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forms and varied resources of error are confined to no particular period, so neither should be the Church's capabilities for meeting them, if need be, by fresh definitions, and a fuller exhibition of that portion of revealed truth which happens to be assailed. We can understand there being no development at all-that is the 'Bible only' theory; but it is not easy to understand (if I may be allowed to borrow a political formula) development with a principle of finality. We cannot, with the Danish monarch of old, say to the rising spring tide, "Thus far shalt thou come and no farther." If the stream once began to flow, we clearly have a right to ask where it was dammed up, and why. That this difficulty is something more than a mere intellectual puzzle is shown by the fact, that both the Greek and Anglican Churches have had to frame new formulas since the division, and will appear further when we come to speak of the modern rationalistic school. It may suffice to suggest it here.

There have no doubt been those in other days, when history was less studied and criticism almost unknown, who have supposed, that all now taught as Catholic doctrine could be discovered, not in germ but in detail, in the writings of the early Fathers. Such a view is no longer held by any well-informed man. It is becoming daily clearer, that the real question is, not whether such and such details of doctrine are or are not developments (for the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Confession of Augsburg are no less a development than the Creed of Pius IV.), but what are the right developments. This is quite un

derstood by Protestant divines in Germany of the more orthodox, as well as of the rationalist school, no less than by Catholic writers.' And it involves more than may at first sight appear; for if the radical principle be denied, we shall find ourselves, sooner or later, compelled to surrender, not only later definitions, but almost every belief which discriminates Christianity from the higher forms of natural religion. None who

value any positive belief can afford to be mere spectators, still less aggressors in the fray. Tua res agitur cum proximus ardet was never more surely verified than here. It is Christianity itself that is at stake.

And now, as a principle is usually best understood by illustrations, I will proceed to exemplify in some crucial cases the gradual expression of doctrine in the Church.

(1.) Let us suppose a Christian of the first, or second, or third century to have been asked, "How many sacraments are there?" He certainly would not have understood the meaning of the question. The word Sacrament was used by early writers, as the corresponding term μvornptov is used in the New Testament, in a sense which includes indeed our conception of a sacrament, but which includes a great deal more besides. "This is a great mystery," or sacrament, says St. Paul, speaking of Christian marriage; but he also says, "Without doubt, great is the mystery of godliness," speaking of the Incarnation, and here again

See e.g. Thomasius' work on Origen, Ein Beitrag fur Dogmengeschichte des dritten Jahrhunderts.

the Vulgate reads sacramentum pietatis. There is perhaps nothing to which the early Fathers, especially St Augustine, so frequently apply the term sacramentum as the Incarnation. But, if our early Christian had been made with great difficulty to comprehend the question addressed to him, he could only have replied, "I don't know." The same sacraments were of course administered from the first, and all are referred to in Scripture. Then as now Christians were baptised, confirmed, absolved, communicated; then as now, there was marriage, and ordination, and the last unction. But, just as for But, just as for many ages doubtful or spurious Gospels and Epistles were handed down alongside of the genuine, and it was not till the end of the fourth century that the Canon of either Old or New Testament began to be fixed by dogmatic decree;1 so for centuries other rites were spoken of under the common name of sacraments, some of which we should now call 'Sacramentals' while others, like the agape, or the washing of feet, have almost or altogether passed away. It was left for a later age to mark out seven, as alone possessing by divine institution an inherent sacramental grace. Hugo of St. Victor enumerates

2

'St. Paul, St. James, and St. Jude, quote apocryphal books, some of which, as the Revelation of Elias, are now lost; some, as the Book of Enoch, still survive.

2 St. Augustine calls the salt and exorcism in Baptism "sacramenta" (De Pecc. Orig. 40); St. Bernard, the washing of feet (Serm. in Can. Dom. § 4); Godefrid, another writer of the twelfth century, the salt, oil, water, ring and staff, used in consecrating bishops. Much useful information on the development of sacramental doctrine, may be found in Professor's Hahn's Lehre von der Sakramenten in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung bis zum Concil von Trient. Breslau, 1864.

six, omitting Order; Gratian gives six also, omitting Unction; Peter Lombard was the first to specify seven. But to define two is equally to develope. There were many differences on the subject among the earlier Reformers; Luther admitted three, Baptism, the Eucharist, and Penance. Cranmer, also, at one time, taught that there were three, making Confirmation the third. It would not be difficult to trace out similarly the history of the doctrine of the Eucharist, but it would occupy more space than can be spared here.1

(2.) Let us turn to another illustration, afforded by the cultus of Saints and Angels. Of this no doubt abundant intimations—φωνάντα συνετοίσι--may be found both in the Old and New Testament, especially the latter, nor are there wanting clear testimonies in writers of the third and fourth centuries of honour paid to Saints, especially martyrs, and invocations addressed to them. Still, and this is my point, it was only by degrees that their position was adequately recognised. In every one of the liturgies of which manuscripts remain to us, among the prayers for the departed in the Canon are found special petitions for the Blessed

The earlier stages of the process are exhibited with clearness and candour in the late Archdeacon Wilberforce's book on the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Its later development, in the definition of Transubstantiation (at the fourth Lateran Council in 1215), and the appointment of the festival and ceremonies of Corpus Christi, is thought to have been partly elicited as a protest against certain pantheistic leanings of the age.

2 Thomassin (De Incarn. xi. 6) thinks the early Church probably abstained from any cultus of Angels through an oikovouía, lest it should give occasion for idolatry in converts from heathenism. But this reasoning from the disciplina arcani must not be pushed too far.

Virgin and the Saints. Controversialists have sometimes explained these as prayers for the increase of their accidental glory,' but the explanation is obviously an afterthought. The very term 'accidental glory,' and the idea it represents, came in centuries later with the scholastic theology. It is better to say at once-what is certainly the case-that the eye of the Christian worshipper was not yet adjusted to the right focus for appreciating clearly the position of the heavenly hierarchy in the economy of grace. The importance of the question, from its bearing on the central mystery of the Incarnation, was gradually brought out in subsequent controversies, especially in the Iconoclastic disputes of the eighth century.' It was not till the fourteenth century, that the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision by the Saints before the day of judgment was defined by authority.2

(3.) This leads me naturally to notice a somewhat kindred development, and I do so the more readily because it has been selected as the reductio ad absurdum of the whole theory-I mean the Immaculate Conception. The reasons for defining it at this particular time, and the nature of the defining authority, are separate questions, which lie beyond the limits of the present inquiry. But the doctrine itself is often objected to as neither primitive, nor scriptural, nor reasonable, nor devout; as an addition to the original de

The first objectors to images were the Phantasiasts.

2 On the Invocation of Saints, I may refer with pleasure to an able, and on the whole satisfactory, essay by the Rev. H. Humble, in the third series of The Church and the World.

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