who oppose it.

finished, to tear up what has been laid down, what is this but to be unthankful for what is gained?"1 Vincentius of Lerins, in like manner, speaks of the development of Christian doctrine, as profectus fidei non permutatio.2 And so as regards the

Jewish Law, our Lord said that He came "not to destroy, but to fulfil."

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."3

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."4

When Roman Catholics are accused of substitut-o ing 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, because it draws away the mind and heart from Christ. They answer that, so far from this, it subserves, illustrates, protects the doctrine of our Lord's condescension and mediation. Thus the

parties in controversy join issue on the common ground, that a developed doctrine which reverses

3

1 Ep. 162. 2 Ib. p. 309. Prideaux, Life of Mahomet, p. 90. 4 German Protestantism, p. 176.