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THE THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT

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THE

THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT

A CRITICISM OF DR. NEWMAN'S ESS A Y ON THE
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

REPRINTED FROM 'THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER,'
JANUARY 1847

J. B. MOZLEY, D.D.
\\\
LATE CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

m^ Yorfe
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
MDCCCLXXIX

A D VER TIS EM EN T.
I '
The following Article is reprinted at the call of
persons well qualified to estimate its value as a
contribution to the controversy of the present
day. The references to the work reviewed are neces
sarily made from the original edition ; but the
passages quoted do not stand in the same relative
positions in the edition^ of 18 "7 8, in the preface
to which the author explains that " various altera
tions have been made in the arrangement of its
separate parts, and some, not indeed in its matter,
but in its text."

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS.

Respective replies of Dr. Moberly, Mr. Allies, and Mr. Palmer, 1 ;
The author selects the argumentative part of the Essay under review, 2.
Lines of thought suggested by the idea ot Development, 3 ; That of
Growth, 4 ; That of Corruption, 5. Corruption acts by abuse as well as
by extinction, 6 ; Examples of this abuse, 8 ; The gift of Illustration,
9 ; Excesses of the Imaginative Faculty, 10 ; Schools of Philosophy,
12 ; National characteristics, 13 ; Christian sects exhibit exaggerated
forms of Development, 13; The Jesuits, 14. Examples of the corruption
of exaggeration, 15 ; Aristotle ; Practical Morality a complex balanced
thing, 16 ; In Morals we cannot develop mathematically, 18 ; Sense in
which Christianity was to develop, 19; Obvious forms of Develop
ment in its internal temper, 20 ; And iu the department of Doctrine,
20 ; Doctrine of the Intermediate State, 21 ; Doctrine of Purgatory,
24 ; Relation of the living towards departed Saints, 26 ; Prayers to
the Saints, 27 ; The honour of the Blessed Virgin, 27 ; Transub
stantiation, 28. Our Church's charge against Rome is exaggeration,
30 ; Tendency of Protestantism is to decay, 30 ; Dr. Newman's
definition of Corruption, 31 ; Analogies drawn from nature, 32 ; The
fact of exaggerated Development admitted, but not recognised iu
his argument, 34 ; The hiatus illustrated from Bocardo, 39 ; Dr.
Newman's tests of true Development, 40 ; The test of logical sequence,
41 ; The region of Logic a plain one where a thorough agreement
as to premisses exists, but where it attempts discovery it loses this
command, 41 ; In the first centuries each sect appealed to Logic, 42 ;
To make Logic infallible, we must have infallible Logicians, 43 ; The
Church's Creed kept a middle course, 44 ; Answer to the argument
that the Doctrine of Purgatory is contained in that of Repentance,
45 ; And that Scripture represents the Day of Judgment as near, 49 ;
Answer to the argument that Scripture contemplates Christians as
sinless, 50 ; The New Testament throws a peaceful character on the
state of good Christian souls departed ; The Doctrine of Purgatory a
contrary one, 52.

Summary of Contents.

The Cultus of the Virgin Mary, 53 ; Dr. Newman's argumentative
position grounded on the Arian Controversy, 56 ; His use of the Arian
Hypothesis, 65 ; His definition of Idolatry, 66 ; Idol worshipper of
the Old Testament, 68 ; Idea of a Secondary Divinity, 73.
The Nicene Council; St. Athanasius's charge against the Arians,
74 ; St. Ambrose, St. Hilary, St. Cyril, Faustinus, 75 ; Distinction
drawn by the Arians, 76 ; Summing up of the two views, 77 ;
Athanasius's condemnation of the Arian position, 80 ; Dr. Newman's
appeal to system, 81 ; Later Roman Doctrines, 82 ; Ultimate point of
his argument the existence of an infallible guide ; Papal Infallibility
keystone of his argument, 83.
The claim of Infallibility more invidious than the mere assertion
of the truth of certain Developments, 83 ; Where Revelation has left
a blank the Mind naturaUy forms conjectures ; Bishop Andrewes on
Purgatory, 84 ; Dr. Newman's argument for Papal Infallibility, 85 ;
Discussed, 87-95. The Argument of Analogy, 96 ; Bishop Butler
claimed as a sympathiser with the Doctrine of Development, 96 ;
This answered by Butler's argument against presumptions concerning
Revelation ; Extract given, 99 ; Reply to the distinction drawn
between the hypothesis of a Revelation and an existing Revelation,
102 ; Supposed argument between a Sceptic and Bishop Butler, 106 ;
Dr. Newman questions the Argument from Analogy on the point
of anticipating a Revelation, 109; He draws a distinction between
the facts of Revelation and its principles, 112; Butler's argument
from our Ignorance, 113. Concluding remarks ou Dr. Newman's whole
mode of treating the Argument of Analogy, 114 ; The hypothesis of a
standing Revelation cannot afford to make any large established idea
in the earthly Church erroneous, 117; A Perfectionist view of the
progress of Truth in the Christian world thus established, 119 ; The
Argument of Analogy, on the other hand, gives a ground on which a
more qualified system erects itself, 119. The popular Cultus of the
Virgin, 121. Answer to the difficulty how God should permit holy
men to think erroneously, 122 ; According to Analogy an original
Creed is thrown into the world of human intelligence and exposed
to the chance of human discolourment, the substantial Creed remain
ing throughout, 124.
M. de Maistre's argument of simple Church Government, 125. After
drawing out his Theory for a standing Revelation, Dr. Newman joins
on the subordinate one, the simple Monarchical Argument, 128 ;
Answer ; the idea of Unity does not imply a particular local centre
of Unity, 129 ; Line of the reductio ad ahsurdum argument, 130 ;

Su^mmary of Contents. xi
The Eastern Church an answer to the assertion that whenever the
Pope has been renounced, decay and division have been the con
sequence, 133 ; The line towards the Greek Church, 134; The Greek
Church has produced great Spiritual deeds, 136 ; The dogmatic Creed
of the Eastern Christian of this day the Creed of St. Basil and St.
Chrysostom, 1 37 ; At the Council of Florence the Church of Rome
was willing to receive the whole body of Eastern Canonised Saints,
139 ; Eastern sanctity presents some barbarian features to European
eyes, 141 ; The Historical Argument for the Papacy regarded by Dr.
Newman as secondary ; not entered into here, 142.
Assertion that the Nicene Creed is a Development, 143 ; Dififerent
senses of Development, 144; Cases of explanatory Development; Of an
arguer having to maintain a point against a circle of opponents, 145 ;
Case of legal amplification, 145. Another form of Development positive
increase of substance, as of the seed into a plant, 146 ; In growth it is
the ultimate formation which is the substance of the thing growing, 147;
All allow that Christian fundamental truth has been explained, 147 ;
Example of explanation from Aquinas on the Doctrine of the Incarnation,
148. The parallel drawn between the Roman Doctrinal Developments
and the Doctrinal Development at Nicsea, 150 ; The Vinoentian rule,
152. "Christianity came into the world an idea," 153; Parallel
between the Dogmatic Principle in the history of Christianity, and
Conscience in the individual mind, 154 ; Answer to the analogy drawn
between the Mosaic and the Christian Dispensation, 155 ; This view of
Development has weight with a certain order of mind, 157.
A right side and a wrong to love of progress, 157. Abbot Joachim's
opinion on the unity of God condemned by the Council of Lateran ;
Answer to the argument derived from it, 160. The word Homoousion,
163 ; The Fathers at the Nicene Council were taunted by the Arians
for their appeal to the old doctrine, 166; The ante-Nicene Docu
ments, 167 ; Bishop Bull's Answer to Petavius's doubts of their ortho
doxy, 168; Dr. Newman's comments upon it, 169; The Negative
ground of insuflSciency, 173; On Discrepancies of Language, 174 ; St.
Athanasius's vindication of the Antiochene Fathers in their rejection
of the word Homoousion, 178; Paul of Samosata, 178; Particular
phrases used in earlier times by St. Ignatius, St. Justin, St. Clement,
etc. ; Answers to objections, 181 ; View held by some early Fathers
of the Xdyos ivSidBeros and Xoyos ?rpo0opiKos; Dr. Newman's explana
tion, 184 ; Supposed answer of the early Fathers to modern inter
preters ; Historical testimony, 188 ; Full belief of the Nicene Church
that its belief had been the doctrine of the ante-Nicene up to the com-

xii Summary of Contents.
mencement of Christianity, 190 ; Extract from the Essay, with sayings
of the Nicene Fathers, 192 ; Contradiction sharpens our logical view
of truth, 195.
Summing up of the argument that Nicene truth was not a Develop
ment in the sense asserted, 196 ; Extract from Dr. Newman's
Roman Catholic opponent, writing iu Brownson's QuarterVy Revieijo,
200 ; Ambiguity in his meaning of the word Development, 203 ;
His distinction between explicit and implicit knowledge, 204 ; In
multitudes of cases implicit knowledge no knowledge at all, 204 ;
The result of the argumentative parallel between Nicene Develop
ment and Roman, 207 ; Dr. Newman gives the Roman Church an
hypothesis which is to account for her difficulties, 210; Extracts from
Dr. Wiseman and Perrone counter to this hypothesis, 212 ; Again
from Brownson's Quarterly, 215 ; In comparing the two hypotheses
put forward by Rome, a member of the English Church has the same
answer to them both, 218 ; What is Dr. Newman's theory ? 222 ;
Brownson's Quarterly on the words, " Christianity came into the world
an idea," 223.

NEWMAN ON DEVELOPMENT.*
Befoee entering upon an examination of this book we
have to express our thanks, and to own our obhgations,
to the writers of various rephes to it, the titles of which
we have prefixed. To the replies of Dr. Moberly,
* I. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. By John
Henry Newman, Author of Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the
Church. London, 1845.
2. The Sayings of the great Forty Days betiueen the Resurrection and
Ascension, regarded as the outlines of the kingdom of God ; in Five Dis
courses ; -with an Examination of Mr. Newman's Theory of Development.
By George Moberly, D.C.L., Headmaster of Winchester College.
Second Edition. London, 1846.
3. The Doctrine of Development and Conscience, considered in relation
to the Evidences of Christianity, and of the Catholic System. By the Rev.
William Palmer, M.A., of Worcester College, Oxford. London, 1846.
4. The Church of England cleared from the Charge of Schism, upon the
Testimonies of Councils and Fathers of the first Six Centuries. By Thomas
William Allies, M.A., Rector ofLaunton, Oxon. London, 1846.
5. The Epistle to the Hebrews; being the substance of Three Lectures,
delivered in the Chapel of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, on the
Foundation of Bishop Warburton ; ¦with a Preface, containing a Review
of Mr. Newman's Theory of Development. By Frederick Denison
Maurice, M.A., Chaplain of Guy's Hospital. London, 1846.
6. Remarks on certain Anglican Theories of Unity. By Edward
Healy Thompson, M.A. London, 1846.
7. The Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism : or. The Church of England
tested by the Nicene Creed. In a Series of Lettei-s. By J. Spencer
Northcote, M.A., Late Scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
London, 1846.
8. The Theory of Development Examined, ¦with reference especially to
Mr. Newman's Essay, and to the Rule of St. Vincent of Lirins. By
W. J. Irons, B.D., Vicar of Brompton. London, 1846.
9. Mithridates : or, Mr. Newman's Essay on Development its ffiun
Confutation. By a Quondam Disciple. London, 1846.
10. Romanism, as represented by the Rev. y. H. Newman, briefly
considered. By the Rev. A. Irvine, B.D., Vicar of St. Margaret's,
Leicester. London, 1846.

Theory of Development.

Mr. Allies, and Mr. Palmer, we would especially call
attention. Dr. Moberly's essay, has one fault, and that
is its shortness. His clear and logical mind could easily
have controlled a much wider region of theological and
historical research ; and the intellectual framework which
he supplies would bear fiUing-up with large materials
from the book-shelves. Mr. Allies's solid and able
treatise we have already discussed. Mr. Palmer writes
with the quiet, sustained circumspection, and even
strength, which distinguish his regular theological works.
He argues patiently, and in general closely. His style
is clear and easy ; and if it never carries the reader on by
any overflow of impulse, never, at any rate, obstructs or
entangles him. His extensive patristic and controversial
reading gives him an ample command of passages, which
he uses with singular judgment and discretion; Hot
overloading his argument with the whole amount of the
material bearing upon it, but selecting what is most
applicable and to the purpose. We would point to the
chapter on the "Argumentative foundation of the Theory
of Development," as a favourable specimen of his mode
of treating a question.
Por ourselves, we must state at the outset that we
cannot pretend to embrace, within that space which a
review affords, the whole of that large field of matter
which Mr. Newman's book presents to us. It is necessary
to confine our scope ; and, therefore, we shall select the
argumentative part of the essay, in distinction to the
historical, as the subject of this article.
A short acquaintance with the Essay on Development
suggests to the reader such a division of the book as we
mention. He sees some vividly drawn historical sketches,
the object of which is to prove the identity of the present
Church of Piome, in religious spirit and character, with

Theory of Development.

the Church of the first centuries. This does not form a
part of what we may call the strict logic of the Essay ;
because its truth is perfectly consistent with the truth of
the identity, e.g. of the Greek Church also, in religious
spirit and character, with the Church of the first centuries.
An ethical similarity in one Church does not preclude an
ethical similarity in another. And, therefore, such state
ments, as apphed to the purpose of proving that the
Church of Eome is the only Church of Christ upon earth,
do not profess to be of the nature of logical arguments ;
though they produce their particular effect upon the
mind as forcibly drawn pictures. On the other hand,
there are arguments professing to prove, from the
necessity of things, and the absolute wants of the
Christian society, the full Eoman developments and
claims logically and conclusively. We shall confine
ourselves, then, in this article to this latter part of the
Essay, and shall devote some thoughts to Mr. Newman's
argumentative proof of the doctrine of development in
connection with the authoritative claims and the pecuhar
teaching of the Church of Eome. And we shall not
scruple, in doing so, to avail ourselves of the assistance
which some of the prefixed publications afford.
On the first opening, then, of this subject, two great hues
of thought encounter us, each of them a true, natural,
and legitimate line, and one of them tending to check
and balance the other. One of these lines of thought
takes up the idea of Development. We see unquestion
ably everywhere a law of development operating. It
meets us in nature and art, in trade and politics, in life
vegetable, animal, intellectual. The seed grows into the
plant, the child into the man; the worm into the butter
fly, the blossom into the fruit. Education develops the
individual, civilisation the nation. The particular ideas

Theory of Development.

we take up, grow. A simple thought, as soon as the
mind has embraced it, ramifies in many directions, applies
itself to many different cases, sees reflections of itself in
nature and human life, gathers analogies around it, and
illustrates and is illustrated in turn. Wealth and power
both multiply themselves. The first round sum is the
great difficulty to the rising merchant, which once made,
a basis is gained, and money accumulates spontaneously.
The nucleus of power, however small at first, once formed,
enlarges, and absorbs material from all quarters. The
jurisdiction of courts, boards, and committees grows ;
aggrandising cabinets get all the local interests of a
country into their hands; and empires, from a union
of two or three tribes, spread over half the globe. Our
languages, our philosophies, our machinery and manufac
tures, our agriculture, our architecture, our legal codes,
our political institutions, our systems of finance, our civil
courts, our social distinctions, our rules of fashion, our
amusements, our occupations, our whole worlds, domestic
and public, are developments. We cannot walk, or sit,
or stand, or think, or speak, without developing ourselves.
We go into a room ; we address somebody, or we listen
to somebody addressing us ; we act in some way or other
under the situations in which successively we are ; and
are brought out by circumstances, acting upon us in con
nection with our own whl, in one direction or another.
This is the development of human character, which ad
vances as life goes on. The whole constitution of the
world physical and moral thus impresses development upon
us, and points natural expectation in that direction. We
find ourselves readily entertaining the probability that
principles, sentiments, fashions, institutions, wiU expand.
The change from the small to the large, and from the
simple to the manifold, does not surprise us ; and an image

Theory of Developm,ent.

of that kind of alteration in things which is caUed growth,
and takes them through different stages of magnitude and
strength, is domesticated in our minds.
This is one great line of thought which encounters uSj
on a jprimd facie view of the progress of any great political
or religious institution. There is another equally genuine, ¦
natural, and true. If the idea of development has estab
lished itself as a natural and familiar one in our minds,
the idea of corruption has done the same. If we see things
grow larger, we also see things grow worse. History and
experience have contrived to fix very deeply in us the
apprehension of perversion, in some shape or other, and,
in one or other degree, accompanying the progress of
institutions, nations, schemes of life, and schools of thought.
There is the maxim that the stream is purer at its source.
It is observed that the intention with which a movement
begins often insensibly declines, or becomes alloyed, in
the progress. We attribute a mixed set of results to time,
and welcome its operations in one aspect, and fear them
in another. With all its functions of growth and enlarge
ment, a general suspicion attaches to a class of slow, gentle,
insinuating influences it betrays : the notion of the lapse
of time suggests indefinite apprehensions, and the mind
forms an instinctive augury of some change for the worse
which it is to briag. Legislators, philosophers, and
founders of institutions are haunted by the image of a
progress destined for their creations, which they never
designed for them; and portend some departure from
original principles which would elicit their protest, by
anticipation, could they foresee it accurately enough.
That things are better at first, and then deteriorate ; that
freshness and purity wear off ; that deflections arise, and
that the inclination from the strict Une, once made, widens
with insensible but fatal steadiness ; in a word, the ten-

Theory of Development.

dency of things to degeneracy is one of those observed
points which has naturalised itself in men's minds, and
taken the position of an axiom. It is one of those large,
broad, and fixed experiences which stand out in strong
relief amid the mixed and shadowy world of minor and
less settled ones. It cannot be passed over, or put aside,
or touched on and left, as if it were a mere casual difficulty.
It is one of those great settled judgments which we bring
with us to the consideration of human questions ; and it
claims to be acknowledged as such.
Moreover, if we go a step farther, and fix upon one very
important and prominent line which this general idea
takes, we find that after establishing broadly and indefin
itely this tendency in moral and physical nature, it next
proceeds specially to remind us that this tendency acts by
the perversion and abuse, as well as by the positive
extinction of the good element which it accompanies.
There is the corruption of exaggeration and excess, as well
as that of decay. We see good tending to bad, without
wholly losing its original type and character in the pro
cess. How this takes place, we are not at present concerned
to inquire. Indeed, what the essential truth, the deep
internal metaphysical reality in the case is, — what the
thing is which really and at bottom takes place when we
speak of good thus changing into bad, — is a question which
perhaps lies below the reach of any limited powers of
analysis. We are only concerned here with broad and
practical truth, as the general sense of mankind has laid
it down ; and, practically speaking, we see corruption tak
ing place constantly by some good principle's simple
exaggeration and excess. Our fine moral qualities are
proverbially subject to this change. Courage becomes rash
ness, and love becomes fondness, and liberality becomes
profuseness, and self-respect becomes pride. In these

Theory of Development.

and such like cases the original type of the virtue remains,
but undergoes disproportion and disfigurement : the ori
ginal disposition, which was good, does not evanesce and
cease to be ; but, continuing, is carried out beyond a
certain Hmit, and transgresses some just standard. It
would be absurd to say that the rashness of the soldier,
whatever extravagances or madnesses it might commit,
lost its type, and ceased to be courage. It retains the
original element which we admire in the courageous
character, — that species of indifference to self, and willing
ness to meet pain and death ; but it retains it in a particu
lar form, which we term exaggerated, and which is offensive
to our moral taste. The rash man remains the courageous
man ; we cannot deny it : we feel ourselves compeUed to
preserve an under-current of admiration for him on this
account ; but we apply it to the simple original element
itself of courage which we see in him, and not to its
actual form and embodiment, as he exhibits it. A vast
number of characters exist in the world, which we con
sider more or less faulty ones, of which the only account
we have to give is, that they carry some natural principles
of conduct, or some natural lines of feeling, too far. Men
are over-busy, over-anxious, hasty, suspicious, thin-
skinned, rigid, vehement, obstinate, passionate, yielding.
In each fault we see the good element at the bottom,
which it carries out unsoundly. How completely does the
whole region of enthusiasm, when we look into it, present
an essential similarity, as far as the fundamental quality
itself is concerned ! We see a certain wide-working
mysterious mental characteristic, which we call by this
name : all the enthusiasms which come before us in actual
life and history, are of this stock ; all the enthusiasts we
see have this enthusiasm running in their veins ; but, quite
independently of the question of a good or a bad cause, we

8 Theory of Development.
like one form of enthusiasm and dislike another. One
man is a natural enthusiast, another an. unnatural and
extravagant one. In these instances, indeed, the continuity
of development is even sometimes marked by the identity
of the name. Jealousy is a virtue, and jealousy is a fault.
We ought to be high-minded ; we ought not to be. We
ought, and we ought not, to be severe and stern, soft and
tender. Such a person is so scrupulous, and another per
son also so scrupulous : we mean it favourably in one case,
unfavourably in another. A fastidious taste is admired
and is condemned. We extol zeal, and stigmatise the
zealot. We use the word enthusiasm, in the same breath,
in a good and a bad sense. The identity of the word in
these cases, is symptomatic of some great intimacy in the
two things ; and often where we have not the same
identical word bearing its cognate good and bad sense, an
unfavourable sense hovers around the virtuous term, a
favourable sense about the faulty one : each is capable of
being used in its contiguous good or bad meaning, and
viewed in the shade and the sunshine, which respectively
haunt them. A particular look or half -formed smile in
the speaker, who is describing a person's character, throws
a dubiousness over the pleasing epithets of courteous,
polite, agreeable, prudent. Even j ustice is rigid, and virtue
is obstinate ; and we call men determined, or vigorous, or
simple, or strict, or pliant, or cautious, or sharp, when the
context has to decide the favourable or unfavourable sense
in which the epithets are used. A whole class of words,
connected with character and action, are very neutral and
ambiguous, capable of expressing bad or good, according
as they are used. The look, the tone of the speaker,
must give the bias which the term itself wants. And in
exploring the region of verbal meanings and significances,
we find ourselves wandering among unknown quantities

Theory of Development.

and formless embryos, which wait in suspense for the
decision of time, and place, and context, to give them
definite and fixed being. That is to say, whereas one main
idea runs through a whole series of characteristic epithets,
it depends upon the stage and the measure of this idea
whether it presents itself to us as right or wrong. Our
verbal identities and verbal modifications, the defects
and the pliabilities of language, point to some unity of
element in the case of various virtues and faults, of which
the former are the just, the latter the unjust develop
ments, but in which it is the measure of development
which makes the difference.
In the same way, the intellectual character of a man's
mind is often unfavourably affected by the over- expansion
of an intellectual gift. A talent, however noble and useful
in itself, requires reining in. Eloquence, versatility, rich
ness of thought, power of illustration, are mighty gifts, and
great snares at the same time. The mind of the writer or
speaker is barren and feeble without them ; and if it has
them, we see it carried away by them. How does the im
poverished mind long for the power of illustration ; the
author seems to be able to do nothing without it ; every
truth falls dead, and every thought comes out hard and
attenuated : but give it him, and it instantly begins to clog
his course ; its impertinent fertility interrupts his argu
ment ; it interferes where it is not wanted ; it goes on
where it ought to stop ; it cheats and fascinates his eye,
and leads him off his road in the pursuit of far-fetched
analogies and superfluous parallelisms and juxta-positions.
Some intellects, again, are too accurate, and narrow them
selves by their own over-definiteness ; they refuse to see
anything vaguely, and consequently see nothing grandly ;
they leave the picturesque masses and groupings of a view,
and always put their minds too close to each part to see

IO Theory of Development.
the form and outline of the whole. Thus argumentative
subtlety is a real gift, and at the same time a most danger
ous one. We see it at first dividing acutely and truly,
cutting a clear course through perplexing statements, and
winding through a circuitous argument with self-pos
sessed flexibility. But how easily does its fineness become
too fine, and its nicety minute and trivial Thus, men of
the world are not rare who would often judge much better,
if they were less shrewd ; their shrewdness carries them
away, and they are always seeing deeper and further than
the fact before them, and never rest in an ordinary natural
view of a man's character and actions.
It is in particulars, however, that is, in insulated pro
cesses of the intellect and movements of the feelings, that
the truth perhaps comes nearest home to us. In such
cases, however fairly we may start, we often feel ourselves
under the infiuenee of some active though hidden force,
some spring of motion in our minds, which impels and
expands us with a strength greater than that of constitu
tional nature ; and carries the internal movement, seeming
all the time simply to advance and go farther and add
one degree of force and depth to another, by that very
accumulation and continuous increasing intensity, to an
exaggerative issue and a plain corruption. Thus, in
movements of the imagination, we observe the poet's
mind too often starting with the natural, and ending with
the morbid. The sentiment which in its first stage was
healthy and sound, becomes, as his fancy works more and
more upon it, as he draws it out and carries it on and on,
sickly and artificial. We may be able to fix on no exact
line where poetical rectitude ended and deterioration
commenced, yet there is the result. By fine imper
ceptible steps, and a continuity which seemed actually to
forbid the developing operation a pause, simplicity has

Theory of Development. 1 1
become puerihty, and sweetness mawkishness. While
the poet has been fondly dwelhng upon his own idea, and
caressing it, and contemplating himself in it, he has
spoiled it by his own weak idolatry ; tiU, spun out, ex
hausted,, attenuated, and frittered away, the mind of the
healthy reader rejects it in disgust. A like process has
spoiled real grandeur and subhmity. How difficult does
the poet seem to find it to prevent himself, in unfolding
ideas of that character, from becoming bombastic. Even
Shakespeare does not always succeed. In truth, real and
deep poetry of a certain class, and not a weak and hoUow
one only, has a strong tendency to bombast ; and the
bombastic development need not rise upon a false basis,
but only exaggerate upon a true one. A poet expands a
grand idea, and is only bent on expanding it ; he attends to
that too exclusively ; he does not check or balance him
self by other points of view. The thought swells, in the
very act of simply expressing and unfolding itself, into
rude and gigantic dimensions, and seeks unsuitable and
excessive height. And an expansion, going upon the
basis of the original thought, and only seeming at the
time its essential elevation and full poetical career, in
the result spoils its subject-matter, and does the work of
an enemy, while it acts as pure exponent and promoter.
Thus many an emotion of heart can appeal confidently to
a hne of continuity which it has maintained from its very
commencement to its very last stage and extreme vent ;
and yet, from a sound natural impulse, it has become an
extravagant and morbid one. " Be ye angry, and sin not,"
the Apostle says ; that is to say, anger is a natural and
proper feehng at a certain point in its duration. " Let
not the sun go down upon your wrath," he adds ; that is
to say, anger beyond that point is wrong. There is no
change of type or essence in the feeling contemplated ; it .

1 2 Theory of Development.
becomes wrong by the act of simply going on beyond a
limit assigned for it. It is the same with other affections.
The genuine moral affection of love becomes, before
persons are aware of it, partiality and favouritism, and
proceeds to idolise an object. Yet it only seems to itself
to follow in the process, step by step, that tenderness
which is its natural character and very constitution.
Indeed, in the mind's daily and hourly history, every
feeling and thought, as it arises, seems to go through a
like course, and the process of corruption seems to go on
in miniature, with respect to every creation of taste, and
every stir of heart within us. Nature herself is sound ;
the thought, immediately as it arises, is true, the impulse
clear ; just the very first dawn of a sentiment, when the
mind is half unconscious of it, its primordia and earhest
infancy are pure. But the perfect healthy stage is an
evanescent one ; it is gone before it can be caught.
Pollow the impression for any time, and it glides out of
our control ; it swells, and unfolds itself too freely and
boldly, and we are conscious it has passed out of its
stage of simplicity into a more or less unsound state.
The characters of great systems, schools of philosophy,
religions, nations, instance the same excessive stamp.
The Spartan character was an exaggeration ; the Cynic
was ; the Stoic was ; the fatalist temper of the Maho
metan rehgionist, the fortitude of the American savage,
the self-denial of the Hindoo saint, are exaggerations.
The idea at the bottom of these characters we admire,
but there is something painful about them ; we shrink
from the boldness of the moral development, as from
something out of measure, unnatural, and prodigious.
National characters are exaggerations. Anglo-Saxon
stubbornness, French vivacity, Itahan subtlety, Spanish
pride, German speculativeness, Irish warmth, Scotch

Theory of Development.

shrewdness, are excessive developments of good national
elements of character. Nations gradually alter, and show,
in the course of a century or two, that a particular
character has grown upon them. The Anglo-Saxon
becomes stiff-necked, the Frenchman revolutionary. The
Greek, of the age of Pericles, was the Grseculus of the
Augustan era. Philosophical schools exhibit the same
history; they exaggerate the mystical, or the argumen
tative character, whichever it may be, of the original
philosophy. The tempered mysticism of Plato is
extravagantly reflected in the wild obscurities of
Alexandrian Platonism ; and Aristotelian logic became
disputatious and rationalistic in the hands of the sophisti
cal schools.
The history of Christianity presents us with like
phenomena ; and particular schools or sects have carried
out particular gospel precepts immoderately, and exhibited
an exaggerated and deformed development of the Christian
^009. The pecuhar meekness inculcated in the precepts,
" Eesist not evil," " Unto him that smiteth thee on the one
cheek offer also the other, and him that taketh away thy
cloak, forbid not to take thy coat also," and other similar
texts, has been carried out into Quietism and Quakerism.
The temper of reserve has been exaggerated in the same
way, and developed into a tortuous and underhand spirit.
There can be no doubt that Christianity does very
significantly recommend, and very naturally produce, a
temper of reserve ; the temper is a feature in Christian
morals, and other religions have not paid such attention
to it. Christianity has done this because it is so essen
tially practical a religion ; it does not stand aloof from
the human throng, it enters boldly and familiarly into it,
and deals with human nature as it finds it. It therefore
thinks much of the quality of considerateness, and it teUs

14 Theory of Development.
its disciples to be watchful and gentle to people's feehngs
and prejudices. Violence defeats itself This quality,
on the other hand, sees difiiculties, looks beforehand, and
suits itself to the state of mind it addresses ; mixes
tenderness and prudence, forbearance and penetration,
love and good sense. Such texts as " Be ye wise as
serpents, and harmless as doves," " Give not that which
is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before
swine," and such declarations as that of St. Paul's, that
he " became all things to all men," evidently suggest some
modification or other of the politic type of mind, as one
intended to exist under the Gospel. Now, whether or not
the Jesuitical order as a whole has exaggerated this type,
at any rate it seems certain that some members of it have,
and that many who have not been Jesuits also have.
Indeed, it is one easily exaggerated : there is an indefinite-
ness as to what it allows and what it does not; as to
where its prudential character ends, and deceitful begins.
A sort of cowardice soon couples itself with it, and a man
uses reserve as a shelter and fortress to himself, instead
of a charity to another. In time, the principle of
accommodation becomes relished for its own sake. The
machinery of management pleases. The undermining
position flatters the mind with sensations of its own
depth and power. The relation of watcher and schemer
with respect to others, which makes one side the material
upon which the other exercises his skiU and tact, feeds a
subtle vanity, and stimulates an earthly activity. A keen
professional spirit grows upon the mind, like the love of
some trade or occupation. The fineness of natural
conscience with respect to sincerity is dullened, — a techni
cal standard obtains ; and, step by step, without trans
gressing any absolute law at any one point, the principle
of Christian reserve has developed into that policy which

Theory of Developm,ent. 1 5
is often conventionally called Jesuitism ; though we want
to lay our stress not on the namej but on the thing.
That which people mean to censure under the name, is
the abuse of a good and a specially Christian principle.
There is a legitimate principle of economy, which simple
forbearance and charity in deahng with other minds
involve ; and this has received an inordinate and exces
sive development.
A general view of things thus impresses strongly a
form of corruption upon us, which is the corruption of
exaggeration, and not that of failure ; the perversion, and
not the destruction, of an original type : we see in a
multitude of cases principles, in themselves true, over
acted, good feehngs over-wrought, fine perceptions over-
cultivated. Our moral nature tends to indignation,
enthusiasm, tenderness, determination, self-respect in
excess. The intellect may be too rich, too accurate, too
subtle, too shrewd ; and poetry can develop into bombast
and sentimentalism, philosophy into sophistry, national
character into caricature. Whether any particular illus
trations are right or wrong, and apply to the case or not,
that form of corruption which consists in excess, and not
failure, is too clearly marked, too broad, too common and
palpable a one, to admit of any doubt. We may add,
that though the word corruption suggests etymologically
the latter rather than the former, and puts the image of
decay primarily before us, yet the strong habitual observa
tion amongst us of corruption exaggerative, has turned it
the other way; and in calling the excess of a virtue,
rather than its failure, its corruption, made the word
suggestive of excess. This form of corruption Aristotle
saw as a fact, and gave it a place in his philosophy. He
said a thing can become worse by excess ; the good prin
ciple need not cease, and an evil one be substituted in its

1 6 Theory of Development.
place, in order to have deterioration ; it may continue to
exist, but exist inordinately. The measure, as well as
the substance, is part of the virtue. Est modus in rebus :
there is symmetry and form in moral nature ; there is a
standard of growth in the constitution of things. It is
not enough that the good principle simply exists ; it
should exist in a certain way. True, indeed, good is good,
and evil evil, and there is nothing between; but this
settles nothing as to the mode by which good and by
which evil become such. In forming a correct image in
our minds of what makes good and makes evil, we must
not only have the image of two separate principles, as it
were two points or atoms, and say that one of these is
good and the other is evil. Practical morality is a more
complex and balanced thing ; and the principle of form,
as weU as that of substance, should enter into the idea of
good. If good refuses to exist according to a certain
standard or measure, it gets wrong by excess, just as, if it
declines, it gets wrong by ceasing altogether. Without
diving, however, into the metaphysical part of the subject,
or attempting to get at the bottom of the relation of good
and evil, it is enough to appeal to a plain and practical
truth. All phenomena, natural or moral, are more or
less inexplicable when we come to analyse them ; but
the difficulty of the analysis does not interfere at all with
the certainty of the fact. And the matter of common
sense, the practical phenomenon, is plain, that things
become worse upon their original basis, and that good
becomes evil by exaggeration.
Thus early, indeed, and in the moral department, before
coming to theology at aU, we find ourselves in coUision
with a certain idea of development. There is a philosophy
of development, which regards it in its progressive aspect
exclusively, and puts its form and measure in the back-

Theory of Development. 1 7
ground. Siich a view has the advantage of simplicity ; it
makes the question of truth a question of quantity, and
the biggest development, whatever it be, the truest.
Development, simply as such, — as • so much continuous
sweUing and pushing forward of an original idea, — is the
more perfect the farther it goes, up to the very extremest
conceptions of size and extension which the mind can
entertain. A pure, progressive, illimitable, mathematical
movement hangs argumentatively in terror em over us,
with the assertion of a logical necessity and impossibility
of stopping short of consequences. But such a rationale
of development is inapplicable to the subject-matter to
which it is apphed. In morals we cannot develop mathe
matically, because we have not a basis which will bear it.
In mathematics we have fixed and defined principles to
start from, — we have them by hypothesis ; we know, there
fore, exactly what we are about, and have a pledge, in a
known and ascertained premiss, for the truth of all the
results. But in morals we have no ascertained, premiss
to begin with. We do not know what we have ; we have
to wait for a development before we do know. Here is
the point. In mathematics the principle is known prior
to its results. In morals it is only known in its results.
Take the principle of love and fear in religion and morals.
We call them two principles conventionaUy, and imagine
them, for convenience sake, existing as two definite
entities, prior to any concrete manifestations or develop
ments of them. But the truth is, we do not know them
or their character, except in their manifestations and
developments. We see moral principles, as we see the
laws of material motion, not prior to, but in their external
and cognisable action ; and the dramatic or practical de
velopments of love and fear alone declare what love and
fear are. The developments thus, in morals, explaining

1 8 Theory of Development.
the principle, to argue from the principle to the develop
ments is to argue in a circle. And, therefore, to any
mathematical veto forbidding us to form a distinct judg
ment of any moral development, on the ground that we
have already committed ourselves to the principle from
which it proceeds, the answer is obvious : — we could not
have committed ourselves in such a sense to the principle,
because we never committed ourselves to this develop
ment. In other words, in the department of morals, as
distinguished from that of mathematics, we go by the
eye ; and the moral taste necessarily forms its judgment
of a moral exhibition, as a present object before it. The
general principle being allowed, the phenomenon has still
to be judged of : the mode of development is a separate
question when development arrives ; and the undefined
moral substance has to receive its form and measure
before it becomes that final reality about which we judge.
To go back to the point at which we started.
We have, then, two great lines of thought encountering
us in limine, in entering upon the question which the
Essay before us raises. We have the natural idea of
development, and we have the natural idea of a tendency
to exaggeration and abuse in development. In giving an
account of the progress of any great institution, political
or religious, either of these ideas is admissible ; and one
party may put forward the rationale of development, and
another the rationale of abuse. One may fasten singly
on the former idea, may illustrate it copiously, and by
filling the imagination with the idea of development
exclusively, preclude all other aspects in which any given
progressive changes can be viewed ; another may carry to
the consideration of such changes the idea of develop
ment, and the idea of abuse too.
Under the contending claims, then, of these two ideas,

Theory of Development. 19
the history of Christianity comes before us ; and the
question is how to decide between the pretensions of the
two. The principle of development is of course admitted,
to begin with, in this case. There can be no doubt that
Christianity was intended to develop itself. It was
intended to do so on the same general law on which great
principles and institutions, we may say all things, great
or small, do. If a man cannot enter a room full of
fellow-creatures without developing himself, still less
could Christianity enter into this world without developing
itself. It had precepts, it had doctrines ; those precepts
must be practised, those doctrines must be entertained in
the mind. Human life and human thought were the
receptacles of the gospel. People who became Christians
would have to act upon, and to think of, what Christianity
imparted to them. The peculiar Christian temper, in
the first place, would be brought out more prominently,
as different relations, rehgious or secular, social or civU,
had to be sustained and responded to. While the
apostles lived. Christians showed their obedience to
apostles ; when the apostolic office descended to bishops.
Christians showed their obedience to bishops, and the
hierarchical sphit of Christianity appeared in more
regular form. Christians found themselves, as a matter
of fact, under civil governments ; and they had to act as
Christians in this relation. They had a general principle
inculcating meekness; that meekness became in this
relation the temper of non-resistance. The charity
enjoined in the Gospel developed itself, under the parti
cular circumstances of the Church after the day of Pente
cost, in community of goods. It afterwards developed
itself in Sunday collections for the poor, and all the
charitable rules and institutions of the early Church.
Thus there could not be martyrs before there were perse-

20 Theory of Development.
cutions; the latter developed the martyr spirit in the
Christian mind : — that generosity which made the indi
vidual ready wholly to sacrifice himself for the Truth and
for the brethren. Heresies developed the dogmatic
temper of Christianity ; it could not show its fidehty to
the Truth so forcibly before as it could after the Truth was
assailed. The seK-denying temper of Christianity de
veloped itself in stated fasts, voluntary poverty, retire
ment from society, celibacy, and monasticism. It was
necessaiy that the Christian temper, when it found itself
in the world, should act in some way or other ; it could
not act without developing itself: action is itself de
velopment. The simple fact of Christianity being in the
world — ^being there just as other things are — being among
governments, the poor, persecutions, heretics, made a
Christian development. The question whether that
peculiar temper has always developed itself properly in
the world — one which we incidentally alluded to above —
is one which we need not pursue.
Besides this internal temper of Christianity, a depart
ment of doctrine, or rather a mixed department of doctrine
and feeling, was brought into existence by the New Dis
pensation, which, when once existing, could not but
expand, and lead to farther ideas. And though those
ideas might at first be strictly apostolical in their origin,
and have the rank of an unwritten revelation, yet a time
would come when inspiration would cease, and the unin
spired operations of human feeling and reason begin. We
will instance three or four important departments in
which original doctrine has received development from
the thought and feeling of the general Christian mind to
which it was communicated; not disguising, as we
proceed, our preference of some to other stages of that
development, though we are only giving at present its

Theory of Development. 2 1
whole course as a fact. And we shall take development
upon its broad and practical ground, not confining our
selves to public verbal statements only, but looking to
their actual interpretation and mode of reception in the
Church. The doctrine of an intermediate state, with the relations
of Christians to the departed accompanying it, presents, in
the successive stages it has gone through, an instance of
this development. The Gospel revealed, with a clearness
with which it had not been before, the doctrine of the
immortality of the' soul. The dead were, to the Christian
behever, real persons, living in another state ; that he did
not see them was nothing to the purpose — they existed :
the same personal beings whom he had known upon
earth were alive in some invisible portion of the universe.
But the dead could not exist without some relation
between him and them ensuing. The first duty of a being
to aU other beings, is to wish them weU. The Christian
could not, on the first principles of rehgion, help wishing
the dead well. If he wished them well, he imphcitly
prayed for them ; for the wish of a religious mind is itself
a prayer. Every one's eternal lot, indeed, is decided at
his death ; and that lot in the case of aU for whom we can
prfiy is a happy one. But we can pray for a benefit which
is already certain, where that certainty is only the certainty
of faith, and not of sight. The certainty of faith as to any
event, can never of its own nature be so certain as not to
leave room for a wish or prayer for it. We beheve, but
do not see ; we look upon the dark ; there is a veil before
us, and we pray that something, which we believe to take
place behind it, may take place. We pray in the baptismal
service that the water may regenerate the infant, though
we believe, in accordance with Cathohc doctrine, that it
certainly will; and in the same way the early Church

2 2 Theory of Development.
prayed that the righteous dead might receive their eternal
reward, though it believed, for certain, that they would.
The doctrine of the intermediate state and prayers for the
dead was thus a natural development of the revelation of
the soul's immortality, specially made in the Gospel. The
dead existed now ; the day of judgment was yet to come ;
an intermediate state of existence therefore between death
and judgment there must be : the righteous souls waited
for their eternal reward, the wicked for their eternal doom.
The primitive doctrine of the intermediate state reflected
simply the original Christian truths, of the departed soul's
present existence and future judgment. For the righteous
it was thus ' a state of pure rest ; their earthly labours
over, their final bliss gradually approaching. " Blessed
are the dead which die in the Lord, even so saith the
Spirit, for they rest from their labours." " Verily, I say
unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise."
Nature was a type of grace : — " Man went forth to his
work and to his labour until the evening;" in the evening
he rested. From the whole idea of life as a scene of
labour, followed naturally the idea of death as a state of
peace ; and the life after was not the continuation, but
correlative, of the life before. The busy day, the still
night, the journey and the rest, waking and sleeping, life
and death, corresponded to each other in the Divine dis
pensation of things. " Them that sleep in Jesus, will God
bring with him." " We which are alive shall not prevent
them which are asleep." The language of the New
Testament ascribes a character of peace and rest to the
state of true believers after death ; the idea pervades it
remarkably, and lays strong hold of a reader. It is im
possible for one careful and anxious about a true behef in
this subject, not to regard with awe that sentence which,
in its obvious meaning, seems so clearly to intimate what

Theory of Development. 23
was in our Lord's own mind on this subject. The Liturgies
of the early Church followed up this tone in their prayers
for the righteous dead. " Eeturn, my soul, into thy rest."
— " I will fear no evil because Thou art with me." — " Be
mindful, 0 Lord God of the spirits of all flesh, of such as
we have remembered, and such as we have not remem
bered, being of right belief, from Abel the just unto this
present day. Do Thou cause them to rest in the land
of the hving, in Thy kingdom, in the delight of Paradise,
in the bosom of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, our holy
fathers." — " Eemember, 0 Lord, Thy servants and hand
maids, which have gone before us with the ensign of
faith, and sleep in the sleep of peace. To them, 0 Lord,
and to all that are in rest in Christ, we beseech Thee
that Thou wouldst grant a place of refreshing, light, and
peace." — " Vouchsafe to place in the bosom of Abraham
the souls of those that be at rest." — " Place in rest the
spirits of those which are gone before us, in the Lord's
peace, and raise them in the part of the first resurrection."
So stood the doctrine of the intermediate state for some
centuries. It then gradually altered, till the simply
waiting expectant state at last issued in a painful and
troubled one, and the interval between earth and heaven,
in which the righteous had rested, was occupied with pain
and torture. A purgatorial doctrine had existed from
the first in the Church. It was piously and naturaUy
held that the soul did not enter heaven without some
purifying process at some point of time intervening, to
take away the vestiges of its earthly stains. The day of
judgment was fixed for this process by some, others did
not fix a time. This behef long went on harmonising
with the primitive peaceful idea of the intermediate state ;
and an intervening purification of some kind, and at some
time, supposed, left the general idea of the intermediate

24 Theory of Development.
rest still whole and entire. By degrees, however, the
purgatorial idea attached to this state grew and expanded ;
it grew, till it at last completely drove out the idea of
rest. The purgatorial idea absorbed the whole state, and
placing at once some highest saints in heaven, the obsti
nately wicked in hell, made the intermediate state one scene
of fiery punishment for the great body of the faithful ; the
souls of the righteous suffering in flames equal to those of
hell in intensity. As to the length of. their continuance
in such torture, nothing was certified ; but nothing also
was certified as to their deliverance. That they had gone
there, the believer upon earth knew ; when they would
come out, he knew not. They would come out when
they wore perfected; but when would that be? The
chantry was founded to pray and offer masses, throughout
all time, for righteous human souls, not quite perfected,
and suffering this pain so long as they remained so. The
difference between a process and a place was great. The
idea of a purifying process, even though it be by fire,
suggested a vague, transient, and merciful purification, and
did not destroy the general image of the intermediate rest
of the righteous ; a purgatorial place, on the other hand,
suggests the idea of punishment always going on in it,
and makes the idea of punishment the standing, lasting,
prominent one. The primitive purgatorial process having
now become the fixed purgatorial place, the purgatory and
prison of human souls, while that fixed place existed, the
departed soul could not, in the idea of the believers upon
earth, be quite separated from it ; and that place existed
till the end of the world. Thus a whole different im
pression from the primitive one, as to the intermediate
state, spread and became dominant. The state of rest
was changed into a temporary heU. A whole growth of
popular theology filled it with horrible, minute, chcum-

Theory of Development. 25
stantial details and particulars. The image was fastened
on the popular mind, and a complete legendary creation
arose. The system of indulgences made a constant appeal
to it. Days, weeks, years, hundreds of years of purgatory
were commuted, in the popular divinity, for penances
upon earth ; a second commutation turned those penances
into alms. So much money bought off' so many years of
purgatorial suffering. The expenses of wars were defrayed,
the necessities of the Papal see supplied, churches built
and ornamented, out of the appeal to purgatory. The
doctrine of purgatory was wielded as an established
ecclesiastical engine, became a regular source of revenue,
and could be counted on. It was eagerly applied, and
warmly responded to ; and a whole mixed practical system,
carrying with it good and evil, much real devotion and
charity, with much trickery, profaneness, and profligacy,
completed the development.
Aga,in, in the feehngs and regards of Christians towards
saints and holy men, development was natural and
necessary. When Christians died. Christians began to
feel relations to the dead. When saints departed, left
a name and memory behind them. Christians began to
feel relations to saints. The new relation followed from
the fact, and honour to the saints arose on the same law
as prayers for the dead did. It was natural to reverence
their memories, and take care to transmit them. Any
memorials of them would be tenderly preserved; their
tombs would be especially sacred ; the martyrdom would
be celebrated ; the saint's day would be kept. The mind
would image to itself their present state, as resting from
their labours and waiting for their crowns. Thoughts
upon thoughts, in this natural line of meditation, would
follow. It is unnatural to suppose that souls departed
cannot pray. The prayers of saintly souls were interces-

26 Theory of Development,
sory in life : why may they not be so afterwards ? We
do not know, indeed, that in their present state they
remember us, or think of us, or know anything about us
upon earth ; but neither do we know that they do not.
All we know is, that saints, once intimately connected
with us, are now personally existing in some portion of
the universe of God, having the same essential disposition
to intercede for us that they ever had. Upon this know
ledge," when realised in a certain strong way, a farther
step might not unnaturally follow in some minds ; and
supposing departed saints could intercede for them, the
wish might arise that they should. The wish again that
they should, might, in some minds, lead to a kind of
apostrophe or an hypothetical address to them to do so,
only as a mode of expressing that wish. " If you hear
me and I do not know that you do not, do what I ask
you; if I can address you I do." If even some very
ardent religious imagination, annihilating the interval
between what may be and what is, hardly felt the hypo
thetical chain, and sent its address straight and uncon
ditional into the spiritual world, the liberty might only
be a mode of expressing the lively and realising impres
sions which such an imagination creates. A whole line
of indefinite feehng to, thought of, mental reference of
some kind to departed saints, extending from the most
ordinary popular honour to their memories to the most
internal supposition of individual piety and imaginative
meditation about them, would thus not unnaturally follow
from the fact of their existence, and would express itself
in ways open or secret, public or private.
This is a development. But development being
necessary to some extent, development goes on farther.
The pious inward wish of the journeyer upon earth that
the saints might intercede for him ; the inward apo-

Theory of Development. 27
strophe and address which arose in individual minds, in
moments of deep and imaginative meditation, when the
spiritual eye seemed to see the invisible world actuaUy
open, and the saints in their own regions above taking
part with the prayers of the Church upon earth ; all which
pious individual impulse might just aUow of or sanction
in its own inward sphere was brought into regular public
usage, and made part of the established worship of the
Church. The indefiniteness which inspiration had left
over the fact of such intercourse between us and the saints
departed, that veil of uncertainty which unsuited it for
the Church's whole pubhc ground removed, — that the
saints heard prayers became a simple popular fact. The
prayer to the saint was offered up pubhcly, side by side
with the prayer to God. By degrees, the language of the
prayer itself became bolder. The era fro nobis had to be
understood, and the earthly supphcant, as far as language
went, asked of the saint the same things which he did of
the Almighty, in the same form. Other and other de
velopments foUowed, which it is unnecessary here to go
through ; the result was the present recognised worship of
the saints established over so large a part of Christendom.
The honour of the blessed Virgin has been developed
stUl more boldly, largely, unflinchingly, with a boldness
and a largeness, indeed, which serve to throw all other
developments into the background. But as we shall
have to enter upon this more at length farther on in this
article, we shaU content ourselves for the present with a
simple allusion, and leave the reader to recall to his own
mind the general features of it ; the style adopted in the
" Litanies of the Blessed Virgin," and such books as St.
Bonaventure's Psalter, the Gloires de Marie, and innumer
able others ; and the whole position given to St. Mary in
the Eoman Church.

28 Theory of Development.
The doctrine of transubstantiation is another bold de
velopment in another department. The doctrine of the
early Church on the subject of the Lord's Supper declared
that the bread and wine were changed into the Body and
Blood of Christ. Nevertheless, it regarded the bread and
wine as continuing to be bread and wine, the same in all
material respects as what they were before. Bread and
wine were material substances before their conversion;
they were material substances after. Looking upon con
secrated and looking upon unconsecrated bread and wine,
it regarded the former as being all that the latter was,
however much more it might be ; there was no idea of
matter which the human mind could entertain, which it
did not entertain of the material bread and wine in the
Eucharist. How the material substance, continuing such,
was at the same time changed into a spiritual one, it did
not profess to say ; it asserted the truth, and maintaining
a thoroughly natural view as to the material bread and
wine, such a view in aU respects as any ordinary human
intellect would take, on the one side, and the truth that
they were become our Lord's body and blood, on the other,
left the two truths to stand together. A simple, absolute,
mysterious idea of a change ; not analysed or pushed out,
but stopping at its first conception ; practically intel-
hgible, intellectually uninteUigible, combined both. Our
ideas on mysterious subjects are necessarily superficial ;
they are intellectually paper ideas, they will not stand
examination; they vanish into darkness if we try to
analyse them. A child, on reading in fairy tales about
magical conversions and metamorphoses, has most simple
definite ideas instantly of things, of which the realitij is
purely unintelhgible. His ideas are paper ones ; a phUo-
sopher may tell him that he cannot have them really,
because they issue when pursued in something self-con-

Theory of Developmient.

tradictory and absurd; that he is mistaken, and only
thinks he has them ; but the child has them such as they
are, and they are powerful ones, and mean something real
at the bottom. Our ideas, in the region of rehgious
mystery, have this chUdish character ; the early Church
had such. It held a simple, superficial, childhke idea of
an absolute conversion of the bread and wine into the
body and blood ; and with this idea, as with an hierogly
phic emblem of some mysterious and awful reahty, it
stopped short. But the time came when the idea of con
version was analysed and pushed ; it was inferred that if
the bread and wine were changed into the body and blood,
they must cease to be the substances of bread and wine ;
and comparing consecrated with other bread, the Eoman
Church pronounced this difference between them, — that
whereas all other pieces of bread in the world were mate
rial substances, this particular bread was not. The bread
upon the altar was not a material thing, it only had the
appearance and not the reality of it. We look on matter
as a substance. We take up a piece of wood, or piece of
stone: the wood is grainy, fibrous, igneous, and has all
ligneous qualities ; the stone is gritty and frangible, and
has aU lapideous qualities : but no assemblage of hgneous
or lapideous quahties is to us the wood or the stone ; we
regard the latter not as those qualities, but as the sub
stances which have those quahties, the qualities essentially
implying to our minds the substance which has them :
and the idea of wood or stone is utterly void and hoUow
whUe the substance is withdrawn, and is satisfied only
when that comes in. Thus bread means substantial bread,
and wine substantial wine, and they are not in idea bread
and wine unless they are this. And this the doctrine of
transubstantiation, unsubstantiating the bread and wine
upon the altar as it does, denies the bread and wine upon

30 Theory of Development.
the altar to be. The doctrine of their conversion has been
pushed out into a denial of their continued existence, and
the idea of change has gained a forced intensity at the
expense of ordinary truth and reasonableness.
Taking these, then, as samples of a general develop
ment which has gone on in the Christian Church, here is
a course of development before us, and the question is. Is
all of it right, or is only some of it right ? Has develop
ment simply brought out truth, or has it exceeded a limit,
and become, beyond that limit, erroneous ? One general
view taken of this course of development holds it to have
exceeded. Of the later and more extreme developments,
what is ordinarily asserted by writers of our Church is,
that they are exaggerations ; that they push certain feel
ings or ideas to excess, and corrupt them by doing so ;
that they go beyond the authorised boundary, and overlay
the truth. The general form of charge against Eome is
this, as distinguished from the charge of having extin
guished truth : it points to the faults of an adding, not a
diminishing system ; to error in the line of growth and
not that of deday. The tendency of Protestantism is to
decay : it diminishes, dilutes, speculates away Christian
truth : it dislikes mystery, distrusts awe ; and therefore
the Christian religion, as an essentially mysterious and
essentially devotional one, would gradually lose its funda
mental characteristics and original type under the sway
of unchecked Protestantism. Upon the Eoman system,
on the other hand, the special charge made is, that in
various doctrines, keeping the original type, it has intro
duced an exaggerative corruption of it. The care for the
dead, the veneration of saints, the peculiar reverence to
the Mother of God, the acknowledgment of the change in
the Eucharist, the sense of punishment due to sin, are all
Christian feehngs and doctrines, and they aU exist in the

Theory of Development. 3 1
Eoman system ; but they are asserted to exist in an im
moderate and disproportionate way. The system which
intensifies the spiritual by denying the material substance
in the Eucharist ; which gives the Mother of our Lord,
because great honour is due to her, the place which it
does give her ; which makes, because it was natural to
imagine some purification of the soul before its entrance
into heaven, the whole intermediate state a simple penal
fiery purgatory ; which pushes out doctrines and expands
feehng towards particular objects to the extent to which
it does, has had one general fault very prominently
charged to it, viz., that of exaggeration, including in that
term all that, commonly called, extravagance, all that abuse
and perversion of the exaggerative kind, which it prac
tically means.
Such is the view which one side takes of certain large
developments of Christian doctrine, which took place over
the world after the first centuries, viz., as deteriorations
or corruptions ; let us now see how Mr. Newman, as the
advocate of the other side, proves them not to be corrup
tions, but true and sound developments.
Mr. Newman's argument on this point proceeds on a
certain definition of corruption ; a certain view which he
lays down of what corruption is. His definition of cor
ruption is " the destruction of the norm or type." " The
corruption of phUosophical or political ideas is a process
ending in dissolution of the body of thought and usage,
which was bound up, as it were, into one system ; in the
destruction of the norm or type, whatever it may be con
sidered, which made it one ; in its disorganisation ; in its
loss of the principle of life and growth ; in its resolution
into other distinct lives, that is into other ideas which
take the place of it." ^ He adds :— " That development,
1 Development of Christian Doctrine, first Edition, p. 62.

32 Theory of Development.
then, is to be considered a corruption which obscures or
prejudices its essential idea, or which disturbs the laws
of development which constitute its organisation, or which
reverses its course of development ; that is not a corrup
tion which is both a chronic and an active state, or which
is capable of holding together the component parts of a
system."-^ Again, "The corruption of an idea is that state of
a development which undoes its previous advances." ^ He
goes to the analogy of nature : " Corruption- as seen in the
physical world, not only immediately precedes dissolu
tion, but immediately foUows upon development. It is
the turning-point or transition- state in that continuous
process, by which the birth of a living thing is mysteri
ously connected with its death. In this it differs from a
reaction, innovation, or reform, that it is a state to which
a development tends from the first, at which sooner or
later it arrives, and which is its reversal, whUe it is its
continuation. Animated natures live on till they die ;
they grow in order to decrease ; and every hour which
brings them nearer to perfection, brings them nearer to
their end. Hence the resemblance and the difference
between a development and corruption are brought into
close juxtaposition." * He introduces the existence of a
falling state : " Thus, as to nations, when we talk of the
spirit of a people being lost, we do not mean that this or
that act has been committed, or measure carried, but that
certain lines of thought or conduct, by which it has grown
great, are abandoned." * In aU these passages, with the
exception of that slight ambiguity occasionally, which in
argumentative writing fulfils the purpose rather of guard
ing and securing a bold position than really modifying it,
one bold assertion runs throughout, viz., that corruption
1 Development of Christian Doctrine, first Edition, p. 63
2 lUd. 3 yjjti, 4 Page 69.

Theory of Development. 33
can only take place by positive faUure and decay. Cor
ruption is the "abandonment of a line of thought."
Corruption is that which "reverses its course of develop
ment."^ Corruption is "that state of an idea which un
does its previous advances ;" ^ that is to say, so long as an
idea goes onward at all, it is sure not to be wrong, the
onwardness of the movement constituting its truth.
" Where then was the opportunity of corruption," he argues
in another place, " in the three hundred years between St.
Ignatius and St. Augustine ? or between St. Augustine and
St. Bede ? or between St. Bede and St. Peter Damiani ? . . .
The tradition of eighteen centuries becomes a chain of
indefinitely many links, one crossing the other ; and each
year as it comes is guaranteed with various degrees of
cogency by every year which has gone before it." ^ That
is to say, corruption is excluded by the simple continuity
of progress on the part of the idea : there is no interval
by which it can slip in : the steps lap over one another
like scales : " one is so near to another that no air can come
between them : they are joined one to another, they stick
together that they cannot be sundered." * The definition
of true development and of corruption is thus, — of develop
ment, simple advance ; of corruption, simple retrogres
sion : of true development, that which pushes out an
idea ; and of corruption, that which extinguishes it. A
philosophical theoiy of development makes all develop
ment true, so long as it is such in kind, — so long as there
is progression as distinguished from retreat, and enlarge
ment as distinguished from reduction. The fact is its own
evidence, the mathematical pledge and certificate of its
own correctness. So long as an idea is simply pushed out,
extended, added to; so long as one step has naturally led
I Page 63. 3 p^ge 367.
2 Ibid. ' Job xii. 16, 17.

34 Theory of Development.
to another, and the movement has been continuous, and
course onward ; so long as it can appeal to a naturally
gliding career, to a process in which the end of one
advance has fitted on to the beginning of the next, to a
line of arithmetical consistency and material succession,
so long its career is ipso facto right. " The destruction of
the special laws or principles of a development is the
corruption of an idea," ^ and that only.
Now this definition simply omits the whole notice of
corruption by excess. Corruption being defined to be
loss of type, it follows that exaggeration, which is not
this, is not corruption'. The latter has no head for it to
come under, and is not taken cognisance of. If indeed
it be asked whether Mr. Newman whoUy denies that
there can be such a thing as exaggeration, the answer is
that he does not, but that he does not admit and recognise
it argumentatively. The value of a truth hes in its
recognition in the argument. If the argument does not
recognise it, an incidental allusion to such a truth in
some other connection is nothing "to the purpose. In those
two or three places where he appears to allude to this
truth, the allusion stops with itself, and nothing comes
of it. To take the foUowing passage : —
" 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
' Development of Christian Doctrine, first Edition, page 69.

Theory of Development. 35
of spring, the richness of autumn, are but for a moment, and
worldly moralists bid us car^e 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
foUy. And in the political world states rise and fall, in
struments of their aggrandisement becoming the weapons of
their destruction. And hence the frequent ethical maxims,
such as ' Ne quid nimis,' ' Medio tutissimus,' ' Vaulting am
bition,' which seem to imply that too much of what is good
is evil." 1
Here allusion is made to the idea of exaggeration, and
it is imphed that the idea is true, and that there may be
such a thing. Various time-honoured maxims, "Ne
quid nimis 1" " Medio tutissimus," are alluded to. The
" virtue which grows into enormity," and that " too much
of good which is evil," are aUuded to. A whole side of
truth, as seen in " the appearance of things and popular
language, " ^ the phenomenon of good becoming evU by
excess (though with the protest against the paradox
that good leads " literall'y " to evil, — a metaphysical part
of the subject which we have already shown not to inter
fere with the phenomenon), are aUuded to. The chapter is
on the subject of " Preservative additions," and therefore
the idea of exaggeration almost necessarily must be aUuded
to in it. And accordingly we do find an allusion to it.
But when it has been aUuded to, it is aUuded to no
more. The subject drops. The idea of excess in growth
becomes mixed with quite a different idea, that of a
climax or end of growth, the consummation which pre
cedes decay, the bloom of flowers before they fade, the
maturity of fruits before they rot ; and after coming up
to the top once or twice, vanishes altogether, leaving
1 Page 87. * lUd.

36 Theory of Development.
that of a "corroborative," "adding,'' "illustrating" develop
ment to proceed without a cheek.
Whereas then the ordinary charge maintained by
Enghsh divines. against the Eoman system is, as we have
said, that of exaggeration, and abuse in exaggeration, we
have here a definition of corruption which excludes
exaggeration from its meaning. With such a definition,
an arguer of course proceeds with considerable advantage
to vindicate the Eoman system from aU corruption. He
has only to say that Eoman doctrines have not destroyed
or reversed the ideas and feelings in which they arose ;
that in distinction to being departures from original truths
altogether, they have been expansions, growths, develop
ments ; and immediately no absence whatever of measure
in extent of expansion, growth, development, can make
corruptions of them. They are secure by the definition,
and have a pledge of faultlessness which no controver
sialist can touch.
Such is Mr. Newman's general argument; and we need
not say there is an obvious form of reply to it. It is
open to any one to deny the correctness and completeness
of Mr. Newman's definition, and to assert that there is a
kind of corruption which is not a whole departure from
an original type, but which carries out that type exces
sively and extravagantly ; that such a kind is seen in life
and morals ; and that it may take place in religious
systems too. Mr. Newman asks, indeed, what room there
is for error to slip in in a course of absolutely continuous
advance ; but is not this just the question which any
one in any case of the most ordinary exaggeration may
ask ? A man carries out some natural feeling or habit to
an obvious excess. If fault is found with him, he can of
course demand to know the exact point at which the
action of the feeling ceased to be right and began to be

Theory of Development. 37
wrong. He can say that the feeling was certainly good
in him to begin with ; that being good to begin with, it
has been carried on continuously, each advance in it
naturaUy leading to a further one ; and that at last he
finds himself in the state of feeling in which he is. An
ultra-fastidious taste, a morbid dehcacy, a lavish liberality,
a haughty self-respect, a venturesome, a hasty, an obsti
nate, a garrulous, a taciturn temper, may each give this
account of itself. And our answer in each case would be,
that we were not obliged to fix accurately on the par
ticular line which separated good from bad, sound from
unsound ; that we observed the feeling or habit had made
the advance which.it had, and that we judged of it as we
did. It is characteristic of the process of exaggeration to
be thus continuous, subtle, and gradual. But this is no
difficulty with us. We look to tbe result, which is plain
and large, and not to the steps, which are subtle and
small. And therefore, when Mr. Newman, in the case of
the Eoman development, sends us back from the result
to the process, and with a phenomenon before us, wUl
not let us judge of it till we have accurately accounted
for its rise ; when he says, " Where was the opportunity
between St. Augustine and St. Bede, and between St.
Bede and St. Peter Damiani ? " and requires us to pick
some definite hole in the process as such, before we
hesitate at the result, we can only say that the request
is not a reasonable one ; that we do not judge in moral
and religious subjects as we do in mathematical, in which
the process is everything, and the result mechanicaUy
forced upon us by it, but judge of the result indepen- ,
dently, and seeing an exaggeration for a result, can pro- 1
nounce that the process has been in some way or other,/
however gradually and insensibly, an exaggerating process.
Indeed, Mr. Newman's own reason, incidentally given

38 Theory of Development.
in one place, for his taking no notice of this great depart
ment of error, is a sufficiently self-convicting one. He
mentions excess in one place, and mentions it as some
thing wrong ; but says he is not concerned with it, because
excess is not " corruption," and he is only concerned with
the question whether Eoman doctrines are corruptions
or not. "We predicate corruption not of the extreme
(meaning something wrong by the extreme), which pre
serves, but that which destroys a type." ^ That is to say,
he excludes the idea of excess, because he has limited the
idea of corruption so as to exclude it. But surely this is
no legitimate reason, for the question is easily asked.
Why did he so limit his idea of corruption ? He
has, by the nature of his argument, to clear the Eoman
developments of all that is wrong, of whatever kind
and by whatever name called. WeU, here is something
wrong, and something, therefore, from which he has to
clear the Eoman developments. He does not relieve
himself of this task by saying that he does not admit
this particular wrong thing into his definition of corrup
tion ; it exists all the same whether admitted into that
definition or not, and whether outside or inside of the
meaning of that word ; and, existing, has to be disproved.
The arguer in the present case may take corruption in
any sense he hkes, as far as the word is concerned, and
may take it exclusively in its etymological sense of decay
or dissolution. But in that sense, if there is anything
else wrong which is not corruption, he cannot put it
aside, because he has not made it corruption. He has
adopted a defective and partial type of evil, and therefore
must admit other types to his argumentative notice when
they present themselves. At present the hiatus in the
argument before us is a large one. We wonder, while
1 Page 64.

Theory of Development.

we read, at the ease with which the conclusion is arrived
at, and feel an argumentative power drawing us along
without a tendency to convince us, or relieve the per
petual undefined consciousness of something wanting.
As Mr. Newman's argument stands at present, he first
excludes that form of error which is charged upon the
Eoman system from the field of existence, and then securely
determines on that system's perfection. He defines, and then
proceeds on his own definition. The scholar, in the old
iUustration of logic, who was locked up in the Bodleian
after four o'clock, and from the window asked the beadle
in the quadrangle to let him out, was refuted out of
Bocardo : no man is in the Bodleian after four o'clock ;
therefore you are not in the Bodleian. The arguer first
limited the capacity of the Bodleian for holding human
beings to the part of the day before four o'clock, and
then irresistibly inferred that there were none in it
after. Mr. Newman limits deterioration to that form
in which it does not apply to the Eoman system, and
then confidently determines that there has been no
deterioration. ' Having noticed the substantial argument, we shaU not
follow the detaU and division through which Mr. New
man subsequently takes it. The Christian " Tests of true
development " which he gives, only profess to be, and
only are, an expansion of the one and leading argument.
They aU successively go on the supposition that there is '
no kind of corruption but that of the departure from, and
destruction of an idea. In a development he says there
should be, first, the " preservation of the idea ; " ^ secondly,
" continuity of principles ;" thirdly, " power of assimUa-
tion ;" fourthly, " early anticipation ;" fifthly, " logical
sequence;" sixthly, " preservative additions ; " seventhly,
1 Page 64.

40 Theory of Development.
" chronic continuance." Of such a series of tests we can
only say, that in any sense — and we presume this is not
intended — ^in which they do not beg the question at issue
every one of them may be responded to, and the result
may still be an exaggeration, — an enormity. An evident
exaggeration may "preserve the idea," may " continue the
principles," i.e. go on in the same direction, as distin
guished from a totally contrary one, with the original
idea; it may make its additions preservative of, as dis
tinguished from destructive of, the idea. Of logical
sequence, we have something to say shortly. How
" power of assimilation," " early anticipation,"^ and
" chronic continuance," can prove a doctrine in a Church,
any more than a disposition in an individual, to be cor
rect, we do not see. The latter test is proved thus : —
" Dissolution is the state to which corruption tends :
corruption, therefore, cannot be of long standing." ^ " Cor
ruption is a transition state, leading to a crisis," ^ the crisis,
viz., of extinction. It follows that " that which is both a
chronic and an active state is not a corruption," and that
" duration is a test of a faithful development." * But this
proof rests entirely on the one prevailing assumption, viz.,
that there is no other kind of corruption or deterioration
but that of failure. The idea of exaggeration does not
enter. We see no reason for our part why failure may
not be a long as well as a short process. But to say that
doctrinal exaggerations may not get strong hold of large
portions of the world, and gain a chronic continuance,
would certainly be, in our opinion, as purely arbitrary an
•assumption as any reasoner could make. The tests as a
whole, in short, following the general argument of which
they are the ramifications, just refuse to touch the point
for which their testing virtue is most solicited ; and allow
1 Pages 73, 77. ^ Page 90. 3 ma. « Page 91.

Theory of Development. 41
the most common fault charged upon the system they are
to test, to slip through them.
Of one of these tests, however, we must speak, inas
much as it is one which, if truly answered to, entirely
settles the question of truth or falsehood in a development.
We mean the test of logical sequence. There can be no
doubt that what is logically derived from any acknow
ledged truth is as true as that from which it is derived.
But then the question comes. How are we to insure the
right application of this test, and how prove, in any given
case, to other minds, that such and such inferences are
logically drawn? We have heard much lately of the
necessity of accepting all the consequences of the truths
we hold, to the utmost bounds of logical exhaustion.
Perfectly acknowledging the necessity, we want to know
how the acknowledgment is to facilitate the argument,
and how certain conclusions are proved to be logical.
The region of logic is a very plain and very unanimous
one, up to a certain line. Where a thorough agreement
and understanding as to any premisses exist, all competent
men wiU draw the same conclusions from them ; and the
inference wiU command acceptance, and carry self-evident
truth with' it. All mankind infer from the facts before
them, that sunshine ripens, that rain makes things grow,
that food nourishes, that fire warms. All men who knew
what a watch was, would infer that it had a maker. We
may go into moral nature, — and so far as people under
stand, and are agreed upon their moral ground, they will
raise the same inferences upon it ; all people, e.g., who
appreciate the fact of a conscience, wUl infer from it future
reward or punishment. We may come to theology, and
so far as men have a fair agreement and understanding as
to any idea, they will draw the same inference from it.
In aU these cases the inferences wUl be the same, because

42 Theory of Development.
the premisses being the same in people's minds, the infer
ences are actuaUy contained in the premisses, and go along
with them. But what explains the commanding irresist
ibleness of the inferential process at the same time limits
its range. When the inferential process enters upon a
ground where there is not this good understanding, or
when it slides out of its own simply inferential functions
into conjectural ones and attempts discovery, it loses this
command ; and the appeal to simple logic to force un
accepted premisses, or subtle conjectures, will not answer.
On this latter sort of ground, one man's logic will differ
from another man's logic ; and one wUl draw one inference
and another another ; and one will draw more and
another less in the same direction of inference. In this
way the logical controversy proceeded on the great
doctrines of Christianity in the first centuries : different
sects developed them in their own way; and each sect
appealed triumphantly to the logical irresistibleness of its
development. The Arian, the Nestorian, the ApoUinarian,
the Eutychian, the Monothelite developments, each began
with a great truth, and each professed to demand one, and
only one, treatment for it. All successively had one
watchword, and that was. Be logical. Be logical, said
the Arian : Jesus Christ is the son of God ; a son cannot
be coeval with his father. Be logical, said the Nestorian :
Jesus Christ was man and was God ; he was therefore
two persons. Be logical, said the ApoUinarian : Jesus
Christ was not two persons; he was not, therefore, perfect
God and perfect man too. Be logical, said the Eutychian :
Jesus Christ was only one person ; he could therefore
only have one nature. Be logical, said the Monothelite :
Jesus Christ was only one person ; he could therefore only
have one will. Be logical, said the Macedonian : the
Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Father, and therefore can-

Theory of Development. 43
not be a person distinct from the Father. Be logical,
said the Sabelhan : God is one, and therefore cannot be
three. Be logical, said the Manichean : evil is not derived
from God, and therefore must be an original substance in
dependent of Him. Be logical, said the Gnostic : an in
finite Deity cannot reaUy assume a finite body. Be logical,
said the Novatian : there is only one baptism for the
remission of sins ; there is therefore no remission for sin
after baptism. Be logical, to come to later times, said the
Calvinist : God predestinates, and therefore man has not
free wUL Be logical, said the Anabaptist : the Gospel
bids us to communicate our goods, and therefore does not
sanction property in them. Be logical, says the Quaker :
the Gospel enjoins meekness, and therefore forbids war.
Be logical, says every sect and school: you admit our
premisses ; you do not admit our conclusions. You are
inconsistent. You go a certain way, and then arbitrarily
stop. You admit a truth, but do not push it to its
legitimate consequences. You are superficial ; you want
depth. Thus on every kind of question in religion has
human logic from the first imposed imperially its own
conclusions; and encountered equaUy imperial counter
ones. The truth is, that human reason is liable to error ;
and to make logic infaUible, we must have an infallible
logician. Whenever such infallibility speaks to us, if
ancient proved tradition be such, or if the contemporary
voice of the universal Church be such, we are bound to
obey ; but the mere apparent consecutiveness itself, which
carries on an idea from one stage to another, is no sort of
guarantee, except to the mind of the individual thinker
himself. The whole dogmatic creed of the Church has
been formed in direct contradiction to such apparent lines
of consecutiveness. The Nestorian saw as clearly as his
logic could teU him, that two persons must foUow from

44 Theory of Development.
two natures. The Monophysite saw as clearly as his logic
could tell him, that one nature must follow from one
person. The Arian, the Monothehte, the Manichean, saw
as clearly as their logic could tell them on their respective
questions, and argued inevitably and convincingly to
themselves. To the intellectual imagination of the great
heresiarchs of the early ages, the doctrine of our Lord's
nature took boldly some one line, and developed con
tinuously and' straightforwardly some one idea; it
demanded unity and consistency. The creed of the
Church, steering between extremes and uniting opposites,
was a timid artificial creation, a work of diplomacy. In
a sense they were right. The explanatory creed of the
Church was a diplomatic work ; it was diplomatic, because
it was faithful. With a shrewdness and nicety like that of
some ablest and most sustained course of state-craft and
cabinet policy, it went on adhering to a complex original
idea, and balancing one tendency in it by another. One
heresiarch after another would have infused boldness into
it ; they appealed to one element and another in it, which
they wanted to be developed indefinitely. The creed
kept its middle course, rigidly combining opposites ; and
a mixed and balanced erection of dogmatic language
arose. One can conceive the view which a great heretical
mind, hke that of Nestorius, e.g., would take of such a
course ; the keen, bitter, and almost lofty contempt which,
— with his logical view of our Lord inevitably deduced and
clearly drawn out in his own mind, — he would cast upon
that creed which obstinately shrank from the caU, and
seemed to prefer inconsistency, and refuse to carry out
truth. Let us examine how this logical process acts, in one or
two instances, in the department of doctrine before us.
In the case of Purgatory, for example. The doctrine

Theory of Development. 45
of Purgatory, we are told, is a corollary from the doctrine
of Eepentance.^ The one is contained in the other. Admit
the doctrine of Eepentance, in its genuine meaning, and
you cannot stop short : it carries you, by necessary
reasoning, to a Purgatory.
It is not easy, mdeed, to see at first what this logical
claim means. The principle of Eepentance is a general
Gospel principle. Taken in a satisfactional sense, it still
remains a general principle, — the principle that sin should
be atoned for by pain. Purgatory, on the other hand, is
a particular fact. A general principle cannot involve,
logically, a particular fact. Charity is a general principle
— the principle that we should love and do good to others.
The general principle of Charity cannot, without an
absurdity, be said logically to involve a given instance of
it at a given time ; as that we should give, on such a day,
such a sum to such a person. If such a fact takes place,
indeed, it is a consequence of the principle, but the fact
cannot be inferred from the principle. Purgatory is a
particular place, entered into at a particular time, viz.,
between death and the Day of Judgment, for the endurance
of pain for sin. That particular endurance of pain is no
more to be inferred from the general principle that pain
should be endured for sin, than the particular act of
charity is to be inferred from the general principle that we
should act charitably We draw from an approving and
disapproving conscience, indeed, the inference of reward
or punishment for actions. True ; but that the sentence
will be awarded on a particular day, that that day will be at
a particular time, viz., at the end of the world, and that all
the world wiU be judged together, are not contained in
the principle of conscience, but are matters of simple
revelation. We believe in a Day of Judgment, because
1 Page 417.

46 Theory of Development.
the fact is revealed to us ; and why are we to believe in a
Purgatory, but for a simUar reason ?
There is an obvious hiatus in such an argument, and
Mr. Newman fills it up in the following way. If the
pain endured for sin, he says, is necessary, not only as a
sign of contrition for, but as an absolute satisfaction for
sin, then whatever amount of it ought to be endured
cannot be diminished from. Consequently, if it is not
endured in this world, it must be endured in another.
The early Church, by their rigorous penances, inflicted it
in this world : those penances have since been softened :
it follows that the difference must be suffered in purgatory.
" How," he asks, " is the complement of that satisfaction
to be wrought out, which on just grounds of expedience
has been suspended in the Church now?^ ... If in con
sequence of death or the exercise of the Church's discre
tion, the 'plena penitentia' is not accomplished in its
ecclesiastical shape, how or when will the residue be
exacted?"^ We whl explain the particular assumption
on which the force of this reasoning depends : —
Minds properly alive to the nature of sin, will admit
the doctrine of. satisfactional pain in every practical and
ethical sense. It is a doctrine not pecuhar to Christianity,
but part of natural rehgion, and does not apply to post-
baptismal sin only, but to all sin whatever. Every one
who genuinely feels that he has committed a sin, will feel
something of an impulse to punish himself for it. A
heathen whl feel it. It is an original instinct in our
nature, though post-baptismal sin comes peculiarly under
its operation, as being the much greater sin of a faU from
special grace. The mere necessary pain contained in the
sense of guilt tends to lead us to some action similar and
cognate to itself. Even the mere additional internal self-
i Page 414. 2 p^ge 415.

Theory of Develop^ment. 47
mortification which the increase of care and vigilance to
avoid a repetition of the sin wiU cause, wiU be regarded
by the mind as in some way satisfactional, and atoning
for the past ; and that aspect of such disciphne wUl be
reposed in with a natural accompanying sense of rehef to
the mind, side by side with, but distinct from, the other
aspect of seK-amendment and improvement. The idea
has laid irrevocable hold of common language, and we
talk about a person "atoning for his conduct," "making
satisfaction," and so on, not confining the meaning of
such expressions, though we use them vaguely enough, to
effects of such atoning conduct in the way of compensa
tion to others, but including the person himseK also under
its benefit and grace. As a practical truth, then, we
beheve in satisfactional pain ; we beheve, i.e. that we
ought to be willing to undergo pain as a punishment for
sin, and that to do so is beneficial to us and pleasing to
God. But as soon as we leave the practical ground, and enter
on the metaphysical, — as soon as we have to do with the
intrinsic value of such pain itself, and its real effect, as so
much pain, upon our eternal condition, we enter upon a
subject on which we are whoUy ignorant, and on which
we have no means of forming a conclusion. Mr. Newman's
argument proceeds on the assumption that equal sinners
must suffer equal amounts of pain, in punishment for
their sin. But this is an assumption and nothing more.
We know what the sinner's disposition should be, on his
side : we do not Jsnow what God's dispensation is, on the
the other. We do not fuUy know upon what laws, or for
what reasons, He inflicts, in the course of His Providence,
various degrees and forms of suffering upon those moral
beings whom He is training for a future hfe. The im
provements in the art of medicine, and the greater security

48 Theory of Development.
of civil government, have relieved Christians of a later
age from much pain which Christians of an earlier under
went. There are all shades of difference in suffering
among Christians of the same age ; and some of the same
apparent goodness have much less bodily illness than
others. We do not know why aU these differences take
place; and therefore to proceed to calculate them, and
infer from them that complement to come in each case,
which is to give the balance, would be to argue in the
dark. The Christian penances were less rigorous at first,
became more rigorous after, became less rigorous after
that : to say that a Christian, who repented with the same
sustained care and self-denying disposition in a less severe
age of the Church, would have to go, after death, into
Purgatory, because he had not suffered so much pain as
a brother Christian in another age, is one of those forced
pieces of reasoning which show their arbitrary basis.
The great difficulties connected with the visible course of
Providence, as regards our preparation for a final state,
every one grants. The difference we see in persons' situa
tions, educations, spiritual opportunities here; the pre
mature death, which seems to cut the formation of a
character in the middle ; the existence of those vast
masses we see, of whose character we cannot pronounce
decidedly either way, suggest undefined and involuntary
conjectures to our minds with respect to the intermediate
state. But we are not concerned here with conjecture
but with logic.
Such is the main argument for the doctrine of Purgatory
itself. A defensive one, to account for the fact of its late
introduction, is skilfully turned into the same channel,
and made to tell positively for it. " Considering," says
Mr. Newman, " the length of time which separates Christ's
first and second coming, the miUions of faithful souls

Theory of DevelopTnent. 49
who are exhausting it, and the intimate concern which
every Christian has in the determination of its character,
it might have been expected that Scripture would have
spoken explicitly concerning it, whereas, in fact, its notices
are but brief and obscure. We might indeed have argued
that this silence was intentional, with a view of dis
couraging speculations upon the subject, except for the
circumstance that, as in the question of our post-baptismal
state, its teaching seems to proceed upon an hypothesis
inapplicable to the state of the Church since the time it
was delivered. As Scripture contemplates Christians,
not as backsliders, but as saints, so does it apparently
represent the Day of Judgment as immediate, and the
interval of expectation as evanescent. It leaves on our
minds the general impression that Christ was returning
on earth at once, ' the time short,' worldly engagements
superseded by ' the present distress,' persecutors urgent.
Christians sinless and expectant, without home, without
plan for the future, looking up to heaven. But outward
circumstances have changed; and with the change of
necessity a different apphcation of the revealed word
became necessary."^ The argument here accounts for the
difference of doctrine in the primitive and in a later age,
by the fact of there being a totally different state of things
before the Christian mind at these two periods ; it asserts
that. Christians being contemplated as sinless, and the
Day of Judgment as immediate in the first, and both of
these views being reversed in the second. Purgatory,
which was superfluous in the former of the two periods,
obtained a legitimate existence in the latter. Now
with respect to one of these two assertions, — without at
all denying the existence of such an expectation as Mr.
Newman mentions in the early Church, viz., that the
1 Page 100.
D

50 Theory of Developmetit.
world was coming immediately to an end — it is surely
not true to say that "Scripture leaves on the mind the
general impression " that that expectation was right. Tlie
prophecies of St. Paul, pointing forward to the " fulness
of the Gentiles," i.e. the spread of the Gospel over the
world, and the restoration of the Jews (whatever that is)
to take place when that epoch had arrived, convey a first
impression certainly of a very opposite kind. Those
prophecies of St. John, which look onward to the rise of
great events and large changes and commotions over the
political surface of the world, to the career of empires and
to their fall, and to the time " when the kingdoms of
this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of
his Christ," leave a like impression. We do not naturally
imagine St. Paul or St. John thinking that the world
was going to end immediately ; and St. Paul in one place
specially corrects that notion.
With respect to the other point, that Scripture " con
templates Christians as sinless," if it be meant by this
that it contemplates them as sinless so far as they are
Christians, it certainly does ; and so has the Church done
always. But if it be meant — and the distinction in
the matter-of-fact state of things at the two periods is
the one wanted for the argument — that Scripture con
templates Christians as sinless in fact, this it certainly does
not do, for there is no ordinary vice, bodily or mental,
which the New Testament does not allude to as more or
less prevailing in the Christian society of that day. They
are Christians of the days of the Apostles who are de
scribed as " unruly and vain talkers and deceivers,"^ acting
from the love of " filthy lucre ;'' " having their mind and
conscience defiled," professing that they know God, but
in works denying him, " being abominable and disobedient,
1 Titus i. 10.

Theory of Development. 5 1
and unto every good work reprobate." Those Christians
could hardly be contemplated as sinless about whom the
memento was given, " the Cretians are alway liars, evil
beasts, slow bellies," with the addition, " this witness is
true, therefore rebuke them sharply." The existence of
"rioters," "drunkards," "brawlers," "strikers," "self-willed"
and passionate persons in the Church of that day was
certainly distinctly contemplated in that direction which
provided that a bishop should not be chosen out of such
a class. A very far from perfect state of the Christian
temper was certainly contemplated in those Christians
who, according to their condition or sex, were to be
specially exhorted " not to purloin " from their masters,
not to be "false accusers and slanderers," not to be
" gadders about," not to be "disobedient to their husbands."
The men of the Church described in the New Testament
appear to have exhibited amongst them very obviously
and definitely the common faults of men ; intemperance in
eating and drinking, violence, covetousness, envy, pride
and boastfulness, over-respect to worldly rank and station :
the women to have exhibited among them the common
faults of women, those " of being idle, wandering about
from house to house, tattlers, busy-bodies, speaking things
which they ought not." The Christian Church of that
day, as the Christian Church of a later age, had " spots in
its feasts of charity," and displayed as coarse a mixture of
bad and good, in the very sanctuary of religious fellow
ship, as it ever did afterwards. " Filthy dreamers among
them despised dominion, defiled the flesh, turned grace
into lasciviousness, spoke evU of the things which they
knew not, and what they knew naturally as brute beasts,
in those things corrupted themselves."^ Men externally
Christians "went after the way of Cain, ran greedily
1 Jude 8.

52 Theory of Development.

after the error of Balaam, perished in the gainsaying of
Core." They were "murmurers, complainers, walking
after their own lusts, speaking great swelling words, having
men's persons in admiration because of advantage."
External Christians were "mockers," "sensual" men,
" feeding themselves without fear ;" were " clouds without
water carried about of winds ; trees whose fruit withereth,
without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots ; raging
waves of the sea foaming out their own shame, wandering
stars to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for
ever." It was in days in which all the above descriptions
had their application, that Mr. Newman says, " Christians
were contemplated as sinless ;" and that the actual state
of the Church, small and holy, did not suggest a purgatory,
whereas afterwards, "when the nations were converted
and offences abounded," it did. "Christians did not
recognise a purgatory as a part of the dispensation till
the world had flowed into the Church, and a habit of
corruption had been superinduced." We see no essential
distinction in the actual moral condition of the Christian
society at the former and in the latter period; none to
suggest to Christian minds at one age a purgatory as
necessary, while it precludes it at the other as not
wanted. And the facts of the case appear simply to
refute the view taken of them, and the argument which
is buUt upon it.
We will add that it is not the omission in Scripture
with which we are concerned, so much as a positive
counter-tone. With the Christian Church, a mixed body
around them, and containing all the moral shades and
inconsistencies, all the unformed, half-formed characters,
all the alloy and general imperfection which it did after
ward. Apostles preached the doctrine that " the dead
which die in the Lord rest from their labours." An

Theory of Development. 53
arguer may doubtless insist on being told accurately who
were " the dead which died in the Lord," and assert that
it meant some true believers, and not others ; but we Jo
not see how any fair mind can deny that the New Testa
ment, as a whole, throws a peaceful and tranquil character
over the collective state of good Christian souls departed,
and that the established doctrine of Purgatory throws a
directly contrary one ; and that, without insisting on the
universally traditionary meaning given to the " Paradise "
and " Abraham's bosom " of the Gospels, the intermediate
state to which good souls went after death has a paradisal
character in inspired and primitive, and an infernal one
in later theology.
We come to another and much more formidable instance
of the asserted " logical sequency " in development.
The whole extreme cultus of the Virgin Mary, — involv
ing aU the prerogatives, distinctions, powers, and attri
butes assigned to her in the practical Eoman system, and
in the works of those Divines who have gone the greatest
lengths on this subject, — is made the logical result of the
fact that she was, in His human nature, the mother of
our Lord. We are referred to the word Theotocos as the
voucher and proof of the whole. The relationship of
mother to God as man, so mysteriously and awfully near
to Him as man, although infinitely distant from Him as
God, has appeared to include, by logical sequence, ratify
ing itself step by step, to some minds, as they dwelt in
long speculative contemplation on that one idea, the
whole formal and distinct "place of St. Mary in the
economy of Grace," which we see assigned to her. The
idea — mother of God — was entered into, pursued, brought
out ; it seemed mathematicaUy to contain, to the religious
reasoner, such further truths about her. Far be it from
us, as members of the English Church, to deny the incom-

54 Theory of Development.
municable dignity bestowed upon the Blessed Virgin in
that mysterious relationship. We write now uuder the
painful conviction that she has been, in our popular
theology, abridged of that honour which is due to her,
though how far the known principles of reaction may
operate or not, as our excuse, we do not now inquire.
But nevertheless when such inferences as we are speaking
of are said to be logically drawn from the simple original
fact of the relationship, the question must be asked how
we can argue certainly from data so mysterious and
incomprehensible. We can express the truth indeed
that the blessed Mary was the Mother of God, as we can
express the doctrine of the Trinity, in all modes and forms
which amount but to the expression of that truth ; and
the truth itself invests her with an incommunicable
dignity. But when the reasoner goes further and says —
She was the mother of our Lord ; therefore she was born
without original sin, in the first place ; therefore she was
the "created idea in the making of the world," ^ in the
second place ; therefore she is the one channel through
which all grace flows, in the third place ; it is right to
ask. Why ? How do these second truths follow necessarily
from the first? Show, for example, that it inevitably
foUows, from her being the Theotocos, that her own con
ception was immaculate ? " Can a clean thing come
from an unclean," we are told. But it is evident that on
such an application of Scripture as this, the mother of
the Virgin must be immaculate, for the same reason that
the Virgin herself was ; and so the stream of original sin
is driven backward till no place is left where it ever
could have existed. The truth is, we are not sufficiently
acquainted with the nature of the mystery of the Incarna
tion to be drawing such conclusions from it. Show us
indeed, as we said before, an infallible logician, and we
1 Quoted from Segneri, p. 44.

Theory of Develop^ment. 55
wUl accept whatever his logic extracts. But it is absurd
to suppose that the mere consecutiveness which human
logic sees in this or that line of thought and process of
evolution, can be appealed to as proof of a doctrine.
Without dwelling, however, further on such general
lines of argument, we wUl proceed at once to the examina
tion of the particular argumentative position which Mr.
Newman has put forward on this subject. Mr. Newman
has discovered, — discovered we say, because we are not
aware that any one has maintained it before him, — a new
argumentative position for the extreme cultus of the
Virgin ; — a position, moreover, which doeg not stop at a
simple defence of the existing doctrine, but aims distinctly
at heightening it, and giving new and indefinite space
for it to expand in. Exerting the privUege of genius,
Mr. Newman does not enter the Eoman Church as a
simple pupil and foUower. He enters magisteriaUy. He
surveys her with the eye of a teacher. He tells her new
truth. He commences a doctrinal rise in her ; he takes
her by the hand, and lifts her up a whole step, in system
and idea, on her very boldest ground of development.
He will not allow her to stand still even there, and rest
contented with her advances. "Catholicity," he says
emphatically, "does not sleep; it is not stationary even
now."^ He points out, and institutes accordingly, a new
doctrinal movement within the Eoman pale, before he is
himself in it ; and he does not permit her to " be stationary
even now," but gives her a distinct move forward in
what occupies so bold and extreme a place in her system
as her view of the Virgin Mary.
It is unnecessary for us here to transcribe aU the
authorised titles of the Blessed Virgin in the Eoman
Church, or describe again what has been so often described,
the whole practical and authorised idea of the Virgin's
1 Page 446.

56 Theory of Development.
position, with the cultus attached to it, and all the rami
fications of the cultits, the nature of the litanies and
prayers addressed to her, and other expressions of the
general idea. The reader may easily recaU them, and
suppose them put down here.
Now Mr. Newman seems to himself to see that if the
Church of Eome goes so far as this in her view of the
Virgin, she ought to go farther ; and that all those prero
gatives and powers assigned to her want some one com
prehensive basis to stand ou, some one hypothesis to
systematise and consolidate them. He accordingly pro
vides one, and takes care that it is sufficiently ample.
The early controversies on the subject of the Divinit^ of
our Lord led, as an inevitable result, the opposers of that
doctrine into a very difficult position. Overwhelmed by
the force of universal testimony and tradition, which
spoke to the fact of the revelation of that doctrine, and
affirmed it to have been distinctly and uninterruptedly
handed down from the days of the Apostles, the Arians
wanted to deny the doctrine, if we may so speak, as little
as they could, — as little, that is, as was consistent with
their own logical hypothesis on the subject. They would
not acknowledge our Lord to be God ; but, that provided
against, they made His being, with an anxious and
emulous subtlety, as near that of absolute Godhead as it
was possible for the speculative faculty to conceive.
They raised Him to the very highest and farthest point
of secondary divinity ; — " they did all but confess," says
Mr. Newman, "that He was the Almighty."^ First of all'
they said He was God : He was ttXtjio?;? 0eo9, full and
perfect God ; that is to say, they tried to make secondary
Divinity more than secondary, and lift it above itself in
the instance of our Lord. They proceeded : He existed
1 Page 405.

Theory of Development. 5 7
before all worlds ; He was the actual Creator of the
universe; the God of the Evangelical Covenant; the
Mediator between God and man. He was, as such, a
legitimate object of Christian worship. This position the
Arians gave our Lord. This position Mr. Newman claims
for the Virgin Mary. " The Arian controversy," he says,
" opened a question which it did not settle. It discovered
a new sphere, if we may so speak, in the realms of light,
to which the Church had not yet assigned its inhabitant.
Arianism had admitted that our Lord was both the God
of the Evangelical Covenant and the actual Creator of the
universe ; but even this was not enough, because it did
not confess Him to be the One, Everlasting, Infinite,
Supreme Being, but to be made by Him. It was not
enough, with that heresy, to proclaim Him to be begotten
ineffably-' before all worlds; not enough to place Him
high above aU creatures as the type of all the works of
God's hands ; not enough to make Him the Lord of His
saints, the Mediator between God and man, the Object
of worship, the Image of the Father : not enough, because
it was not aU, and between aU, and anything short of all,
— there was an infinite interval. The highest of creatures
is levelled with the lowest, in comparison of the One
Creator Himself. That is, the Nicene Council recognised
the eventful principle, that while we believe and profess
anything to be a creature, such a being is really no God
to us, though honoured by us with whatever high titles,
and with whatever homage. Arius, or Asterius, did all
but confess that Christ was the Almighty; they said
much more than St. Bernard or St. Alphonso have since
said of St. Mary ; yet they left Him a creature, and were
1 In the edition of 1878, for the words " begotten ineffably,'' we
read "having an inefifable origin ;" for " Lord of His saints," " King
of all saints;" for "Mediator between God and Man," "the Inter
cessor for man with Gad." — Page 143.

58 Theory of Development.
found wanting. Thus there was ' a wonder in heaven : '
a throne was seen, far above all created powers, media
torial, intercessory; a title archetypal; a crown bright
as the morning star; a glory issuing from the Eternal
Throne ; robes pure as the heavens ; and a sceptre over
all ; and who was the predestined heir of that Majesty ?
Who was that Wisdom, and what was her name, 'the
Mother of fair love, and fear, and holy hope '¦ — ' exalted
like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and a rose plant in Jericho ;'
' created from the beginning before the world,' in God's
counsels, and 'in Jerusalem was her power V The vision
is found in the Apocalypse,—' a Woman clothed with the
sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a
crown of twelve stars.' "^ The conclusion of the argument
is that St. Mary is truly that being which the Arians
falsely maintained our Lord to be. She "supphes the
subject of that august proposition of which Arianism pro
vided the predicate :"^ — "As containing all created per
fection, she has all those attributes, which, as noticed
above, the Arians and other heretics applied to our Lord."^
Now, in the first place, what does Mr. Newman mean
here ? The attributes which he noticed above as those
which the Arians apphed to our Lord, were, that He was
"begotten before the world;" that He was " the actual
Creator of the universe;" that He was "the Mediator
between God and man ;'' and others. Does he mean to
say that the Virgin Mary was "begotten before the
worlds ; " that the Virgin Mary was " the actual Creator
of the universe ?" Without a wish to attribute to him
such ideas, we must at any rate be permitted to say, that
if he does not mean these, his language is loose, and is
not what language should be on such an awful subject.
We are told, generally, that the Virgin supplies the sub-
1 First Edition, p. 405. 2 /jj^. p 407 3 p^ge 444.

Theory of Development. 59
ject of that august proposition of which " Arianism pro
vided the predicate." We are told, particularly, that " as
containing all created perfection, she has all those attri
butes which the Arians apphed to our Lord." And the
attributes here referred to are those of " being begotten
before the worlds," being "the actual Creator of the
universe," being " the Mediator between God and man."
Nor does " as containing all created perfection " qualify,
but only explain the application of them. Interpreting
Mr. Newman grammatically here, we cannot understand
him but as asserting that the Virgin Mary was " begotten
before the worlds," was " the actual Creator of the uni
verse," was "the Mediator between God and man."^ If
Mr. Newman uses the terms " mere child of Adam," and
" mere human being," of the Virgin, in one part of his
book, we whl not charge him with the full grammatical
meaning of another. But the question stUl remains, and
is not answered — What is his meaning ? Does he confine
himself to the general animus of the Arian proposition,
which was to make our Lord simply and shortly aU but
God ? The general proposition, however, does not omit
the fact of, but only the mention of, the particulars.
Does he mean that the position of the Virgin Mary is
equal, and tantamount in dignity, to the position of the
Arian " perfect God," without being the same ? But this
would be a vague difference ; and, moreover, the whole
position of the Arian Demiurge was expressed with the
view to quantity — greatest imaginable quantity of dignity
not Divine : if it is to be adequately represented then, it
must be represented as it was expressed, and with those
attributes by which it was. To express an equal position
to it there must be the same means used to express it.
We are not, however, strictly speaking, concerned with
1 See ante, p. 57, note.

6o Theory of Development.
the process by which Mr. Newman enables himself to
hold such a view. It is enough that, as a matter of fact,
he does hold it ; that, whatever he may do with obstacles
to it, he holds, and holds directly and categoricaUy, the
view that the Virgin Mary " supplies the subject of
that august proposition of which Arianism provided the
predicate ; " that she is what the Arians affirmed the
Second Person in the Trinity to be.
To proceed then : what is the proof which Mr. New
man gives of the Arian idea being thus fulfilled in the
person of the Virgin ? The answer is, none at aU, except
the facts that Arianism existed, and that the cultus of
the Virgin does. The rest is supplied by assumption.
Let us follow him. First in order there is the fact that
the Arians, in depriving our Lord of His divinity, made
Him as divine as they could, consistent with so depriving
Him ; and that thus a certain idea was arrived at, viz.,
the Arian idea of secondary Divinity. He then proceeds :
" Thus there was a wonder in heaven ; a throne was seen
far above all created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a
title archetypal; a crown bright as the morning star; a glory
issuing from the eternal throne; robes pure as the heavens;
and a sceptre over all. And who was the predestined heir of
this great Majesty ? " He proceeds, that is, to say that
this Arian idea demanded fulfilment ; and asks. Who was
to fulfil it ? To which the answer follows, no one but
the Virgin. The Arians imagined a position. It was
necessary that that position should be impersonated. As
our Lord was not the impersonator of it, some one else
must be ; and no one comes before us so suited for it as
the Virgin Mary.
We must be allowed to pause, in some degree of
wonder, at a train of reasoning like this, exhibiting such
largeness, we must even say, wildness of assumption.

Theory of Development. 6i
It is assumed that the Arian idea must be realised, must
be fulfilled, must be verified in some personage or other.
Why ? Are aU conceptions, as such, true ones ? Are all
ideas, as such, verified by facts ? If not, why must the
Arian idea of our Lord needs be verified ? What reason
is there to be on the look-out for any personage at all
to substantiate it ? Why trouble ourselves to find a
subject for an Arian predicate ? What is there to pre
vent us from considering the whole idea of those heretics,
subject, predicate, and all, as a falsehood and a nullity,
iheir idea, and nothing more ? Certainly, there may be
such a case as an idea strongly suggesting its own fulfil
ment ; but in such a case the idea must show some
peculiar tokens of truth, genuineness, authoritativeness,
and even then the argument is a hazardous one. But to
say that because a profane heresy raises an idea, that
therefore orthodox Christians are bound to discover a
verification of it, and that if Arianism conceives a predi
cate, the Church must supply the subject — How can this
be reasonable ? Let those who conceived the one dis
cover the other if they can, and let them verify their
own conception ; but they are responsible for it, and not
others. If the Arian conception remain the Arian con
ception, and nothing more ; if an idea in this case has no
fulfilment, a predicate no subject ; if a whole speculation
issues in hoUowness, vacancy, and delusion, it is no more
than what has happened to the conceptions of a hundred
other sects, and is happening to ten thousand creations of
the human brain every day.
We must add, that ifjanything can increase the strange
ness of such an assumption, it is the absolutely matter-
of-course way in which it is made. It is not men
tioned, it does not appear ; it simply lies underneath the
argument, is simply supposed, and gone upon, as any

62 Theory of Development.
self-evident principle is in ordinary reasoning. " The
Arian controversy opened a question which it did not
settle." He means that the Arians put forth a position,
and that the Church did not decide who occupied it.
Observe the implied assumption, as if it was self-
evidently necessary that it should be occupied. " Arian
ism discovered a new sphere in the realms of light, to
which the Church had not yet assigned its inhabitant."
The same implied assumption again, as if it were self-
evidently necessary that it should have its inhabitant.
Arianism gave its " throne and sceptre over aU ; and who
was the predestined heir of that Majesty?" The same
implied assumption again, as if it were self-evidently
necessary that there should be an heir.
The historical view is drawn up in a somewhat similar
style to the argumentative. The drawer-up describes an
easy, a natural, an inevitable succession of ideas on the
subject. He exhibits the Church as going on in one con
tinuous line of thought, and forming in two grand suc
cessive stages a doctrinal creation ; first, embracing an
ideal position, and then proceeding in due course to im
personate it. " There was in the first ages no public or
ecclesiastical recognition of the place which St. Mary
holds in the economy of grace ; this was reserved for the
fifth century, as the definition of our Lord's proper
Divinity had been the work of the fourth. There was a
controversy contemporary with those I have already men
tioned, I mean the Nestorian, which brought out the com
plement of the development. ... In order to do honour
to Christ, in order to defend the true doctrine of the
Incarnation, in order to secure a right faith in the man
hood of the Eternal Son, the Council of Ephesus deter
mined the Blessed Vhgin to be the Mother of God. Thus
all the heresies of that day, though opposite to each other.

Theory of Development. 63
tended in a most wonderful way to her exaltation ; and
the School of Antioch, the fountain of primitive ration
alism, led the Church to lay down, first, the conceivable
greatness of a creature, and then the incommunicable
dignity of St. Mary."^ We have here an illustration of
what may be effected by the instrumentality of partial
aspects and points of view. The writer fixes an aspect on
the Arian controversy ; — the Church took cognisance then
of the idea of a secondary Divinity. He fixes an aspect
on the Nestorian controversy ; — the Church decided then
that a certain high title was due to the Virgin Mary ;
and these two put together are the Church's successive
steps of predicate and subject. Now what are the facts
of the case on which these aspects are fixed ? The
Church condemned the Arians for attributing to our Lord
only a secondary Divinity : the Church condemned the
Nestorians for making God and man in the Incarnation
two persons. On this latter point we will speak more at
length. It is true then that the Virgin was declared to be the
Theotocos at the CouncU of Ephesus ; but that title had
final reference in its bestowal, not to her, but to our Lord.
The CouncU of Ephesus pronounced our Lord to be One
Person. It necessarily followed hence that the Virgin
Mary, being the mother of that One Person, was the
mother of God ; but the assertion of our Lord's one
personality was the end for which the Council of Ephesus
met; and the term Theotocos was introduced sub-
ordinately, as the sign of that one personality. The
Council had not the rank of the Virgin Mary, but the
truth of the Incarnation as its object; and the word
Theotocos comes down to us with this distinctly sub
ordinated character and significance stamped upon it by
1 Page 407.

64 Theory of Development.
its early use. It may be said, indeed, that it makes no
difference whether the Church used the word primarUy or
subordinately, so long as the word was used as a fact ; and
that the rank of the Virgin is a result from the word itself,
with whatever view employed. But it is undeniable
that the original motive for the word necessarily presents
it to the mind, with a certain connection, direction, and
meaning attached to it. Between being used for one pur
pose, and being used for another, there is unquestionably
a difference ; and that difference has an inevitable bearing
upon the word itself. Mr. Newman, at any rate, seems
to acknowledge this ; for he studiously moulds his whole
historical statement so as to leave an impression on the
reader of the rank, as such, of the Virgin being the sub
ject of the Church's deliberations. Even the construction
of a sentence, aiding as it does a general bias in this direc
tion, is symptomatic. " In order to do honour to Christ,
in order to defend the true doctrine of the Incarnation, in
order to secure a right faith in the manhood of the
Eternal Son, the Council of Ephesus determined the
Blessed Virgin to be the Mother of God." The reader
will observe that the sentence leads up to the Virgin's
title as to a climax ; and at the very time that a state
ment recognises its subordinateness, a certain form and
arrangement makes it a principal. A simple transposi
tion would considerably alter the effect : — " The CouncU
of Ephesus determined the Blessed Virgin to be the
Mother of God in order to do honour to Christ, in order
to," etc. etc. We instance this to show what a very little
tells in this way. The whole statement of the case is
moulded with the same view ; in order to produce, viz., a
general impression different from what the facts of the
case themselves give, an impression of the Virgin's per
sonal rank as the primary subject of, her personal

Theory of Development. 65
elevation as the crowning work of, the Ephesian
CouncU. Such are the two proceedings of the Church on which
Mr. Newman has to buUd. And he builds thus. Out of
the Arian idea of our Lord, and its condemnation, he
chooses the idea itself apart from our Lord, and apart
from its condemnation, and so gets, an idea of secondary
Divinity simply taken cognisance of by the Church.
Out of the Nestorian controversy again he selects the
Virgin's title apart from the doctrine to which it was
subordinated. Thus, on his view, the Church first takes
cognisance of a position of secondary Divinity, and then
provides formaUy an occupant for it. But of this argu
mentative proof by a succession of aspects, it must be
remarked that that whole mode of arguing cannot be
considered conclusive which goes upon arbitrarily selected
abstractions from facts, and not from the actual facts
themselves. An arguer may abstract one aspect, but
all the others which he does not abstract stUl remain;
and it wiU continuaUy happen that one aspect of the
selfsame fact wUl wholly negative another for a given
argumentative purpose. Mr. Newman holds up the
Arian idea, in its aspect as taken cognisance of by the
Church : it certainly has that aspect ; but it was taken
cognisance of only as the idea of an heretical party ; and
that is another aspect. Mr. Newman takes the former
and omits the latter ; and the Arian hypothesis accord
ingly appears, in his view, as the sacred and awful pro
perty of the Church from the first, insisted upon, pursued,
and in time furnished with its occupant.
Such is Mr. Newman's positive use of the Arian
hypothesis, as brought to bear on the cultus of the Vhgin :
but he also uses it negatively, and as a defensive argument,
for that cultus. The Arians were denounced by the
E

66 Theory of Development.
Church as disbehevers in our Lord's divinity, notwith
standing their high and g'wast-deifying hypothesis con
cerning Him. Upon that fact the general principle is
raised, that no one who regards any being as at all short
of the One and Supreme God, can be charged with regard
ing that being as God, or be charged, therefore, with
idolatry with respect to such a being. "Between all
and anything short of all there is an infinite interval."
" The highest of creatures is levelled with the lowest in
comparison of the One Creator Himself. The Nicene
Council ^'ocognised the eventful principle, that while we
believe and profess any being to be a creature, such a
being is really no God to us, though honoured by us
with whatever high titles, and with whatever homage.
Arius, or Asterius, did all but confess that Christ was the
Almighty ; they said much more than St. Bernard or St.
Alphonso have since said of St. Mary, yet they left Him
a creature, and were found wanting." He concludes —
" The votaries of St. Mary do not exceed the true faith,
unless the blasphemers of her Son come up to it. The
Church of Eome is not idolatrous, unless Arianism is
orthodoxy."' Now, without at aU professing to be of that number who
throw a whole-length charge of idolatry upon the Eoman
Church, we see an argument here before us, and we would
deal with it as an argument. The argument, then, is
based on a particular implied definition of idolatry;
idolatry being considered to mean the regarding of a
being as the One and Supreme God who is not such, and
nothing short of such regard being considered to be
idolatry. This definition, we must next remark, the
writer" gets from his own mind, and not from the Nicene
CouncU. The Nicene Council asserts that a being who
1 Page 406.

Theory of Development. 67
is not the One Supreme God, is not Qod, — God being the
One and Supreme God. Mr. Newman turns this asser
tion into the assertion that " such a being can be really
710 Qod to us." Now, if by the latter phrase Mr. Newman
means simply, "not regarded as the One and Supreme
God by us," in that sense his assertion is coincident
with that of the Nicene CouncU; but it is not the
assertion which he wants, because it does not declare
that such a being may not be idolatrously regarded by
us. If, on the other hand, he intends his phrase posi
tively to express the meaning wanted, viz., " not regarded
idolatrously by us," in that sense it is only coincident
with the assertion of the Nicene CouncU on the supposi
tion that the two meanings, "not regarded as Supreme
God," and "not regarded idolatrously," are the same;
that is to say, on the supposition that his definition of
idolatry is true. He argues in a circle, and has to assert
the definition on his own authority to begin with, in
order to prove it to be of Nicene.
Of the definition of idolatry, then, thus assumed in Mr.
Newman's argument, we must observe that it appears to
us a whoUy inadequate and a practically futUe one. There
is a look indeed of irresistible logic about a train of reason
ing which runs : — Idolatry implies regarding as God : no
being is regarded as God who is regarded as anything
short of the One and Supreme God ; therefore the attri
bution of no kind of secondary divinity to a being, even
up to the point of making it " aU but " the One and
Supreme God, is idolatry. Such an argument may appear
at first sight to bring the matter to an immediate point,
and to the test of mathematical demonstration. But an
argument is too irresistible, if one may say So, and defeats
itself, if it refutes demonstrably a plain and obvious fact.
The plain and obvious fact, in the present instance, is

68 Theory of Development.
that there has been all along, for ages and ages in the
world, an idolatry which has not answered to this defini
tion. It is well known— and the fact is largely dwelt on
in the first volume of Cudworth — that the ancient Poly
theisms, expressly condemned as idolatrous in the Bible,
acknowledged a subordination in the sphere of deity, and
placed over aU the minor and secondary divinities, not
withstanding their temples and worship, one God supreme,
the Creator of all things.* Scripture takes the broad and
practical view here, viz., that such divinities were gods,
and that they received divine worship ; and that, however
persons might intellectually deify, in a pecuharly deifying
1 "Let it be granted, as you assert," says Arnobius, "that your
Jupiter and the Eternal Omnipotent God are one and the same. Are
not almost all your gods such as were taken out from the rank of men,
and placed among the stars ? Have you not advanced into the number
of your Divi, Bacchus or Liber for inventing the use of the wine, Ceres
of corn, .lEsculapius of herbs, Minerva of the olive, Triptolemus of
the plough, and Hercules for subduing beasts, thieves, and monsters ? "
" The one and only God," says Clemens, " is worshipped by the Greeks
paganicaUy." " It is unquestionable," says Cudworth, " that the more
intelligent of the Greekish Pagans did frequently understand by Zeus,
the supreme unmade Deity, who was the Maker of the world, and all
the inferior gods." " That there is one supreme Deity," says Lac
tantius, " both philosophers and poets, and even the vulgar worship
pers of the gods themselves, frequently confess." " The Pagans," says
St. Augustine, " had not so far degenerated as to have lost the know
ledge of one supreme God, from whom is all nature whatsoever ; and
they derived all their gods from one." " The Maker of the universe,"
says Proclus, "is celebrated both by Plato and Orpheus, and the
Oracles, as the father of gods and men, who produceth multitudes of
gods, and sends down souls for the generation of men. We have the
Orphic verses — . . '. Atoff TToKiv ivTos iTV')(6r)
AlSepos e'upelrjs rjd' ovpavov ayXaov v'^os
UdvTfs t' dddvaTOi fidKapes 6eo\ rjbe deatvai,
and the celebrated —
Zcvy jrpaTos yevero, Zeis tloraT-os,
and Homer's —
Tdo-croK iyo> TTcpi t' clp.1 Bfav, jrepl t' elp.' avOpinrav.

Theory of Development. 69
sense, some Highest Being distinct from them all, they
practically treated the latter as divine, and put themselves
in their whole feelings and ideas in a certain practical
position to them, to which the term idolatry was due.
But upon Mr. Newman's definition, how Scripture wiU
prove its charge against the Polytheist, it is not easy to
see. The latter wUl immediately present his belief in the
One and Supreme God, as the infalhble security against
the idolatrous regard of the subordinate ones, and wUl
say, " Between aU and anything short of all there is an
infinite interval; the highest of creatures is levelled
with the lowest in comparison with the One Creator
himself." Or put such a summary mode of reasoning as Mr.
Newman's into the hands of the idol-worshipper of the
Old Testament. It appears to be quite certain that if
such logic as this is to be aUowed to settle the question,
the idol-worshipper has a ground positively irresistible, to
faU back upon against the charge of the prophet. The
prophet charges him with regarding an idol which he has
himself made as God. He enters into the most vivid and
accurate detail in describing the entire and unqualified
way in which this worshipped god is a creature, known to
be a creature, actually made by the hands of the wor
shipper. The worshipper does not worship the matter as
such, — he worships the form ; that form is the actual
workmanship of the person who worships it. "The smith
with the tongs both worketh in the coals, and fashioneth
it with hammers, and worketh it with the strength of his
arms : yea, he is hungry, and his strength faileth : he
drinketh no water, and is faint. The carpenter stretcheth
out his rule ; he marketh it out with a line ; he fitteth it
with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and
maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the

70 Theory of Development.
beauty of a man, that it may remain in the house. He
heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the
oak, which he strengtheneth for himself among the trees
of the forest : he planteth an ash, and the rain doth
nourish it. Then shaU it be for a man to burn : for he
wUl take thereof, and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it,
and baketh bread ; yea, he maketh a god, and worship-
peth it ; he maketh it a graven image, and faileth down
thereto. He burneth part thereof in the fire ; with part
thereof he eateth flesh ; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied :
yea, he warmeth himself, and saith. Aha, I am warm, I
have seen the fire : and the residue thereof he maketh a
god, even his graven image ; he faileth down unto it, and
worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith. Deliver
me ; for thou art my god. They have not known nor
understood : for He hath shut their eyes, that they can
not see ; and their hearts, that they cannot understand.
And none considereth in his heart, neither is there
knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part
of it in the fire ; yea, also I have baked bread upon the
coals thereof; I have roasted flesh, and eaten it: and
shall I make the residue thereof an abomination ? shall I
fall down to the stock of a tree?"* Now the idol-
worshipper of the old world, because he was spiritually
hardened, was not therefore inteUectually stupified. We
are expressly told of such, that "professing themselves
wise, they became fools." He was, in regard to intel
lectual power, fully as profound a phUosopher, as deep a
thinker, as subtle a reasoner, as the worshipper of the
One Invisible God. Let us at any rate suppose him so,
for it is aU the same for the argument. Is it possible to
imagine that an intellectual idolater would not have had
the wit to urge in his defence that he did not worship
1 Is. xliv. 12.

Theory of Development. 7 1
the idol itself, and that the prophet misapprehended him.
Could he not confront his accuser in limine, and before
he troubled himself with a single step in the line of
apology, with the self-evident proposition that it was
simply impossible, an absurdity in terms, that he should
regard a piece of matter as God? And could he not
retort, with irresistible effect upon the prophet, those
very details of image-making which had been urged
against him ? Could he not say that that very descrip
tion only proved the more vividly that the idol was,
because it tn-mt be, looked upon by the worshipper as a
creature ? that if the latter made the image with his own
hand, he had an i'pso facto proof, which it was not in his
power as a rational being to deny, that it was a creature ?
that if he knew it to be a creature, he must think it to be
one ? and that if he thought it to be a creature, he could
not at the same time think it to be God ? What logical
contradiction could be given to such a defence? Un
doubtedly it is impossible that any human being should
think the material substance of a stone or a log to be
God. The prophet would, of course, proceeding upon
his own substantial meaning in his charge, treat such a
reply to it as an evasion and not an answer. If there be
a species of regard to, a feehng to, a whole internal
attitude of the mind toward an image which is idolatrous,
while it does not absolutely deify it, such idolatry is not
refuted by this reply. But take away this species of
idolatry from the field of existence, as Mr. Newman does,
and we do not see how the prophet can make good a
charge of idolatry in the case. He must yield to irresist
ible logic ; the thing charged is simply impossible.
Mr. Newman's reasoning makes the plain assertions of
Scripture inexplicable, and empties the whole arguments
of the whole line of prophets on the subject of idolatry

72 Theory of Development.
of validity. The Bible is made to talk what is in truth
nonsense ; and the refinement of later speculative analysis
throws over its holy scorn and confident denunciation, a
character of little more than — to use the expression — a
high fanaticism.
Such logic, then, as that before us is refuted by the
fact. And this is only another form of stating that it is
not sound logic. The principle of summum jus summa
injuria in justice has its counterpart in reasoning.
There is an extreme, a purist species of logic, which
marches through a question hke a phantom, and leaves it
just where it was. The present is an attempt to decide a
practical question by the test of an abstract truth.
Idolatry is a practical thing ; it exists, where it does
exist, in the shape of a certain actual state of feehng and
sentiment in an individual mind toward a particular
object ; and it must be tested by being compared with the
same individual's actual state of feeling toward another
object, viz., God. If the former, on comparison, exhibits
a sufficient distinction from the latter, it avoids the
idolatrous character ; if it does not, it assumes it ; but the
distinction lies between two practical states of feehng.
Mr. Newman's test, on the other hand, is a belief in the
abstract truth that one being is God and the other not.
Now the reception of the abstract distinction does not
necessarUy carry with it that amount of the practical one.
It might seem, indeed, at first sight, that the simple idea
of a Supreme Being implied in the holder of it a corre
sponding supreme aud inapproachable standard in his idea
of that Being's dignity, as compared with his idea of any
other's. Because we form the idea of an infinite Being,
we seem to have an infinite idea, and therefore to be
ipso facto secured from the possibihty of an approach to
it in our idea of any other being. But that is not true.

Theory of Development. 73
In the present case the Being is infinite, our idea of Him
is finite. We have from the imperfection of our nature a
necessarUy hmited idea of God ; the consequence is that
that idea is not incapable of being approached in the
case of forming a conception of some other being, and
that such a thing is possible as raising the dignity of
some other being too near to His to leave room for that
difference which should exist between them. " Between
aU, and anything short of aU, there is an infinite interval ;"
certainly, in the region of abstract truth, but not in the
region of human idea and conception. The human idea
of " all " is a finite one, and therefore the interval between
that " aU " and something just short of it is not infinite
in the human mind. Were we infinite beings, indeed,
and had an infinite idea of God to begin with, we could
afford to erect any finite conception of any magnitude
whatever, and run no risk of approach to the infinite one.
But such a hberty cannot be conceded to circumscribed
minds without an interference with their finite idea of
that Being. And to throw open the whole world of
human conception to them, and allow them to raise their
idea of secondary divinity as high as they please, only
with the abstract salvo that it is. short of supreme, is to be
secure in the finiteness of the idea approaching, while we
forget the finiteness of the idea approached. The image
which our hmited faculties can form of the Supreme
Being is one to w'hich daring ascents in the scale of
secondary divinity can, if pursued, make an approach,
and attain an improper vicinity. And although it may be
argued that if our idea of the Supreme Being is finite, we
have the evil, anyhow, of a less interval than there ought
to be between our idea of Him and other beings ; stiU we
may have quite a sufficiently large and awful idea of Him
to make the practical distinction we want : and an interval

74 Theory of Development.
may be wide enough, if properly preserved, though it may
not be if rudely invaded.
Moreover, this whole argument is just not the one
which, as a matter of fact, the Fathers of Nice took with
respect to the Arian hypothesis. Mr. Newman says,
"The Nicene CouncU recognised the eventful principle,
that while we believe and profess any being to be a
creature, such a being is reaUy no God to us, though
honoured by us with whatever high titles, and with what
ever homage." If this, as we said before, means only that
the Nicene Council asserted of the created God of the
Arians, that such a being could not be regarded as the
One and Supreme God by them, that is, indeed, as true
I as it is irrelevant. But if it means that the Council
' asserted that such a being could not be " God to them," —
be regarded idolatrously by them, — because they professed
Him to be a creature, then, so far from asserting such a
thing, the Nicene Council, in the person of her principal
Father and expositor, most clearly, positively, and literally
asserted the contrary. " If," says Athanasius, " the Word
is a creature, either He is not true God, or they must of
necessity say that there are two Gods^ — one Creator, and
the other creature; and must serve two Lords — one
ingenerate, and the other generate and a creature. Where
fore, when the Arians have these speculations and views,
do they not rank themselves with the Gentiles? For
they, like the Gentiles, worship t'he, creature!' St. Athan
asius here clearly asserts, that the titles and homage with
which the Arians honoured our Lord made our Lord a
God to them, notwithstanding His being pronounced by
them a creature : he clearly asserts that they paid divine
worship to this creature, believing Him to be such. He
charges them with idolatry, as the immediate and neces
sary result of their position. St. Ambrose repeats the

Theory of Development. 75
charge, and attacks their worship of a created god : " If
the Son is posterior to the Father," he says, " He is a new
god : if He is not one with the Father, He is a strange
god : why do they worship a strange god ?" It is obvious
that he could not imagine the Arian paying such divine
worship in the first instance, on the principle that the
bare acknowledgment of creatureship in the being honoured
precluded the possibility of such worship in the honourer.
St. Hilary has the same argument. " Knowest thou not,
0 heretic, who caUest Christ a creature, that cursed are
they who serve the creature ? Thou confessest Christ to
be a creature : know what this confession makes of thee :
know that cursed is the worship of a creature." St. HUary,
that is to say, recognises the fact of divine worship being
paid to a creature, confessed by the worshipper to be such.
" Why," says St. CyrU, " do they believe the Son to be a
creature, and yet worship him ?" the same fact recognised.
" God forbids us," says St. CyrU again, " to thmk any new
god to be God, or to adore a strange god ;" and he pro
ceeds to enlarge on the sin of paying divine worship to a
being confessed not to be the Supreme and Eternal God.
'¦' If thou believest in," says Faustinus, " and worshippest
and servest the only begotten Son of God, calhng Him a
creature, expect the punishment due to those who turn
the truth of God into a lie." " Very many of the ancient
Fathers," says Petavius, ''were accustomed to call the
Arians idolaters, because they adored one whom they
confessed to be a creature ; and they assert that they did
not differ from the heathen. ... So says Cyril, in his
fourth dialogue on the Trinity. He shows the dogma of
these heretics to be that the Son was not true God, and
was yet to be adored and worshipped ; from Christians, he
thus argues, they had become GentUes again, for that
they adored and served creatures, and confessed a plurahty

76 Theory of Development.
of gods, just as the Gentiles did. Inasmuch as even the
GentUes served the creature, and worshipped gods, who
are no gods, with the understanding that they gave, while
they did so, the first place to some One and Supreme
God, the Maker of the universe." *
The Fathers, then, certainly considered the Arian
position an idolatrous one. If it be said that this was a
mistake as to a fact ; that they misapprehended the
Arian worship ; that if they had asked the Arians, the
latter would have told them that they could only, from
the very nature of their hypothesis, pay a relative and not
a divine worship to their Demiurge, the plain answer, in
the first place, is, that the Fathers knew that the Arians
could say this — it is so obvious a defence — and that they
charged them with such worship, notwithstanding. And
the answer, in the second place, is, that the Arians did
say this, and that the Fathers did not listen to them.
The Arians made this very distinction ; they asserted that
they worshipped Christ, o-p(;6Ti/Kftj?, with a relative worship.
They said, what the early Socinians have said since, that
they paid a relative worship to Christ as to a created
God. " Is honour and worship," stands the question in
the Eacovian Catechism, " paid to Christ in such a way
as for there to be no distinction between Christ and God
in this respect?" And the answer is: "No: there is a
great distinction. For we adore and worship God as the
primary cause of our salvation ; Christ as the secondary :
God as Him from whom, Christ as Him through whom,
are all things." Such a defence had the Arians, and it
did not avail them. The judgment of the Fathers was
decided. Nay, we have Mr. Newman's own authority for
the fact of, and Mr. Newman's own concurrence in, the
truth of this judgment. " The Arians," he says, " were
1 Petavius, de Trinitate, lib. ii. cap. xii. sect. vi.

Theory of Develop^ment. 77
under the dUemma of holding two gods, or worshipping
the creature." "The reason," he says again, "for the
title ungodliness (a^eori;?) as applied to the Arians, seems
to have lain in the idolatrous character of the Arian
worship, on its own showing, viz., as worshipping One
whom they yet maintained to be a creature."* What?
the Arian worship idolatrous on its own showing? A
creature worshipped as God, by those who maintained
Him to be a creature ? But this is exactly the thing of
which we have just heard Mr. Newman denying the
possibUity. Let us put the two sentences side by side :
" That while we believe and profess any being to be a
creature, such a being is really no God to us," is what we
heard asserted just now as the view of the Fathers, and
of the writer : that Arian " worship is idolatrous on its
own showing, as being the worship of one, who is main
tained to be a creature," is what we next hear asserted as
also the view of the Fathers and of the writer. On the
same self-evident ground, of "its own showing," in both
cases, the same worship is pronounced to be essentially
idolatrous in the latter sentence ; essentially not idolatrous
in the former.^
The truth is — for it is time that the distinction between
the two views shoiUd be summed up — the Fathers plainly
condemned the whole Arian hypothesis, application, sub
stance and aU. Mr. Newman does not do this, and does
not aUow that the Fathers did. He views the Arian
hypothesis as consisting of two parts : the hypothesis
itself, as we may caU it, and the subject of it. To make
the subject of it our Lord was erroneous. But the
hypothesis itself involved no idolatry, and was sound.
1 St. Athanasius against Arianism, Part I. p. 3.
2 We have to acknowledge many obligations here and throughout
this article to Mr. Palmer's able and learned treatise.

78 Theory of Development.
He separates, by an ingenious process, the application of
the Arian idea from its substance, and applies the censures
of the Fathers to the former, and not to the latter. But
the Fathers censured the latter. They condemned the
application of the idea of a created divinity to our Lord ;
they also condemned that idea of created divinity. They
charged the Arians with idolatry. But idolatry could not
attach to the Arian idea in its application ; for so far as
our Lord was the object of their worship, they were not
idolatrous. It attached to it in its substance. The
position was in itself an idolatrous one. It supposed a
being, who was not to be supposed, — a being who demanded
worship on account of his greatness, and could not receive
it on account of his creatureship, — endowed with a quasi-
eternity and creatorial attributes which overwhelmed the
imagination with the look of, while they did not touch
the abstract notion of, Deity : a being, virtually a god to
human minds, and yet an idol the instant he was a god.
The conception produced idolatrous relations from within
itself, and made its disciples and believers, necessarily,
worshippers of what they ought not to worship. The
ideas of heretics are perpetually inconsistencies and
obliquities, and this was one. The hypothesis was inter
nally unsound. The Fathers, as a matter of fact, did not
view the Arian created godhead as " a wonder in heaven,
a throne mediatorial, a title archetypal, a crown bright as
the morning-star, a glory issuing from the eternal throne,
robes pure as the heavens, and a sceptre over all." They
did not look upon the conception as a noble, grand, and
insphed one. They regarded it with simple detestation
and abhorrence ; and the Arian Demiurgus, — not simply as
a misrepresentation of another, but also as being what he
was, — was a theological monster in their eyes, unlawfully,
profanely, and falsely imagined. It was a principle with

Theory of Development. 79
them to dislike proximities to Deity. They feared and
suspected, as such, ambiguities and borderings in this
department ; and a scrupulous and jealous eye was ever
on the watch to preserve, in its proper broadness, not
merely by abstract definition, but in actual image and
idea to the mind, the interval between the Creator and
all created beings. Let creatures be creatures, and let
God be God, their theology said : the halfway and mixed
being, who was a god to the imagination and not to the
reason, the nature which trembled on the very verge of
godhead, just " all but " divine, and yet not divine, were
not legitimate existences in their eyes. They dreaded
the confusion which vicinity caused ; the shading off of
the keen distinction between what was God and what
was not ; the dUution of the idea of Deity. The heathens,
with their gradual ascent of being up to the Supreijie,
and system of approximation, had dUuted the idea of
Deity : the work of the chosen people, on the other hand,
was to preserve that idea keen and pure. The Fathers
showed, on this subject, much of what a modern phUoso
phical developist wiU perhaps think a Judaic spirit, and
the rf6o<i of the law ; mental vestiges of the old dispensa
tion stUl surviving, but intended to disappear with the
progress of truth. " It pleased God," says Athanasius,
" to show in man His own Lordship, and so to draw aU
men to Himself. But to do this by a mere man beseemed
not, lest having man for our Lord, we should become
worshippers of man. Therefore the Word Himself became
flesh, and the Father caUed His name Jesus ; and so made
Him Lord and Christ, as much as to say, ' He made Him
to rule and reign.'" The idea is, evidently, that a human,
a created Eedeemer, would have been an ensnaring object
to us, on this ground, as seeming to claim worship, while
he was after all only a creature. It is the midway being.

8o Theory of Development.
the secondary god which is objected to. " Consistently,"
says the same writer again, in mentioning some of the
features of the Incarnation, " were such ascribed not to
another, but to the Lord, that the grace also may be from
Him, and that we may become not worshippers of any
other, but truly devout towards God ; because we pray to
no creature, no ordinary man, but to the natural and true
Son from God, who has become man, yet is not less Lord
and God and Saviour." The drift is clear, and pointedly
against the idea of secondary godhead. Again, " It was
right that the redemption should take place through none
other than Him who is the Lord by nature, lest we should
name another Lord, and faU into the Arian and Greek
foUy, serving the creature." Again, "If the Son was
worshipped by the angels, as excelling them in glory, each
of things subservient ought to worship what excels itself
But this is not the case, for creature does not worship
creature, but servant Lord, and creature God. Thus Peter
the Apostle hinders Cornelius, who would worship him,
saying, I myself also am a man. And an angel, when
John would worship him, in the Apocalypse, hinders him,
saying, See thou do it not : for I am thy feUow-servant :
worship God. Therefore to God alone appertains worship ;
and this the very angels know, that though they excel
other beings in glory, yet they are all creatures and not
to be worshipped, but worship the Lord." Again, " Since
He is not a creature, but the proper offspring of the sub
stance of God, therefore is He worshipped." Certainly
Athanasius's condemnation of the Arian position is no
" vindication " of a theology that would profess to verify
and impersonate it. The whole tone of mind, line of
thought, implied principles, on which the Fathers' con
demnation of the Arians proceeds, and which runs through
their arguments, is repugnant to the fundamental idea of

Theory of Development. 8 1
the Arian Demiurge. The modem theologian may say,
that it is an open question whether they were right or
wrong ; but that the Fathers had their theological line, and
that that was not one of sympathy witli secondary divinity,
is a matter of fact ; and the advocate of that idea must
go to other ages than that of Athanasius for its defence.
To return now to the main hne of argument with which
we commenced.
We gave at an early point in this article, a statement
of the question of development; that the mind has a
natural idea of development, and has a natural idea of
the tendency to exaggeration and abuse in development ;
that if, in any given case, the former supphed a rationale
on one side, the latter supplied a rationale on another;
that the history of Christianity comes before us under the
contending claims of these two rationales ; and that the
question is how to decide between the pretensions of the
two. We now observe that Mr. Newman has not hitherto
decided this question. He has given a series of tests, to
distinguish a true from a false development, which, — in the
way we explained, — enthely omit one very large, important,
and common kind of false development, viz., exaggeration,
and suppose abuse upon the same type to be impossible.
And one of these tests, which seemed to demand pecuhar
attention, from its summary and conclusive pretensions,
viz., that of logical sequence, has appeared to possess no
force whatever (in any sense which does not make it
assume the question at issue), inasmuch as persons differ
very much in their views of what is logic ; — in particular,
some arguments which appeared very conclusive to Mr.
Newman having appeared quite inconclusive to ourselves.
The appeal to "system" is only another form of this
appeal to logic, and fails for the same reasons. And such
challenges as the foUowing, which almost pervade, in one

82 Theory of Development.
or other shape, the whole essay, fall dead. To say that
"we must accept the whole, or reject the whole; that
reduction does but enfeeble, and amputation mutUate ;
that it is trifling to receive all but something, which is
as integral as any other portion ; and that on the other
hand it is a solemn thing to receive a part, for before you
know where you are, you may be carried on by a stern
logical necessity to accept the whole ;" * — to say of later
Eoman doctrines "that they include in their own unity
even those primary articles of faith, such as that of the
Incarnation, which many an impugner of the system of
doctrine, as a system, professes to accept, and which, do
what he will, he cannot inteUigibly separate, whether in
point of evidence or of internal form, from others which he
disavows "^ — to say this again and again is throughout one
appeal of the writer to the certainty of his own logic ; that
is to say, one act of begging the question. Indeed Mr.
Newman himself admits the incompetency of his argu
ments, in any practical sense, for deciding the question.
"Tests," he says, "it is true, for ascertaining the correct
ness of developments in general, have been drawn out in
a former chapter, and shall presently be used ; but they
are insufficient for the guidance of individuals in the case
of so large and complicated a problem as Christianity,
though they may aid our inquiries and support our con
clusions in particular points. They are of a scientific and
controversial, not of a practical character, and are instru
ments rather than warrants of right decisions. While,
then, on the one hand, it is probable that some means will
be granted for ascertaining the legitimate and true develop
ments of Eevelation, it appears, on the other, that these
means must of necessity be external to the developments
themselves."^ 1 Page 154. ^ Page 146. ^ Page 115.

Theory of Development. Z2)
Here, then, one division of our subject ends, and
another begins. We enter on another and a further field
of argument, and perceive that, in distinction to taking
any representation, however large, ingenious, and exuberant
of the simple notion of development, — any explanation,
however fuU, of its naturalness, probability, commonness
in ordinary life, and the career of nations and schools, as
a single step towards settling the question of the rightness
or wrongness, the justness or immoderateness of any given
development, — we are referred, as the ultimate point on
which the whole argument turns, to the asserted existence
of an infaUible guide, who is able to, and does in each ease,
decide the question by that simple gift of infallibility ;
and pronounces with certainty the fact of a development
being right or wrong. The doctrine of the Papal InfaUi-
bility comes out as the keystone of Mr. Newman's whole
argument, and according as he proves, or fails to prove,
that doctrine, that argument stands or falls.
The argumentative ground here for the opponent of
Mr. Newman has a very different general character from
the one he has hitherto had to maintain. He has hitherto
had to argue against the faultlessness of certain develop
ments themselves, and to give his rationale of them, as
opposed to Mr. Newman's. The general direction of his
argument now is, not so much against those developments
as against the necessity of imposing them. For though
the argument against the Papal Infalhbility comes on in
the present discussion as an argument against a professed
conclusive proof of the faultlessness of these developments,
stiU what it directly proceeds against is that claim itself
of infallibly sanctioning and enforcing them. The asser
tion of this claim is of course a much more invidious one
than the mere assertion of the truth of the developments
themselves. Where Eevelation has left a blank, the

84 Theory of Development.
human mind, if it dwells at all upon the unknown
contents of it, wiU naturaUy form some sort of conjecture
about them. To take the example already referred to, of
the state of departed souls : Scripture has, to a great
extent, left a veil upon it; and we are not told what
will happen after death to a great number of imperfect
Christians, who seem to go out of this life with good
dispositions, and often generous hearts in the main, but
\y\\o have lived carelessly. It is better, doubtless, to form
no conjecture about them ; at the same time we are not
positively forbidden to form conjectures within our own
minds, as to the unknown and unseen world. If any one
from a religiously amiable repugnance, on the one hand, to
supposing that such persons as the above are necessarily
reserved for eternal damnation, and from a strong idea, on
the other, that they must require some searching purifica
tion to fit them for a heavenly state, attaches some
accompaniment specially purgatorial to the intermediate
state in their case, it would be hard to condemn him for
doing so. The formal doctrine itself of Purgatory, Bishop
Andrewes would allow as an opinion of the schools. But
it is a different thing when the pious conjecture is made
a fixed doctrine, an article of faith, and people are not
allowed a neutral state of mind on a subject which
Eevelation has left veiled.
Before examining Mr. Newman's argument for the
Papal Infallibility, there is one preliminary remark we
wUl make about it, and that is the exceedingly smaU
space that it occupies in the book. Certainly quantity
is no test of strength in such a matter, and yet where a
particular hypothesis is the turning-point of the whole
argument of a book, we expect to see its estabhshment
occupy some proportion of the book, and to see some
legitimate prominence given to it. But amidst large,

Theory of Development. 85
expansive, and detailed representations of development
itself, the argument for the only position which can'
decide that development in his favour comes in, in the
book, as a kind of subordinate point. No reader would
find out, from the way in which it comes in, the absolutely
fundamental place which it holds in the discussion.
Of this argument for infallibility again, a very large
proportion is taken up in the statement and refutation
of certain arguments against it, and is of no positive force
whatever for it. After such reductions, the sohd positive
argument for the Papal InfallibUity is found to occupy
but a small space in the essay. It hangs and hovers over
the reader throughout as a thing supposed to be proved,
making good, if true, the whole of the rest of the argument
as it goes on, supporting, if solid, all that wants support
ing ; but the actual proof of it hardly catches his eye as
he turns over the pages. We are not saying that this is
difficult to be accounted for, or that Mr. Newman does
not know best his own line of argument ; and that the fact
of developments is not, in his view, itself the substantial
proof of the existence of an infallible decider upon them ;
it is, however, worth noticing such a feature as this.
Mr. Newman states then the positive argument for
infallibUity as follows : —
" Let the state of the case be carefully considered. If the
Christian doctrine, as originally taught, admits of true and
important developments, as was argued in the foregoing
Section, this is a strong antecedent argument in favour of a
provision in the Dispensation for putting a seal of authority
upon those developments. The probability of their being
known to be true varies with their truth. The two ideas
are certainly quite distinct of revealing and guaranteeing a
truth, and they are often distinct in fact. There are various
revelations all over the earth which do not carry with them
the evidence of their divinity. Such are the inward suggestions

86 Theory of Development.
and secret illuminations granted to so many individuals ; such
are the traditionary doctrines which are found among the
heathen, that 'vague and unconnected family of religious
truths, originally from God, but sojourning, without the
sanction of miracle, or a definite home, as pilgrims up and
down the world, and discernible and separable from the
corrupt legends with which they are mixed by the spiritual
mind alone.' There is nothing impossible in the notion of a
revelation occurring without evidences that it is a revelation ;
just as human sciences are a divine gift, yet are reached by
our ordinary powers, and have no claim on our faith. But
Christianity is not of this nature ; it is a revelation which
comes to us as a revelation, as a whole, objectively, and with
a profession of infallibility; and the only question to be
determined relates to the matter of the revelation. If, then,
there are certain great truths, or proprieties, or observances,
naturally and legitimately resulting from the doctrines
originally professed, it is but reasonable to include these
new results in the idea of the revelation, to consider them
parts of it, and if the revelation be not only true, but
guaranteed as true, to anticipate that they will be guaranteed
inclusively. Christianity, unlike other revelations of God's
will, except the Jewish, of which it is a continuation, is an
objective religion, or a revelation with credentials; it is
natural to view it wholly as such, and not partly sui geiieris,
partly like others. Such as it begins, such let it be considered
to continue ; if certain large developments of it are true, they
must surely be accredited as true." — Pages 117-119.
Now, the proof of the Papal Infallibility is made here
to rest on the necessity of the continuance of a revelation
if once given. The argument is that so long as nature is
our basis of knowledge, we have no reason to look for
certainty of knowledge ; but that when a revelation has
been once made, we have : that a Divine act of com
municating truth has thus taken place, different from the
ordinary one by natural means, and having once taken
place, must be expected to go on. This granted, it

Theory of Development. 87
follows, of course, that there must be some person or
tribunal always to keep this communication, this revela
tion, going : and that tribunal is then pronounced to be
the Papal one.
But it is to be observed that this argument is put
in a peculiar form in the passage before us; and this
form deserves some examination in the first instance.
" Christianity is a revelation which comes to us as a
revelation, as a whole, objectively, and with a profession
of infallibihty ; and the only question to be determined
relates to the matter of the revelation. If, then, there
are certain great truths, or proprieties, or observances,
naturaUy and legitimately resulting from the doctrines
originally professed, it is but reasonable to include these
true results in the idea of the revelation, to consider them
parts of it ; and if the revelation be not only true, but
guaranteed as true, to anticipate that they will be
guaranteed inclusively."* We will examine, then, this
form of putting the argument for a standing revelation
before we proceed to the argument itself, and attend to
the subtler dress before we go to the simpler substance.
We have then here supposed, to begin with, an original
revelation, and various unrevealed results and develop
ments from it. The arguer for a continuing revelation
has to convert this unrevealed truth into revealed ; and
he does it by an argument which runs thus : — A revela
tion must have consequences and developments of some
kind or other beyond its own original substance. Of these
developments some must be true, though others may be
false. The true ones, whatever they are, being real results
of the original revelation, are a part of that revelation ;
and being a part of it, must be revealed with the rest. —
Now if Mr. Newman means here that there exist in the
» Page 118.

88 Theory of Development.
abstract universe of truth such absolutely true ulterior
results of the original revealed truth as he describes ;
fully admitting this, we ask. Why must such results be a
part of the original revelation? Because they exist in
the universe of abstract truth, it does not foUow that
they are even known to a single human being, much less
known for certain, and revealed. Undoubtedly, if they
were revealed, they would be a part of the original revela
tion, but their abstract existence does not go one step to
making them revealed. It is almost a truism, indeed, to
say that there must be, at this moment, an infinite number
of results from the Christian revelation existing in the
universe of truth, which have not so much as entered the
mere threshold of human thought, and which never will
enter it so long as the world lasts. Again, if Mr. Newman
means that a certain number of such true results must,
in the progress of Christianity, have entered into the
human mind ; that it is unreasonable to suppose that the
whole mass of actual Christian developments is every bit
of it false, and therefore but reasonable to allow that there
have been and now are actually in the world some or other
existing really true developments, we do not see, even if
we admit this, what he has gained in the way of proof
that we have such developments revealed to us, in the
ordinary sense of the word revelation. Because such
developments are somewhere, we do not therefore know
where they are; and if we see them, we do not know
them as true. We may make a guess, and that is all.
Mr. Newman starts with uncertainty ; he has a mass of
developments from an original revelation before him, of
which, by the supposition, he does not know which are
true and which are false ones. He professes to convert
this uncertainty into certainty, by simply saying that
some are really true, and others really false. He divides

Theory of Development. 89
uncertainty to us into absolute truth and absolute error
in themselves; and to any one asking where certain
developed truths are, and what they are, simply answers,
Never mind, they are somewhere ; and if they are some
where, that proves that you must know them. But,
surely, uncertainty to us is not removed by being viewed
as certainty in the abstract ; and truth is not a bit the
more ascertained and revealed because one side or another
must be true.
It will be seen that the whole point of this argument
lies in viewing the truths, for the additional revelation
of which it contends, as resulting truths, instead of truths
simply. But this is not a relevant difference. It makes
no difference if the uncertain truths in question are, sup
posing we knew them, results and developments of some
truth which we know. If they are uncertain, the fact of
their coming from something else which is certain does
not the least repair or undo their uncertainty. All truth
is connected together, we believe, and forms one whole ;
and yet that does not prevent part of it being ascertained,
and part of it not being. "Christianity," says Mr.
Newman, "is a revelation which comes to us as a whole;"
and he specially argues, therefore, that its results and
developments being included in that whole, are revealed
to us. But if he means by the " revelation coming as a
whole," that the whole of what is revealed to us is
revealed as a whole, such a truism does not help him the
least to his inference that a variety of indefinite resulting
truths are in that whole : if he means that that revelation,
from the fact of revealing certain fundamental truths,
pledges itself to reveal these other indefinite resulting
ones, in that case we entirely deny the assumption.
And, therefore, the particular point on which so much
stress is laid, that the uncertain truths in the present

90 Theory of Development.
case are developments from an original truth, and not
independent and isolated truths, does not seem to us to
add anything to the argument. Mr. Newman lays out,
as it were, a general substratum of truth in se before us,
part of this truth being in the revealed world, and part of
it out of it. On the view, then, of all of it, whether
revealed or not, having one common existence as truth
in se, he calls upon us to infer that it has all one common
revelation. But this is to ask us simply to contradict
ourselves. We suppose all this further existence of truth
in se when we talk of any given part of truth being
revealed, and cannot undo this limitation of revealed
truth by simply resupposing that further existence of
abstract truth.
Nor is it anything to the purpose, again, to caU Chris
tianity a "guaranteed revelation,"* a "revelation" that
comes to us with a profession of " infallibihty ;" as if such
phrases amounted to anything more than saying that
Christianity was a revelation, as everybody believes it to
be. What we mean by a revelation is a guaranteed
revelation : we use the word, in contradistinction to
natural rehgion, in that sense. Mr. Newman separates,
indeed, in his use of the word, the guarantee from the
revelation, the truth in revelation from the guarantee for
that truth. Eecurring, that is, to the simply etymological
meaning, he makes the word revelation mean whatever is
disclosed — whatever has been made to enter into any
human mind — being also true : in which latter sense all
true thought in the world whatever may be called revela
tion ; and, with it, these true results from the original
revelation, in whosesoever mind entertained, may be called
revelation. But though, as a mere verbal transposition,
this makes certain indefinite unascertained results of the
1 Page 118.

Theory of Development. 91
original revelation look more hke revelation themselves,
because, if they have defoMto occurred to any minds, they
are, by this verbal process, raised to the rank of un
guaranteed revelation: — yet the reality remains exactly
the same as before. And when Mr. Newman asks
whether the guarantee for the original revelation does not
include these (in his sense) revealed results from it, he
only asks, in another form, the question, whether the
revelation, because it reveals some truth, does not reveal
a variety of other resulting truths. The original absence
of revelation in the developments it deals with, which
the argument found at starting, and which it undertook
to remove from them, never is removed : the defect
adheres to its subject-matter, through every stage that
the arguer takes it, and confronts him at the end, the
same as it was at the beginning.
Let us see : If an original revelation is guaranteed, its
resulting truths will be. Apply this formula to a common
case. A powerful medicine is discovered, and attested or
guaranteed beyond a question by actual experiment : but
some properties remain unguaranteed and conjectural,
and medical men dispute about them : there is a revela
tion certain, that is to say, with some resulting truths
uncertain, but existing in the world of truth somewhere,
could they be ascertained. Apply the formula : the
original discovery is guaranteed, therefore the ulterior
results are : therefore they are known and ascertained,
and medical men need not dispute about them. A great
chemical law is guaranteed to a certain point by actual
discovery ; ulterior and finer results from the same law
are uncertain, but there are some, could they be hit on.
Apply the formula : the law is guaranteed ; therefore the
results are : therefore you are wrong in supposing that
you do not know them, because you do.

92 Theory of Development.
The fact is, this whole mode of arguing from the mere
supposition of truth abstract beforehand, before we know
what is true, to the fact that we know the latter, is a
simple anticipation and forestalment, — an antedating of
the known before its real existence. Mr. Newman pro
fesses to perform a feat of logical magic, and to get some
thing out of something else which has nothing at all to
do with it. He converts the known into the unknown,
as a conjuror changes one thing into another before our
eyes : we know that the change does not really take
place. With the formula, "Some uncertain truths are
results of certain truth : if they are, they are certain
themselves," he gets something out of nothing, converts
uncertainty into certainty without a medium ; and trans
mutes the known into the unknown by a stroke of
legerdemain. The case is like trying to make a number
more»than it is by transposition, and to produce additional
length by a rapid shifting from the bottom to the top.
Impress the addition at the top on the eye, before it has
realised the shortening at the bottom, and the line seems
longer. Make the mind put unknown truth before itself,
as truth, and it will imagine it as known truth.
We must add — besides what we have said about this
form of argument itself — that Mr. Newman states it in a
way in which he has no right to state it, and assumes in
connection with it what he cannot possibly by the sup
position know. For he says, "If certain large develop
ments of it are true, they must surely be accredited as
true."* Now if he is referring here to the world of
abstract truth, there certainly are in that world large,
nay, infinite true developments of this original revealed
truth ; but with which, as we said, human knowledge has
nothing to do. But if he is speaking of the true actual
iPage 119.

Theory of Development. 93
developments existing in this concrete world, what does
he know of these developments by the supposition as to
whether they are large or small ? He is stating the case
of actual truth in the Christian developments in the
world, and he states it exactly to coincide with the
desiderated truth of the Eoman developments. He
assumes that there are large existing developments of the
original revelation absolutely true ; and he appeals to us
to know whether, there being these large existing develop
ments which are purely and absolutely true, it is not
reasonable just to crown their truth with the guarantee.
But this is to lay out the state of Christian truth in the
world upon a mere assumption. Of the existing true
developments of Christian truth in the world, he does not
know whether they are large ; of the existing large ones,
he does not know whether they are true. The general
state of development may be, for anything he knows,
neither wholly true nor wholly false, but a mixture of
both. And if his anticipatory picture of it describes his
•view of the Eoman developments, another anticipatory
picture may describe another.
With this preliminary notice on the form of putting
the argument, we proceed to the substance of the argu
ment itself. Divested of its particular form, that argument
stands thus :-^That because God guarantees some truth,
he must necessarUy guarantee more : that because there
is certainty to some extent, there must be certainty to a
greater : that because an original act of revelation took
place, it must be continued. To this we answer. Why ?
We see no reason for thinking so; no presumption for
the expectation. If the argument is then stated with
greater point, and revealed religion is exhibited in its
special distinction to natural, to remind us that God has
confessedly done something different in the latter from

94 Theory of Development.
what he did in the former, and that having done differently,
He must be expected to continue to do so, we answer
again, as we did at first. Why ? Why should He go on
acting differently? Why should He not cease acting
differently ? Why should He not, after acting differently,
recur to acting as He did before ? Is it impossible to look
upon the act of revelation as an exception to a general
rule, which, having taken place, the general rule operates
again ? Are there no such things as general rules with
exceptions to, or particular interruptions of them in the
ordinary government of the world? And is an act of
revelation, therefore, because it takes place, necessarily
not an exception to a general rule, but a new general rule
itself? Whence do you get that latter view of it but
from pure hypothesis ? You may say, indeed, that you
have as much right to an hypothesis of continuation as
another has to an hypothesis of cessation. But who
forms an hypothesis of cessation ? We do not. We form
no hypothesis at all ; but taking the fact of a revelation
simply, of which fact we are certain, ask you for your
ground for more than that fact, viz., for that revelation's
continuation. We stop with the fact : you go beyond
the fact, and must, therefore, give a reason why you do
so. And the only reason you can have is a simple
hypothesis of your own. You say a particular kind of
communication must be continuously repeated, because it
has been made. We say we see the fact in the case, but
do not see at all why it should be a reason for that con
clusion. Let us consider. — Eevelation is a new course of
proceeding entered on by God : if it begins, it must be
expected to continue — " The circumstance that a work
has begun makes it more probable than not that it will
proceed."* But what does this mean ? Beginning is not
1 Page 123.

Theory of Development. 95
an idea we have got from the fact, because beginning
implies continuance : we do not get the fact of a revela
tion beginning in the mere fact of it being given. If by
putting revelation before our minds as a new course of
Divine action, in this way the arguer makes revelation a
continuous thing to begin with ; he is begging the ques
tion. If he means that a Divine act of revelation took
place, the question is then simply whether that act must
be continuously repeated; and to that we say again.
Why? Let Mr. Newman put the question in his own
peculiar or any other way, the same substantial argument
has the same answer ready for it. " If a revelation be
guaranteed as true, its true results will be guaranteed
inclusively."* Why ? " Such as a revelation begins, such
let it be considered to continue." Why ? " If certain
developments of it are true, they must surely be accredited
as true."^ Why? We cannot possibly know what the
whole of God's purpose was in making at a particular
time a revelation : we cannot possibly therefore have the
ground necessary for asserting that he must " surely "
make other revelations in continuous succession after it.
On the contrary, if we are to go at all by the actual course
of Providence before us, it is most natural to suppose that
God would after such a revelation leave men, with the
additional light of truth, and aU the other advantages of
every kind which may be part of it, in their possession, to
carry it out with more or less of abuse or perversion if
they wiU. To whatever extent we have positive evidence
for His not doing so, we must believe that He does not
do so. But the facts of Providence before our eye would
lead us to expect that course rather than the other, and
tend to discourage the idea of a revelation always going
on. 1 Page 118. 2 Page 119.

96 Theory of Development.
We are approaching here that whole line of argument
called the argument of analogy. The argument of analogy
takes the course which has just now been taken, and
maintains the valuelessness of simple presumptions
respecting revelation. The argument of analogy brings
us at once upon Butler's great treatise. Mr. Newman
here comes into coUision (we have not a right as yet to
call it more than a primd facie one, but that it certainly
is) with the argument of a writer for whom he has
necessarUy a great respect, and with whom he has many
reasons for wishing to be in harmony. To guard his
Essay from the disadvantage of having so great an authority
in opposition to it, he has to explain Butler. One or two
instances, before we come to the main one with which we
are concerned, will serve to show the character of the
explanation which goes on, and the way in which particu
lar meanings are extracted. The writer presents Butler
to us as a sympathiser at bottom with the doctrine of
development advocated in the Essay; as holding and
teaching principles which necessarily lead to that
doctrine. The medium of such an interpretation is the fact of
Butler holding a principle of development ; speaking of
some truth as involved in other truth ; of natural infer
ence ; of necessary result. For example : The divinity of
the Second and Third Persons in the Trinity being
granted, Butler says the duty of worshipping them
necessarily follows. " The duty of religious regards to
both those Divine Persons immediately arises to the view
of reason out of the very nature of the relations in which
they stand to us. . . . The relations being known, the
obligations to internal worship are obligations of reason,
arising out of those relations themselves." " Here," says
Mr. Newman, " is the development of doctrine into

Theory of Development. 97
worship."* Butler is teaching development. It is true he
is. But he is only, by the very nature of the argument,
teaching a development which is necessarily contained in
the original truth. Mr. Newman cannot apply this
reasoning to the support of the " hyperdulia " paid to St.
Mary, except he first assumes the existence of certain
relations to St. Mary which oblige to such worship of her.
Grant these relations, and the cultus wUl follow, on
Butler's principles ; but Butler's principles have no kind
of tendency to establish those relations.
Again, Butler in a remarkable passage speaks of the
meaning of Scripture being brought out more and more
in the course of ages by study and reflection on the part
of thoughtful minds. He says, " Practical Christianity,
or that faith and behaviour which renders a man a
Christian, is a plain and obvious thing ; like the common
rules of conduct, with respect to our ordinary temporal
affairs. The more distinct and particular knowledge of
those things, the study of which the a,postle calls going on
unto perfection, and of the prophetic parts of revelation,
like many parts of natural and even civU knowledge, may
require very exact thought and careful consideration.
The hindrances, too, of natural and of supernatural light
and knowledge, have been of the same kind. And as it
is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet under
stood, so, if it ever comes to be understood before the
restitution of all things, and without miraculous interposi
tions, it must be in the same way as natural knowledge is
come at, — by the continuance and progress of learning
and of liberty, and by particular persons attending to,
comparing, and pursuing intimations scattered up and
down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the
generality of the world. For this is the way in which all
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G

98 Theory of Development.
improvements are made, by thoughtful men tracing out
obscure hints, as it were, dropped us by nature accidentaUy,
or which seem to come into our minds by chance. Nor
is it at all incredible that a book, which has been so
long in the possession of mankind, should contain many
truths as yet undiscovered. For all the same phenomena,
and the same faculties of investigation, from which such
great discoveries in natural knowledge have been made in
the present and last age, were equally in possession of man
kind several thousand years before. And possibly it might
be intended that events, as they come to pass, should open
and ascertain the meaning of several parts of Scripture."
Of this passage Mr. Newman says, " Butler, as a weU-
known passage of his work shows, is far from denying
the principle of progressive development."* " Butler is
bearing witness to the probability of developments in
Christian doctrine.'' If by " doctrine " he means anything
that is taught, truth of any kind connected with Christi
anity, in that sense Butler is certainly "witnessing to
the probabUity of development in Christian doctrine."
But if " doctrine " is at all intended to mean necessary
doctrine, or the faith, in that sense the passage does not
throughout give the least sanction to a development of
doctrine. Mr. Newman allows this, but he seems to
aUow it only as the absence of a conclusion, a stopping
short in a line of reasoning which intrinsicaUy proceeded
further. " Butler of course was not contemplating the
case of new articles of faith, or developments imperative
on our acceptance."^ It ought rather to be said that it is
quite obvious from the whole passage that he was con
templating something totaUy different from it. Indeed
the very first sentence in it happens to show the fact not
only that he " did not contemplate," but that he expressly
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Theory of Development. 99
disavowed any reference to the Christian creed, for he
there carefuUy prefixes the mention of " that faith and
behaviour which makes a man a Christian" as being
specially that which he is not going to talk about, and
to which the passage he is about to write wUl not refer.
To return to the subject. The argument of Butler with
respect to presumptions concerning revelation, and our
incompetency to form them, is as foUows : —
" As God governs the world, and instructs His creatures,
according to certain laws or rules, in the known course of
nature known by reason together with experience, so the
Scripture informs us of a scheme of Divine providence
additional to this. It relates that God has, by revelation,
instructed men in things concerning His government, which
they could not otherwise have known, and reminded
them of things which they might otherwise know; and
attested the truth of the whole by miracles. Now, if the
natural and the revealed dispensation of things are both
from God, if they coincide with each other, and together
make up one scheme of Providence, our being incompetent
judges of one must render it credible that we may be incom
petent judges also of the other. Since, upon experience, the
acknowledged constitution and course of nature is found to be
greatly difi"erent from what, before experience, would have
been expected, and such as, men fancy, there lie great
objections against, this renders it beforehand highly credible,
that they may find the revealed dispensation likewise, if they
judge of it as they do of the constitution of nature, very
difierent from expectations formed beforehand, and liable, in
appearance, to great objections, — objections against the scheme
itself, and against the degrees and manners of the miraculous
interpositions, by which it was attested and carried on.
Thus, suppose a prince to govern his dominions in the wisest
manner possible, by common known laws ; and that upon
some exigencies he should suspend these laws, and govern, in
several instances, in a different manner ; if one of his subjects
were not a competent judge beforehand, by what common

lOO Theory of Development.
rules the government should or would be carried on ; it could
not be expected that the same person would be a competent
judge, in what exigencies, or in what manner, or to what
degree, those laws commonly observed would be suspended or
deviated from. If he were not a judge of the wisdom of the
ordinary administration, there is no reason to think he would
be a judge of the wisdom of the extraordinary. If he thought
he had objections against the former, doubtless, it is highly
supposable, he might think also that he had objections
against the latter. And thus, as we fall into infinite follies
and mistakes whenever we pretend, otherwise than from
experience and analogy, to judge of the constitution and
course of nature, it is evidently supposable beforehand that
we should fall into as great, in pretending to judge, in like
manner, concerning revelation. Nor is there any more ground
to expect that this latter should appear to us clear of objec
tions than that the former should.
" These observations, relating to the whole of Christianity,
are applicable to inspiration in particular. As we are in no
sort judges beforehand, by what laws or rules, in what degree,
or by what means, it were to have been expected that God
would naturally instruct us; so, upon supposition of His
affording us light and instruction by revelation, additional to
what He has afforded us by reason and experience, we
are in no sort judges, by what methods, and in what propor
tion, it were to be expected that this supernatural light and
instruction would be afforded us. We know not beforehand
what degree or kind of natural information it were to be
expected God would afford men, each by his own reason
and experience ; nor how far He would enable, and effectually
dispose them to communicate it, whatever it should be, to
each other ; nor whether the evidence of it would be certain,
highly probable, or doubtful ; nor whether it would be given
with equal clearness and conviction to all. Nor could we
guess, upon any good ground, I mean, whether natural
knowledge, or even the faculty itself by which we are capable
of attaining it, reason, would be given us at once, or gradually.
In like manner, we are wholly ignorant what degree of new
knowledge, it were to be expected, God would give mankind

Theory of Development. loi
by revelation, upon supposition of his affording one ; or how
far, or in what way, He would interpose miraculously, to
qualify them, to whom He should originally make the revela
tion, for communicating the knowledge given by it ; and to
secure their doing it to the age in which they should live ;
and to secure its being transmitted to posterity. We are
equally ignorant whether the evidence of it would be certain,
or highly probable, or doubtful ; or whether all who should
have any degree of instruction from it, and any degree of
evidence of its truth, would have the same ; or whether the
scheme would be revealed at once, or unfolded gradually.
Nay, we are not in any sort able to judge whether it were to
have been expected that the revelation should have been com
mitted to writing, or left to be handed down, and conse
quently corrupted by verbal tradition, and at length sunk under
it, if mankind so pleased, and during such time as they are
permitted, in the degree they evidently are, to act as they
wilL " But it may be said, ' that a revelation in some of the
above-mentioned circumstances, one, for instance, which was
not committed to writing, and thus secured against danger of
corruption, would not have answered its purpose.' I ask,
what purpose % It would not have answered all the purposes
which it has now answered, and in the same degree ; but it
would have answered others, or the same in different degrees.
And which of these were the purposes of God, and best fell
in with His general government, we could not at all have
determined beforehand."*
Now such a passage as this, supported as it is by, and
forming part of, one whole line of reasoning which runs
through the " Analogy," appears to decide beyond a doubt
what Butler's view was. He asserts generaUy in the
first place, that, the existence of a revelation supposed, we
are in no way whatever judges a priori as to the whole
plan on which it is conducted ; mat we are quite ignorant,
and that our presumptions on the whole subject are
1 Analogy, Part II. Chap. iii.

I02 Theory of Development.
valueless. Then, in particular, among the items men
tioned, about which we are totaUy ignorant, and about
which our presumptions are valueless, is that of " degree."
He says plainly we "are not competent judges of the
degree to which God's ordinary laws should be suspended,"
supposing a suspension of them : that we " are in no sort
judges in what proportion supernatural light should be
afforded us," supposing it afforded us ; " what supernatural
instruction were to have been expected " supposing any
given. Now supposing a revelation made, the question of
its going on or stopping at a certain point is one as to its
degree : Butler therefore plainly asserts that we are no
judges whether a revelation, supposed to be made, will go
on indefinitely, or stop at a certain point ; will be given
once for all, or be a standing revelation.
To this Mr. Newman says: "This reasoning does not
here apply : it contemplates only the abstract hypothesis
of a revelation, not the fact of an existing revelation of a
particular kind, which may of course in various ways
modify our state of knowledge by settling some of those
very points on which, before it was given, we had no
means of deciding." * Again : " He (Butler) is speaking of
our judging before a revelation is given. He observes that
'we have no principles of reason upon which to judge
beforehand how it were to be expected revelation should
have been left, or what was most suitable to the Divine
plan of government,' in various respects ; but the case is
altogether altered when a revelation is vouchsafed, for
then a new precedent, or what he calls 'principle of
reason,' is there introduced, and from what is actually
put into our hand we can form a judgment whether
more is to be expected."^ The conclusion is that there
is an essential distinction between the presumption Mr.
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Theory of Development. 103
Newman contends for and that which Butler's reasoning
invahdates. But is such a distinction shown ?
First of all we have the distinction between "the
hypothesis of a revelation and the fact of an existing
revelation," — between judging beforehand and judging
after; that if a revelation actually exists, we can argue that
it will go on, whereas, in Butler's reasoning, it was only
hypbthetical, and therefore he could not so argue. This
is absolutely a distinction without a difference. True it
is that Butler is supposing a revelation with his opponent ;
and true it is that Mr. Newman can take for granted a
revelation with us. But what is the difference between a
fact and a supposed fact, as to the argumentative erection
upon it ? In supposing a fact, you make it a fact as far
as reasoning is concerned ; a real fact is, as far as reason
ing is concerned, no more. Its hypothetical, as distin
guished from its actual existence, makes all the difference
to it as a fact, but can make none whatever to it as
a premiss. In the present case, agreeing with Mr.
Newman in the fact of a revelation, we are solely con
cerned with that fact as the premiss of a conclusion which
he fastens upon it. Bishop Butler says, on the supposi
tion of a revelation we are no judges beforehand to what
extent it ought to go on. In supposing a revelation
Butler supposed the fact of it ; he supposed it being made.
He might have presumed with Mr. Newman from that
supposed existence, that once existing it would go on in
perpetuum revealing ; but he does not presume so. He
had the self- same argumentative ground in an hypothetical
fact which Mr. Newman has in an actual one, and he
argues differently from it. Mr. Newman's fact is the idea
of the fact, the same as Butler's was : if a revelation takes
place it must go on : a revelation does take place, and
therefore goes on : it is the same thing : Butler, in deny-

I04 Theory of Development.
ing the former, denies the latter. Indeed, for a person to
, form a certain inference (or absence of one) from a sup
posed fact, and then to form a totaUy different one from
the same fact afterwards because it is a real one, — to say,
I judged thus beforehand before it did take place, but I
judge differently afterwards because it does take place, — is
simply self-contradictory. If we abstain from presuming
beforehand the continuation of a revelation from its
original bestowal, we must abstain from presuming it after.
" Before '' and " after " are nothing in the case ; we do not
argue from the fact as before, or from the fact as after,
but from the nature of the fact itself. Mr. Newman
thinks that from the fact of a revelation taking place,
we must presume that it will continue ; Butler had that
very fact before him, and he forbade such a presumption.
We mean to say that Butler only differed from Mr.
Newman in the persons he was arguing with, not at all in
what he was arguing from. He had the actual fact of a
revelation before him, as far as he himself was concerned,
just as Mr. Newman has ; and of that actual revelation he
argued that it need not, because it was a revelation, be
such and such a kind of one, which persons presume it
ought to be. Mr. Newman, on the other hand, argues
that because it is a revelation it ought to be a certain kind
of one, viz., a standing and continuing one.
Mr. Newman next urges that Butler contemplated
indeed a revelation, but did not contemplate a revelation
" of a particular kind : " of the kind, viz., which Mr.
Newman is contemplating. And to this it is enough to
answer, that it is not necessary that Butler should par
ticularise all the kinds of revelation in the case of which
he does not allow presumption, for that would be endless ;
it is sufficient if he lays down a general head of what he
considers groundless presumptions, and if Mr. Newman's

Theory of Development. 105
comes under it. His argument asserts generally that we
are not judges of what a revelation should be ; and there
fore any particular judgment formed on this subject
comes, by the nature of the case, within his argument's
operation. However, he does happen to go very near to
mentioning the very particular which Mr. Newman's pre
sumption concerns. Mr. Newman's argument on this
latter head proceeds thus: — "The developments of Christi
anity are proved to have been in the contemplation of its
Divine Author, by an argument parallel to that by which
we infer inteUigence in the system of the physical world.
In whatever sense the need and its supply are a proof of
design in the visible creation, in the same do the gaps, if
the word may be used, which occur in the structure of the
original creed of the Church, make it probable that those
developments which grow out of the truths which lie
around them, were intended to complete it."* Hence
he concludes, that when we have a revelation before us
" of a particular kind," then, "from what is actually put
into our hands, we can form a judgment whether more is
to be expected." Now the " particular kind " of revela
tion, described above, is a revelation which reveals some
truths, and does not reveal others; which guarantees
some ground, and does not guarantee more. The creed is
what is revealed ; the gaps are what are not revealed. So
far as the word " gap " means anything more than this, so
far, e.g., as it is intended to insinuate in the word that the
original revelation is inconsistent without the additions to
it, so far its meaning, as begging the whole question at
issue, is irrelevant and is to be excluded. The fact before
us is a revelation, which tells us some things, which does
not tell us others. However much we may desire to know
those other things, however much we may be led by that
1 Page 101.

io6 Theory of Development.
part of truth which is revealed to us to desire to know
them, however well, supposing them to be known, they
would join on to and complete an original revelation,
such a revelation comes, with all those accompaniments,
under the head of a revelation which tells us some truth
and does not tell us more. Now this kind of revelation
Butler distinctly contemplates. He contemplates many
kinds of revelations. He contemplates a revelation with
" certain evidence," one with " highly probable " evidence,
one with "doubtful evidence;" a "revelation revealed at
once," a revelation "unfolded gradually," a revelation
" committed to writing," a revelation " handed down by
verbal tradition " only. He contemplates other kinds of
revelations. Among these various kinds of revelation
thus contemplated, he contemplates a revelation which
revealed to a certain " degree " and not further ; a " super
natural light afforded " in a certain " proportion," and not
a larger one. He contemplates, that is, a revelation in
complete in its communication of truth. And of such a
revelation he distinctly asserts that there is no presump
tion whatever against it. That is to say, in other words,
there is no presumption from the fact of its incompleteness
that it wUl go on to fill that incompleteness up. Let us
take one of Mr. Newman's instances of the argument. The
original revelation does not teU us what the divine dis
pensation is with respect to a large mass of imperfect
human souls on their departure from this life : this is a
gap ; purgatory fills up this gap ; therefore purgatory is a
revealed doctrine. Can Mr. Newman seriously think that
Butler would have admitted such a mode of arguing (we
mean the mode simply without reference to the subject of
it) as this ? Suppose a sceptic coming to him, and saying
that he could not believe in the Christian revelation
because it had so many gaps in it. Would he have set to

Theory of Development. 107
work to prove one by one that these different gaps were
in reahty filled up ? or would he have told him that it
did not become a person of his imperfect knowledge to be
bringing gaps at all as any objection ; that he could not
know what God's whole purpose was in a revelation, and
therefore could not know that such gaps were inconsistent
with His purpose ? And if the sceptic replied that these
gaps were of more than intellectual importance, inasmuch
as if they were filled up some practical duties would ensue,
which do not exist now, or would at any rate have a clear
positive ground, instead of an hypothetical one, would the
line and tone of the "Analogy " compel us to yield to such
a reply, or would it suggest that there was no presumption
that God would reveal to us all truths, from which practi
cal duties would follow supposing he did ? " It is highly
credible beforehand," is its great general answer, "that
revelation should contain many things appearing to us
liable to great objection.* The analogy of nature shows
beforehand not only that we may, but also probably that
we wUl, imagine that we have strong objections against it."
" The whole constitution and course of nature shows that
God does not dispense his gifts according to our notions
of the advantage and consequence they would be to us."
" It may be said that a revelation (wanting in certain
things) cannot answer its purpose. I ask what purpose ?
It wiU not answer all the purposes which it would
answer with them, and in the same degree ; but it will
answer others, or the same in different degrees."
It wUl be seen that this is an argument from our
ignorance. Butler is arguing ultimately, not from analogy,
but from something prior to analogy. Prior to aU proof
from analogy, such an imperfect creature as man must
confess the great probabUity of his ignorance with respect
' ArwXogy, Part II. Chap. iii.

io8 Theory of Developmient.
to the whole designs of God, in His several dispensations,
and therefore must confess the valuelessness of his pre
sumptions as to them. Analogy indeed comes in and
proves this ignorance demonstrably; because it shows
that whereas we had formed various presumptions re
specting what a Divine dispensation would be, these
presumptions are as a matter of fact falsified by the dis
pensation of nature before our eyes. We had imagined
that God would certainly act in such and such a way,
some best imaginable way of our own conception ; but we
find that as a fact He does not. Well then, argues analogy,
here is proof positive of your ignorance. It is indeed
absurd that you should want any external proof of it ; but
here is the proof, as you want one. You have made your
guess, and your guess turns out wrong. Now then, at any
rate confess your ignorance, and be wise. — This is what
is called the negative side of the argument of analogy,
that side on which it is conclusive. It is not conclusive
on its positive side ; far from it : it only gives us pro
babilities on that side, because on that side it only argues
that because such and such a course of things has gone
on, it wUl continue to go on the same. On its positive
side it only conjectures future facts ; on its negative, it
points to present : it is a presumptive argument on its
positive side ; it argues from actual fact against presump
tion on its negative. It is arguing on the latter side now.
Butler argues from analogy, but from analogy as proving
by matter of fact what was sufficiently evident before in
itself — human ignorance. " We may see beforehand," he
says, " that we have not faculties for this kind of specu
lation." And analogy comes in as confirmative. " So,
prior to experience, they would think they had objections
against the ordinary course of nature." " Since, upon
experience, the acknowledged constitution and course of

Theory of Development. 109
nature is found to be greatly different from what, before
experience, would have been expected, this renders it
beforehand highly credible that they will find the re
vealed dispensation likewise very different from expecta
tions formed beforehand." And thence the conclusion
foUows. Men must not " pretend to judge from precon
ceived expectations." " It is self-evident that the objec
tions of an incompetent judgment must be frivolous."
" Since it has been shown that we have no principles of
reason upon which to judge beforehand, how it were to be
expected revelation should have been left, or what was
most suitable to the divine plan of government, it must
be quite frivolous to object afterwards to any of them,
against its being left in one way rather than another ; for
this would be to object against things upon account of
their being different from expectations which have been
shown to be without reason." This negative use of
analogy is the use to which Butler's work as a whole
applies it. " The design of this Treatise is to show that
the several parts principally objected against in this
moral and Christian dispensation . . . are analogous to
what is experienced in the constitution and course of
Nature or Providence; and that the chief objections
which are alleged against the former are no other than
what may be alleged, with hke justness, against the latter,
where they are found in fact to be inconclusive ;" which
"argument from analogy is in general unanswerable."*
We write the above with reference to what foUows.
Mr. Newman, after explaining Butler's reasoning in his
own favour, in order to be utrimque paratus, proceeds to
give reasons for doubting the validity of it ; and after
proving that the argument from analogy is not against
him, opposes the argument from analogy. " Nor can it,
1 Analogy, Introduction.

1 1 o Theory of Development.
as I think, be fairly denied that the argument from Analogy
in one point of view teUs against anticipating a revelation
at all ; for an innovation upon the physical order of the
world is, by the very force of the terms, inconsistent with
its ordinary course. We cannot then regulate our ante
cedent view of the character of a revelation by a test,
which, applied simply, overthrows the very notion of a
revelation altogether. Anyhow, Analogy is in some sort
violated by the fact of a revelation, and the question
before us only relates to; the extent of that violation."*
Now here it wiU be observed that Mr. Newman has
glided out of one ground into another. He has got upon
the ground of positive analogy, and is arguing against its
conclusiveness ; whereas this has not been Butler's argu
ment. He has not been telling us what antecedent views
to form of revelation, but dissuading us from giving
weight to any ; not been arguing that revelation is like to
present fact, but proving by present fact that we are
ignorant beforehand what revelation should be.
The argument positive indeed of analogy is of undoubted
force in its own way, and Butler brings it in. We do
unquestionably argue from hke to hke, " from that part
of the Divine government over inteUigent creatures
which comes under our view, to that government of
them which is beyond it; and from what is present
coUect what is likely, credible or not incredible, wiU
be hereafter." And this argument undoubtedly tells, in
a way which we need not describe here, but which is
famihar to aU readers of Butler, much more against the
presumption for a standing revelation than for one. The
obvious irregularities, breaks, and hmitations in the case
of natural knowledge, suggest the same in the case of the
revealed. But no one ever supposed that such analogical
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Theory of Development. 1 1 1
presumptions were conclusive-. " There is a very strong
presumption," says Butler, " against common speculative
truths, and against the most common facts before the
proof of them, which yet is overcome by almost any
proof;'' and "presumptions from analogy," he adds, "are
overcome by the same proof" The probability of things
being like what we see, only holds good of them " in those
respects in which we have no reason to believe they wiU
be different " — " real probabihties which rise even to moral
certainty are overcome by the most ordinary testimony."
Analogy teUs us, for example, with all the certainty with'
which analogy can, that the sun wiU rise to-morrow ; but
we know that a day will come when it wiU tell this
falsely, — a day when the heaven and the earth shall be
dissolved. Such intrinsic defectiveness, however, in the
positive argument from analogy does not prevent Butler
from giving the argument weight. In particular, he
allows for " a peculiar presumption from analogy " against
a revelation in the first instance; and yet continues
taking analogy for his _guide in his presumptions for that
revelation. Mr. Newman appears to see a contradiction
here, and says, " We cannot regulate our antecedent view
of the character of a revelation by a test which, applied
simply, overthrows the very notion of a revelation alto
gether." But there is no contradiction. Analogy did
not " overthrow the very notion of a revelation;" it could
only presume against it. It never pretended to be con
clusive, and therefore is not invalidated by being shown
not to be. A demonstrative proof is refuted by one con
trary case ; a ground of probability is not ; and exceptions
do not undo an argument which, of its own nature, admits :
of exceptions. After this particular case of violation, just
as after any other, the positive argument of analogy goes
on and holds good ; we continue and cannot help ourselves

112

Theory of Development.

judging of the unknown from the known ; and we apply
it to the very revelation against which it has presumed,
just as to other things. We regulate, in spite of this or
other mistakes which positive analogy may make, our
d priori views of revelation by positive analogy, though
only presumptively, of course not conclusively, and sub
ject to chance of reversal when we come to the fact.
Indeed, what Mr. Newman comes to after all, is only that
that expectation is weakened in degree, and that the
violation of it is made less of an objection by the con
sideration he puts forward. He considers still that we
have that expectation, and that the violation of it is an
objection. But he here meets us with a distinction, which seems
to him, while he aUows the general force of positive
analogy, to exempt the particular case of a continual
revelation from its jurisdiction. " I will hazard," he says,
" a distinction here between the facts of revelation and its
principles ; — the argument from analogy is more concerned
with its principles than its facts. The revealed facts are
special and singular from the nature of the case : but
it is otherwise with the revealed principles. They are
common to all the works of God ; and if the Author of
Nature be the Author of Grace, it may be expected that,
while the systems of fact are distinct and independent,
the principles displayed in them will be the same, and
form a connecting link between them. In this identity
of principle lies the true Analogy of Natural and Eevealed
Eeligion in Butler's sense of the word. The doctrine of the
Incarnation is a fact, and cannot be paralleled by anything
in nature : tbe doctrine of Mediation is a principle, and is
abundantly exemplified in its provisions. Miracles are
facts ; inspiration is a fact ; divine teaching once for all,
and a continual teaching, are each a fact ; probation by

Theory of Development. 113
means of intellectual difficulties is a principle."* Now
with regard to this distinction between "facts" and
" principles," considered in itself, we do and can give no
opinion, because the value and legitimacy of all such dis
tinctions depend entirely on the way in which they are
used. If such distinctions are used, so as faithfuUy to
represent the substantial state of the case, they are con
venient ; but they must be used with an entire subser
vience to the substantial state of the case, and not bend
the latter to themselves. If a continual revelation is a
" fact," it is not a fact hke the " Incarnation," in which it
is impossible by the nature of the case to look for an
analogy. If it is a " fact," it is one in a sense in which
probation of the inteUect may be caUed one too : it is a
general line of proceeding on God's part toward mankind.
The substantial truth in the present case is that we expect
an analogy everywhere, except where, by the nature of
the case, we are prevented. The nature of the case does
prevent us from expecting an analogy or hkeness in
certain instances, but it does not prevent us from expect
ing one in the present; and therefore we expect it, and
we argue from a certain hne of proceeding in nature to a
like line in revelation.
Thus much with respect to the positive argument of
analogy, and its weight in the present question. But this
argument is not — and we have introduced it principally
for the sake of showing that it is not — -the argument
which Butler uses for showing the valuelessness of d
priori reasonings with respect to revelation. The argu
ment by which he proves that, is an appeal to the simple
fact of human ignorance, from which the incapacity for so
reasoning necessarily follows. He strengthens this fact,
indeed, by a reference to analogy, by showing that the
1 Page 123.
H

114 Theoiy of Development.
very things we object to exist in God's natural dispensa
tion, and that therefore the fact proves that we are wrong.
But it is analogy as proving ignorance, and not analogy
simple and positive, which is the basis of his argument.
It foUows that to endeavour by various objections and
distinctions to weaken the force of the positive argument
of analogy is, in the present question, to fight the air, for
we do not invalidate one ground by detracting from
another. Whatever arguments may be adduced to relax
the force of simple verisimilitude, and the inference from
the known to the unknown, do not in the remotest way
touch the ground on which we have been going in this
question. They do not touch that truth of human ignor
ance which no verisimihtude but actual consciousness
witnesses, nor that evidence of human ignorance which
no probabilities but actual facts afford us. And on the
ground of that ignorance, and that incompetency for a
priori judgment, we cannot aUow any weight to Mr.
Newman's presumption that a revelation is to be continued
because it has been made.
And now we will make one remark on the whole mode
of treating the argument of analogy which has come before
us here, — on the general relations which Mr. Newman, as
a reasoner, seems to have entered into to that argument.
There is an established argument then, to which all this
discussion has had reference, caUed the Argument of
Analogy. We have had to view this argument on different
sides, but, taken comprehensively, it is an argument which
intervenes between the a priori reasoner and revelation.
It establishes a certain medium through which h priori
reasoning has to pass, and checks and regulates our
presumptions with respect to revelation by an appeal to
the course of nature. That there are difficulties connected
with the theory of this argument may be true, and Butler

Theory of Development. 115
invited the attention of philosophers to them when he
wrote his treatise ; though the invitation, we believe, has
never been attended to, and the theory of the argument
has remained comparatively uninvestigated to this day.
But this is a consideration which does not, of course,
affect the practical weight of it, and the Argument of
Analogy, involving the medium which we have men
tioned, appeals to us like other substantial and practical
truth. Now here, on the other hand, is an argument which
makes us reason h priori without this medium, — makes
us reason from the idea of a revelation to a conclusion
with respect to that revelation, straight and directly.
It says the existence of a revelation at aU is an indepen
dent ground of reasoning, from which by itself we draw
a sure inference with respect to that revelation, viz., that
it wUl continue and be a standing one. And when the
argument from analogy steps in with the veto from nature,
i.e. the experience which nature gives us of our ignorance,
and teUs the arguer that he cannot so presume, the arguer
replies that a revelation being given is a new ground,
which lifts him above this analogy of nature, and is of
itself a direct inteUectual basis for this conclusion. He
tells us that revelation as such supersedes the appeal to
nature, and from the fact that it is revelation certifies to a
standing revelation. That is to say, here is a view which
does not allow the argument of analogy to perform its
necessary functions or work at aU, for whereas that argu
ment by its own nature intervenes between us and our
presumptions with respect to revelation, this view cuts
off that intervention.
The argument of analogy, in short, ends where revela
tion begins, in other words, there is no such thing as the
argument from analogy. The very nature of analogy

1 1 6 Theory of Development.
supposes two sides of it, which it argumentatively connects.
The whole argument in Butler goes on the principle that
although revelation is a new and distinct line of proceed
ing on God's part from nature — it one thing, nature
another — yet that we may and must reason from one to
the other, must ever form our presumptions about the
former under the veto and through the medium of the
latter. But this essential argumentative connection is
dissolved if, as soon as revelation comes, analogy goes, and
revelation itself supplies the presumptions about revela
tion. Nor will it alter the case to call revelation a new
order of nature, and make its continuation analogous to
that new order of nature so called ; to say, " The case,
then, stands thus : that revelation has introduced a new
law of divine governance, over and above those laws which
appear in the natural course of the world, and henceforth
we argue for a standing authority in matters of faith, on
the analogy of nature and from the fact of Christianity ;"^
— the analogy of nature meaning here exactly the same
thing with the fact of Christianity, i.e. revelation here
being viewed as nature. For this new order of nature, if
revelation be called such, is, in the Argument of Analogy,
the very dispensation the view of which an analogy of
nature regulates. It is not, therefore, by the argument,
that regulating analogy of nature. It is the subject and
not the basis of the analogy ; and to call it by the name
of nature gives it no new function, and makes it no more
that course of nature from which the analogy proceeds
than it was under the name of revelation. Eevelation
then, in spite of the verbal change, still presumes about
itself : the analogy of revelation to nature is the analogy
of revelation to revelation. The argument from analogy,
with its parallehsm, retreats before one member of it.
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Theory of Development. 117
One of the lines has become its own paraUel ; the stream
has both banks on one side ; revelation is its own analogy.
And, therefore, when Mr. Newman speaks of his conclusion
of a standing revelation " being forced on him by analogical
considerations," he speaks of an analogy which he has
explained away, and unsubstantiated altogether. The
whole argument has evaporated under his distinctions, and
left him an analogy which has no nature to make revela
tion analogous to, and which he has especially adopted
because it has not. He has treated the argument of
analogy as the Germans treat insphation, and under the
appearance of explaining it has dissolved it.
It is, however, important before leaving the subject to
follow out these two bases of reasoning which we have
been contrasting into their respective lines of thought
and ultimate positions with respect to rehgious truth.
We have then, on the one hand, a great presumptive
ground asserting that if a revelation is given it must go
on ; that human nature wants a present infalhble guide ;
that " Christianity must, humanly speaking, have an
infaUible expounder."* Upon this original notion of what
is necessary arises immediately the assertion of what is,
and with that assertion a whole corresponding view of the
existing matter-of-fact Church, and its established body
of ideas, however and wherever derived. A whole, to use
the word, perfectionist view of the historical progress of
thought and growth of truth in the Church earthly, and
the Christian world is ultimately imposed by an original
basis of presumption like the present. The hypothesis of
a standing revelation cannot afford to make any large
established ideas in the earthly Church erroneous, it
would interfere with such a standing revelation to do so ;
a pledge for the absolute correctness of aU that growth
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1 18 Theory of Development.
of opinion which the infaUible guide sanctions is contained
in the notion of that infalhble guide. Thus inevitably
arises the great general view that whatever is is right.
The fact of certain ideas getting estabhshed becomes itself
the proof of their truth. We see this view immediately
in the tone of the arguer. The arguer reposes in fact ; he
carries the sensation about with him of largeness, extent,
numbers; a doctrine that spreads over a large surface,
that is held de facto by a large mass, is its own evidence.
His tone of reasoning is a perpetual memento of the de
facto ground. It is almost a condescension for him to
argue at aU ; he has the fact, that is his argument. That
his use of the fact is an assumption is lost sight of in the
largeness of the fact itself; the authority of fact becomes
itself a fact, and is ever seen in the background as the
supreme authority, beyond which no appeal lies. The
arguer is thus less occupied in proving than in simply
unfolding his assumption. He explains how it was that
such opinions arose, the need that was felt for them, their
convenience in filling up certain chasms in the original
revelation. It was thus, he explains, that their truth
became known. This deshe became, in course of ages,
stronger and stronger, tiU at last it formaUy expressed
itself: the mass of Christendom resolved that these
opinions were true, and accordingly they became known
truths, and have continued so up to the present day.
Such is the account of the rise of this doctrine, of this
article of faith : the arguer simply traces the progress of
theh discovery and adjustment from the very first dawn of
the want to the chmax of the supply. The completeness
and rotundity of the formed system are then urged ; the
coincidence of the fact that such doctrines exist, with the
fact that they were wanted ; the coincidence of the various
results and ramifications of developed doctrine with each

Theory of Development. 119
other ; the coincidence of the permanency of their recep
tion with the fact of that profession of infaUibility which
first sanctioned it. " When we are convinced that large
developments do exist in matter of fact professing to be
true and legitimate, our first impression naturally must
be that these developments are what they pretend to be.
The very scale on which they have been made, their high
antiquity, yet present promise, their gradual formation,
yet precision, affect the imagination most forcibly."* We
need hardly say that Mr. Newman, in accordance with the
whole tone of his book, and his appeal to the living and
real, as opposed to merely historical and formal, of course
understands by these developments of doctrine not the
simple statements on paper, but doctrine as generally
understood and beheved, — the practical and energising
opinions of the Christian body. Here, then, is what may
be caUed a perfectionist view of the progress of truth in
the Christian world. The ideas which establish themselves
time after time in the Church are ipso facto true. What
exists is right ; each successive stage of thought improves
on the foUowing one ; truth advances with the certainty
of a mathematical problem ; an infallible centre produces
a perfect, ever operating self-correction ; and the present
state of things, as regards our relations to truth, becomes
all that, humanly speaking, we could wish it to be.
The argument of analogy, on the other hand, gives a
basis upon which a more qualified system erects itself.
Its maxim that we are not judges of what a revelation
should be, and consequent confinement of us to the fact of
what revelation there has been, tends immediately this
way. That there has been a revelation rests upon evidence
of fact; its continuance rests upon presumption. That
revelation, then, as far as it went, and as much as it said ;
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I20 Theory of Development.
the whole of it, in whatever mode communicated ; every
thing for the institution and communication of which, as
a fact, there is evidence, the argument of analogy gives
us ; but for the rest, it teUs us that we have no revelation,
and that we cannot, by any notion on our part that we
ought to have one, make one. It leaves the revelation
which God gave, among them to whom he gave it, exposed
to the same chances of abuse, perversion, or neglect, in the
carrying out, which attend on the truths of nature ; in all
respects, except those in which it is, as a matter of
fact, divinely guaranteed. The Christian revelation is
divinely guaranteed against total corruption; it has the
direct promise that the "gates of hell shall not prevail
against it," and stands in a different position from natural
rehgion, in consequence of this promise. With this safe
guard, however, the argument of analogy sends it down
exposed all the same to common degrees of corruption,
and those changes which are consistent with the substance
of the revelation continuing. It prepares us, in conse
quence, for such abuses, if they occur ; it makes it most
likely beforehand that they will, in a greater or less
degree, occur. To the divine truth, thrown into the im
perfect human mass, a positive likelihood of distortion and
discolourment of some kind attaches. Not to mention
lower and rougher causes, the mere tendencies of the
human mind to go off upon particular thoughts, refine
upon the natural substance of the truth put before it,
and idolise its own conceptions and points of view, are
against the probability of a revelation which offered the
materials and supphed the occasions for abuse, being
carried out without it ; and running through centuries of
intricate and agitating contact with the collective Chris
tian intellect, without any deflection whatever from original
soundness. If the rise of such deflections, again, is pro-

Theory of Development. 121
bable, their permanency is no matter to be surprised at ;
for the same course of things which originally established
them makes them also last : it was their adaptation to
some large and prevalent tastes which caused them to
spread at first ; and the same keeps them going. Again,
when they have been going on for a certain time, further
accretions to them give them further hold : the appendages
of poetry, ornament, association form around them : they
colour art and literature, they have aids and aUiances in
a hundred departments around them, and interweave
themselves with the hfe Bud sentiment of the mass. If
the argument of a standing revelation can explain such
facts upon its own hypothesis, the argument of analogy
can do the same on its hypothesis ; and can do it with
exactly the same appeal to coincidence, harmony, and
wholeness in its explanation. If truth can systematise
and arrange itself, error can do the same ; once begun, it
is seen going on by a kind of intrinsic force of self- evolving,
self-adjusting growth.
To take, for example, the popular and authorised cultus
of the Virgin. The argument of analogy can take an un
favourable view of this cultus ; offering, in doing so, quite
as complete an account, in one way, of the rise, spread,
and permanence of it as the argument of infaUibUity can
in another. That the doctrine of the Incarnation, for
instance, was hkely, humanly speaking, to lead to it, falls
in just as well with the former as with the latter argu
ment; for we see, constantly, instances of great truths
which slide quite naturally, unless narrowly watched, into
error, and seem to produce their own misconstruction.
Here, then, analogy tells us we need not be perfectionists,
and uphold the whole growth of opinion in the Church as
faultless. And it proceeds to give one or two natural
answers to some claims and reasons urged on the latter

12 2 Theory of Development.
side. It is asked, for example, how we can suppose that
God would allow great saints and holy men to have joined
in and promoted this cultus if it was wrong ? But surely
it is not necessary to suppose that, a general tendency to
error being granted in the Christian body, good men
should not, in particular cases, go along with it, even
actively. The general body suffers in its attitude toward
truth. If God, with all His vouchsafed grace, has left
frailty in the heart of every single member of the earthly
Church, from the lowest sinner to the highest saint, you
cannot teU what may be the consequences of this fact
upon the attitude of the Church, as a body, toward truth.
It is natural to suppose that truth and goodness go to
gether ; and that if the Church is not pure in one respect,
it wiU not be pure in the other. Subtle evU is an awful
mysterious fact, which must be expected to have its results.
You cannot tell how it may operate in this respect. And
this general tendency in the body may carry away, in
particular cases, and even engage the activities of, good
members of the body. Moreover, you may ask how God
wiU aUow this ; but if He aUows the element of evU to
exist in these good members at aU, it is no great additional
wonder if He allows that element to do something, and
make a real difference in what comes from them, and affect
the actual external issues from theh minds. Why should
not they be subject to their own class of partialities and
obliquities, be liable to take up ideas, and then be over
fond of them because they have taken them up, and dwell
upon them with something like mental luxury, and feel
originality with the secret rehsh of a frail creature, and go
on to mould and tune their minds to a favourite line of
thought, as men tune an instrument? Let no persons
think we are doing injustice here to the minds of reaUy
holy men; the degree to which serious evil can co-exist

Theory of Development. 123
with very high dispositions in the soul is one of the
mysteries of our present state. We may add, that apparent
symptoms of some ethical unsoundness, and of a degeneracy
from the purity and severity of Christian worship, are
found in the particular tone which runs through this
cultus ; which, even in its best form, seems to show an
element of what may be called false sweetness in it, and
very soon runs out into palpable and unbecoming senti-
mentahsm. Again, if it is such a difficulty that God
should permit holy men to think erroneously, how are we
to account for the plain fact that He has permitted multi
tudes, in all ages, of the best and noblest minds to do so,
and to worship Him in faulty modes ? We are concerned
with a principle of Divine government here, and are not,
for an instant, comparing Eoman Catholicism and pagan
ism. The human souls that have lived and died under
pagan systems have had, as far as we can judge, tempers
and natures as capable in themselves of the fullest saintly
development, and as worthy of the correctest views of
truth, as those that have lived and died under Chris
tianity ; but they were permitted to think and to worship
faultily. Nor is it any answer to this fact to say, that
God has distinctly pledged the possession of the truth to
good Christians, and did not to good pagans ; for it is not
denied here that the holy men we are referring to
possessed the truth, but only that they possessed it free
from all intermixture of error. The general facts of this
earthly dispensation show plainly that it is a part of God's
providence to permit good men to err. And though it is
true that He distinctly teaches that " they who do His will
shaU know of the doctrine," this cannot be applied as a
certain test of truth so long as men do not do His wiU
perfectly. For so long as evil remains in good men, we
cannot teU what may be the consequence of that evil, and

124 Theory of Development.
how far theh mental relations to truth may be impaired
by it. The rule of doing His wiU is absolutely true as a
practical rule to ourselves ; but this rule must be acted
up to before it can become an infaUible test of the teaching
of another, and we know that no human being does act up
to it. Nor is this explaining away an obvious meaning,
but only excluding a forced one, as regards this scriptural
maxim ; for its obvious meaning, in the way in which it
is brought before us, is that of a practical rule, and the
other is a subsequently appended one. The test of per
sonal goodness for deciding truth, though by no means made
a useless or unimportant, because it is not an infallible
test, nor reduced to nothing because it is not everything,
is yet not infallible. If Scripture appeals to it in some
places, in others it warns us against it. And the simple
fact that on some most important questions which divide
the Christian world, equal personal holiness is to be seen
on both sides, disqualifies the test of personal hohness in
general as an absolute one on the question of truth.
On the whole then, we say — according to the argument
from analogy — an original creed or revelation thrown into
the world of human intelligence is exposed to all common
chances of human discolourment in the carrying out ; the
substantial original creed remaining throughout notwith
standing, and secured, if there be evidence for this fact,
against failure to the end. And however, in reasoning d
priori, out of our own heads, respecting revelation, we
might expect it to do more for us because it did much,
and look forward to a progress of truth pure, divinely
guaranteed against error : the argument of analogy on the
other hand bids us expect no such thing, but take the
facts as they stand. It tells us not to expect aU must be
truth because there is truth ; or again, to think all must
be error because there is error ; but to expect both truth

Theory of Development. 125
and error. It supplies a dogmatic basis on the one side,
and it aUows for uncertainty on the other ; and bids us
neither be unbelievers nor perfectionists. It says — This is
a mixed world, and expect mixtures in it. Do not think
that the progress of things will be wholly one way, or
wholly another ; that it will entirely submerge truth, or
unfold it unimpeachably. There is much of both good
and evU in it. The earthly Church partakes of the mixed
character of the world in which it is placed, and which it
has more or less received into its own pale. And its best
members too are not perfect, but have their own undue
biasses of intellect, temper, taste, sometimes more open
and palpable, sometimes more refined and internal.
Thus much for Mr. Newman's presumptive argument
for a standing revelation, on which he rests the proof of
the Papal Infallibility. It only remains now to take a
brief view of this hne of proof, as distinguished from
another line of proof for the same doctrine.
The whole argument, then, of a standing revelation is
a very different one from M. De Maistre's argument of
simple church government. M. De Maistre argues for
the simple necessity of a central government for the
Church ; the need for a universal empire of a universal
head. The simple idea of government, he says, neces
sarUy takes us up, step by step, to one central and
supreme seat of government, for there must be some
limit to appeal from subordinate authorities, if a question
is to be settled at all ; and wherever the power of appeal
stops, you have ipso facto a supreme authority. Now,
such an hypothesis as this has certainly the advantage,
as an hypothesis, of covering the whole ground. It is,
indeed, absurd to expect that the mind should be satisfied
with it ; because what the mind wants is to believe what
is true ; and this argument does not touch the question

126 Theory of Development.
of truth or error in the doctrines themselves decided on
by this ultimate authority. It tells us the fact that they
are decided on, and no more. It views the Church
simply as a polity, and professes to apply the same prin
ciples to it which belong to other polities; and whoUy
omitting its prophetical office of teaching the truth, makes
it impose its dogmas on us on the same principle on
which the state imposes acts of parUament. However,
it has, as an hypothesis, the advantage of covering the
whole ground, for every single opinion which is, or can
be entertained among Christians is either authoritatively
decided, or is not. If it is, it is authoritatively decided ;
and if it is not, it is authoritatively not decided : so that,
in either case, Christian doctrine has a perfectly complete
basis provided for it.
Mr. Newman's argument, on the other hand, though
much superior in hne to M. De Maistre's, for he does
address himself to a real internal craving after truth in
the human mind, is not so complete, and does not cover
the whole ground. The hypothesis of a standing revela
tion reaches a point where it ceases to apply, and confesses
that it can explain no further. For however largely truth
is revealed to us, after all we come to a point where truth
is not revealed to us ; and it is only a matter of degree
whether we stop where an original revelation stops, or
stop where a standing revelation stops. As a matter of
fact, there are a vast number of questions, and some of
them very important ones as regards their intrinsic truth
or falsehood, which this standing revelation does not
decide. There is the whole question, e.g., of the attributes
and position of the Virgin, which this standing revelation
has scrupulously avoided deciding ; and a person in the
Eoman Church may either believe, with Mr. Newman,
that the Blessed Virgin is aU which the Arians supposed

Theory of Development. 127
our Lord to be, or only beUeve what the English Church
believes about her. It has scrupulously avoided saying
whether her conception is immaculate or not* If a stand
ing revelation avoids deciding important questions which
come before it, it stops revealing. And though Mr.
Newman may say that it may in course of time, though
it has not yet done so, turn into dogma or reject a
particular view of the Virgin ; stUl here is the fact before
us of an important question which this standing revela
tion has had before it for ages, and has refused to touch :
a result (if true) included in the idea of the original
revelation, and consequently part of it, and consequently
revealed in theory ; which, somehow or other, has not
been revealed in fact. It is needless pursuing this remark
through the whole series of instances in which it would
apply. It is evident that in multitudes of cases of theo
logical opinion in the Church public, not to mention the
innumerable daUy cases in the private hfe of all Christians
in the world, who have been, are, or will be, there is, as
a matter of fact, no continuous revelation which decides
for us. And wherever it stops, all the objections which
apply to the original revelation's continuance, apply in
principle to its cessation too.
This defect, indeed, in the hypothesis, is so obvious,
that the Eoman controversialist attempts to answer it by
confessing it ; by showing, that is, that it is admitted
into the rationale of the Papal Infallibihty. The idea of
a standing revelation which goes to the real extreme of
its principle, and reveals everything whatever about
rehgion that people can naturally desire to be told,
has its unreasonableness, so far, granted that the Papal
authority voluntarily decides a great number of questions
1 The dogma of the Immaculate Conception was promulgated
December 8, 1854.

128 Theory of Development.
about religion without revealing ; simply commanding as
the supreme authority, and claiming obedience on that
ground only. All the questions which are decided in
this latter way are defined, indeed, to be ones out of " the
province of infallibUity ;" but it is not explained why they
should be out of the province ; and the case is, simply,
that infallibility has come to an arbitrary terminus which it
does not choose to exceed, and that a standing revelation
stops short. In these cases the Eoman rationale supplies
the defect of one hypothesis by ground from another, and
where the profession of a standing revelation conveniently
stops, introduces the appeal to mere authority. It constructs
a position out of the argument of a standing revelation and
the monarchical argument combined ; and M. De Maistre
and Mr. Newman could only give a unity of hypothesis to
its system by each confining himself to one side of it.
Accordingly, the latter, after drawing out his theory
for a standing revelation, proceeds to join on to it, as an
additional and subordinate one, the simple governmental
or monarchical argument ; to assert " the impossibility
that an infinite wisdom, in decreeing the rise of an
universal empire, should not have decreed the develop
ment of a ruler;"* a certain "absolute need of a mon
archical power in the Church ; which is our ground for
anticipating it ;"^ and of " a necessary centre of unity for
preserving the sacrament of unity." We have not space
for a regular discussion of this further subject; and
contenting ourselves with the general answer that aU the
arguments quoted above against the validity of d priori
reasoning on the point of a standing revelation apply to
the same line of reasoning on the point of an absolute
monarchical authority and necessary centre of unity in
the Church, shaU make but one or two reflections here.
1 Page 171. 2 Page 170.

Theory of Development. 129
With respect, then, to the direct proof of the existence
of an absolute monarchical authority somewhere in the
Church, drawn from the fact of the Church being intended
to be one external society ; — of the proof of the existence
of a local centre of unity, drawn from the idea itself of
unity ; — we do not see the force of it. The idea of unity
does not imply a particular local centre of unity. Take a
drop of water, or any fluid substance ; it is one drop, but
there is no centre of unity in it. The particles of any
substance can adhere together by some equal pervading
adhesion ; and do not involve the existence of a central
force in it attracting them to itself, and preventing them
from flying off. The Church might certainly continue, as
far as the nature of the case is concerned, one external
society, without a monarchical head over it, or centre in
it. What if all Christians had from the first obeyed the
spirit of unity, and kept together upon their own indi
vidual wUl ? The idea, of course, imphes much more per
fection in Christians than there has been ; but it shows
that the Christian society does not, metaphysicaUy, and in
the nature of the case, as one society, imply a local centre
and head. Indeed Christians did keep together for many
centuries in fact, without any local head. So much
for the nature of the case, and the metaphysical reason.
Nor does the practical argument, again, of the expediency
of such a local head for preserving unity, prove such a
necessary centre of unity as is wanted : for an expedient
for preserving unity is not the substance itself of unity.
Water cannot rise above its level : an argument cannot
prove more than its basis supports. The argument here
proceeds on simple expediency as its basis, and therefore
cannot confer any sacramental character as its result. The
Papal power is, on this argument, a means to an end ; a
practical instrument for making men keep a Christian
I

Theory of Development.

ordinance — that of external unity. If it fails to do this,
and does not secure the preservation of that ordinance,
either from its own excesses or the fault of the material
it has to do with, it fails just as any other instrument may
fail in doing its work : the ordinance is broken, and there
is all the evil, whatever that may be, of external schism
in the Christian body. But it is the division in the unity of
the body at large, and not the separation from the Papacy,
which is that evU ; and no sacramental virtue is conferred
by this argument on special union with Eome.
Again, the necessity of the Church being one external
communion is urged as a practical argument in this direc
tion ; and for that necessity the most common argument
urged is a reductio ad absurdum one.
A reductio ad absurdum argument then, to prove that
the Church can be but one intercommunicating body in
the world, proceeds thus : — If there can be two branches
of the true Church not intercommunicating, why may
there not be a thousand? and why may not every single
Christian diocese in the world split off from every other,
and yet all continue real Churches ? If two Churches can
be Churches without intercommunicating, there can be no
such thing as a schismatical Church. We must be aUowed
to say here that the reductio ad absurdum, as a whole form
of argument, is in an unsatisfactory, we may say neglected
state, — there are no recognised rules for the use and
management of it; and each side on every question,
worldly or religious, wields it in a loose irregular way, as
it serves a turn, and inflicts a temporary stroke. In the
present instance we shall only ask, would it be a reductio
ad ahsurdum of the extreme doctrine of the Papal Infalli
bility, to suggest that there is nothing whatever in the
nature of things to prevent a Pope turning GalHcan, and
proclaiming the truth of Gallicanism by a formal bull ?

Theory of Developmient. 131
Such an argument would be considered puerile ; and j'et
we see no difference in principle between it and the
argument here advanced respecting schism. Neither of
these contemplated absurdities have occurred, and nobody
expects that they wiU occur. It may be said that there is
a tendency, an apparent beginning of the fact in one case,
which there is not in the other ; but what difference does
this make, so long as in neither case the fact will actually
take place, i.e. so long as the right to say that the fact
will not take place is the same on either side? And
this right is the same. For that evil exists to a certain
degree, is no kind of evidence in itself that it will proceed
to the greatest possible degree. There are multitudes
of beginnings and tendencies in the world which are no
sort of evidence, even to the remotest probabihty,
that the extremes of which they are the abstract begin
nings, and to which they do abstractedly tend, will
foUow. Every human being tends to diabolical and insane
wickedness, if by saying so be meant that he has the
beginning of that which, if foUowed out, would become
such; but no one would say that an excellent religious man
actuaUy tends to such a character, for there is not the
remotest prospect, from the fact of his having evU in him,
that he wiU become evil to that amount. In the same
way there may be a beginning of unlimited schism in the
Church ; but it does not at all follow from that, even in
the way of the remotest probability, that such unlimited
schism will ensue. There is a difference of degree, which
is, for all argumentative purposes, a difference of kind : a
difference of degree in which there is no actual sequence
from the one extreme end of the series to the other
extreme end. The Church ought by rights to be one
external society ; if she is split up into two or three large
branches, she is so far divided, and there is so far schism ;

132 Theory of Development.
the principle of unity is violated. But this is one state
of things. A state of things in which Christians, instead
of loving one another, had grown to hate one another
to such an extent, that no one single particle of the
Church would cleave to any other, and which would
seem to show that Christian principle-, and with it the
Church upon earth, had evanesced, is another state of
things. And there is no actual sequence from the
one to the other. And therefore in the two cases of
reductio ad absurdum before us, one side has as much
right to disown the hostile supposition which its opponent
presses as the other has. What we assert is that all
division does not take away churchship, and that more
than one external communion may be the Church. The
proper mode of answering this is to prove that all division
does unchurch, and that the Church can only be one
external communion. If the necessity of this external
oneness is not established by direct proof, it cannot be
established by this reductio ad absurdum; for because
the fact of existing division has to be accounted for, we
have not therefore to account for the fact of a vast amount
of division which does not exist.
But we must go from these reflections on certain lines
of reasoning on the subject before us, to the examination
of a statement. Mr. Newman asserts that, as a matter of
fact, all Christianity outside of the Eoman obedience has
been a failure, and that therefore there is the evidence of
fact to the divine institution of the Papal Monarchy.
"Wherever the Pope has been renounced, decay and
division have been the consequence." * " The Church is a
kingdom ; and heresy is a family rather than a kingdom :
and a famUy continually divides and sends out branches,
founding new houses and propagating itself in colonies,
1 Page 170.

Theory of Development. 133
each of them as independent as its original head ; so was it
with heresy." * And this observation is meant to be appli
cable to all that is outside of the Eoman obedience. Now
to bring this statement to the test of fact. There is a large
and important branch of the Church, which, never having
been under the Eoman obedience from the first, refused
about a thousand years ago to conform to it, and has con
sequently been separate from the Eoman see ever since.
This portion of the Church has not exhibited, since that
separation, division or decay. With respect to division :
The Eastern Church — the portion to which we allude —
was very fertile in division and heresy before the separa
tion of East and West ; and when, therefore, not the East
by itself, but the whole Church, East and West together,
as one body, were responsible, so far as responsibility was
incurred, for such events. It was very fertUe in schism
in early times, as the Western Church has been in later.
But the Eastern Church has had, since the separation of
East and West, comparatively no divisipn or heresy rising
out of it; the Nestorian heresy and the Monophysite,
which subsequently split into the Armenian, Jacobite,
and others, date prior to that era. The Eastern Church
again has not exhibited decay. It was overwhelmed
by Barbarians in its more Eastern domains, . just as
the African Church was overwhelmed by the Vandals ;
but it found other ground, and soon after its Asiatic
reverses shot up with marveUous vigour and success
in the North of Europe. Its conversion of the North,
the largest and most striking of aU the conversions of
the middle ages, took place, it is to be remembered,
after the separation from Eome ; and the result is now
before us in the shape of the Eussian Church, with its
history, saintly names, and associations, and all the
1 Page 146.

134 Theory of Development.
ecclesiastical accumulations of a thousand years. The
Eastern Church presents at this day the phenomenon of a
Church, comprehending about eighty miUions of Christians,
in perfect doctrinal unity with itself, chanting the same
creed and the same liturgies now which it has chanted
every day of every year since the time of St. Basil, the
Gregories, and St. Chrysostom, up to this present hour at
which we write, — a Church in full possession of the
popular affection throughout its domains, and fertile in
examples of the most holy, self-denying, and severe
Christian life. Such is the Church which is asserted to
have exhibited nothing but decay and division since the
separation from Eome.
Mr. Newman's line with respect to the Greek Church
is indeed a feature in the Essay to be observed. His
ordinary view supposes it not to exist ; and the argument,
proceeding as if there were no such body, is of course not
encumbered by the fact at aU. But he is necessarUy
brought into contact with it occasionally, and then he
supposes it as a totally different fact from what it is. He
supposes Eastern Christianity to be an effete and stagnant
superstition, showing no life and producing no fruits.
Its permanence confronts him as an obstacle to his theory
of a corruption, which makes corruption " the end of a
course, a transition state leading to a crisis, and as such a
brief and rapid process;"* and the same theory, which
proved that corruption could not attach to Eoman doctrines,
because they were permanent, has to be explained when
it comes across the doctrinal permanence in the East. And
the explanation is the one mentioned. " Decay," he says,
" which is one form of corruption, is slow. . . . We see
opinions, usages, and systems, which are of venerable and
imposing aspect, but which have no soundness within them,
1 Page 90.

Theory of Development. 1 3 5
and keep together from a habit of consistence and from
dependence on political institutions; or they become
almost peculiarities of a country, or the habits of a race, or
the fashions of society. . . . Such are the superstitions which
pervade a population, hke some ingrained dye or inveterate
odour, and which at length come to an end because nothing
lasts for ever." * " Whether," he continues, " Mahometanism,
external to Christendom, and the Greek Church within
it, fall under this description, is yet to be seen.'' And
so the case of the Eastern Church is dismissed. But
surely upon this very statement, highly unfavourable as
it is to Eastern Christianity, the case of Eastern Chris
tianity cannot be so dismissed. For the only conclusive
proof of the theory of decay, viz., dissolution, it confesses
to be wanting here, and it aUows that whether the Eastern
Church " comes to an end " or not " is yet to be seen."
It has not then, at any rate, come to an end yet ; and so
long as it has not, it is the phenomenon of a permanent
Christian doctrine and society outside of the Eoman
obedience, and is therefore a real difficulty which his
theory has to surmount,. — a difficulty, we must add, which
is but imperfectly covered by couphng its permanence
and that of Mahometanism (which is no difficulty to Eome
whatever) together. The " barrenness, if not lifelessness,"^
of the Greek Church, however, is the one idea taken for
granted throughout the Essay, and is aided by side remarks
here and there, such as the casual suggestion that it is
mere accident that it did not fall with the rest of early
heresy contained in the quotation from Gibbon, that
perhaps the " Greeks would be still involved in the heresy
of the Monophysites if the Emperor's horse had not
fortunately stumbled. Theodosius expired, and his ortho
dox sister succeeded to the throne." ^
1 Page 91. 2 Page 72. 3 Page 46.

136 Theory of Development.
With respect then to this assertion of lifelessness in
Eastern doctrines, we do not know what particular stan
dard of life in a Church may be imphed here, but we will
propose one to which there can be small objection.
Doctrine is not barren and lifeless which produce's good
works. Other things may be wanting; but if they are
there, after all they are the surest sign of life, of a Church
having something in her, being a reahty, being solid.
They show that her doctrine is not mere sound, — that it
has a spirit in it ; they show that she is animated, — that
she is not a corpse, a husk. Learning, science, intellec
tual refinement, and many of the human media by which
a Church expresses and adorns its spiritual life, there
may not be ; but if the Christian type has worked, and
an awful unspeakable moulding power has resided within
her, seizing human souls as if it were some physical
principle, mastering and overwhelming weak and carnal
nature in them, and making them new creatures, with
thoughts aud hopes estranged from earth, and passing
through this world as through a wilderness, — if some
powerful mould within her has formed wonderful spiritual
beings on whom the inhabitants of the earth have gazed
in reverence and awe, this shows something more than
the dead dry husk and shell of a Church. This presence
of the Spirit, and these deep movements of grace, the
Eastern Church can show. She has formed saints and
holy men in all their various gradations ; has produced
great spiritual deeds of self-denial, love, and fear; and,
from the highest and severest ascetic down to the
humblest of the Church's flock, has trained in every
age, and does train now, souls for heaven. If she has
done this, she has been a living Church. We may be
answered, perhaps, that a congregation of Baptists pro
duces good men amongst them, and yet is not the Church.

Theory of Developmient. 137
But this is no answer to meet the case. Here is a body
that has the whole external form and system of a Church
which the early Church exhibited; and which is the
representative, by uninterrupted descent, of the ancient
Eastern Church. It beheves and teaches the self-same
dogmatic Christianity which the ancient Church did.
There is not the smallest question that the dogmatic
creed of the Eastern Christian at this day is the creed of
St. Basil and St. Chrysostom. Now this whole corporate
and doctrinal identity with the ancient Church the Baptist
congregation wants ; and those appearances of life are a
mere isolated note in the case of the Baptist congregation,
which come in to complete a whole body of other notes of
a Church in the Eastern case. Moreover, it may do very
weU as an off-hand answer, to say that all sects can pro
duce their good men; but the note of sanctity which
belongs to the Eastern Church is a totally different one
from what sectarian piety affords us. We are concerned
with a question as to- a phenomenon here — the apparent
life of the Greek Church ; and we say that Eastern sanctity
is one phenomenon, and what we call sectarian piety is
another; and one phenomenon cannot be put aside by
identifying it with another, which is totally different
from it.
Indeed, the controversial line taken upon this subject is
one which we must notice. It is objected, on the part of
the Eoman controversialist, to the English Church that
she does not exhibit notes of sanctity. Her defenders
reply that she has them, though in her own form, and
though she cannot show the same extraordinary mani
festations in individuals which some other Churches can.
And they are told that this is not enough ; that the truth
is, we have no saints, and that, therefore, we are not a
Church. With this decision the controversy steps over

138 Theory of Development.
to the East. Now the Eastern Church on this subject
produces what is something like evidence. The Greek
points to twelve thick volumes, one for each month, con
taining the Hagiology of his Church. We open the
volumes, and there, at any rate, are portrayed real saints.
There is no distinction there between sanctity and its form,
to be offered and to be overruled ; there are real saints,
spirit, form, and all ; men who lived literally in caves and
dens of the earth, who passed life in spiritual contempla
tion, or in converting rude tribes to Christ ; men who laid
the foundation of the monastery in the wild forest, and
whose cells, hollowed with their own hands out of the
solid rock, or mountain, or lake side, far from human
habitations, still coUected disciples, attracted by the fame
of their sanctity, to hear their voice, and crowds of simple
folk to touch their garments. Here are the lives of holy
monks, hermits, bishops, from a thousand years ago to
recent times, the canonised saints of the Eastern Church,
and as true and unquestionable saints as any Church can
show. And what does it gain to the Eastern Church in
the controversy to show them ? Nothing. The advocate
of Eome as completely excludes the Greek Church from
the universal Church of Christ as if it had not one single
saint to show. The line is the same with respect to
miracles. The English Church is told she has not the
note of miracles. But the Eastern Church has the note
of them, upon quite as good evidence as the Eoman ; and
it does her no good whatever to prove it. No wonder if
some people think all controversy hollow and unreal when
they see arguers simply dealing out their arguments for
the occasion, and allowing no weight to, and claiming the
greatest weight for, the same evidence at the same time,
according as others or themselves are to be benefited by it.
But to return to what we were saying about the char-

Theory of Development. 139
acter of the phenomenon here before us : for our own part,
we look in vain to discern any essential distinction as to
the note of sanctity (including miracles in that note)
between the Eastern and the Western Church. We see
on each side a vast coUection of wonderful saintiiness,
accompanied by a considerable amount of miraculous
agency, asserted and recorded, and professing to be so upon
evidence. It would disturb a devotional mind, and make
the latitudinarian smile, to attempt to establish any sohd
distinction, either as to evidence or internal character,
between the miracles of the Eastern and the Western
Church. Moreover, at the Council of Florence, as the
terms of the meditated reconciliation implied, the Church
of Eome herself was quite willing to recognise this sanctity.
She was wilhng to allow the whole Eastern Church to
retain its calendar, and go on in future exactly as .it had
gone on in this respect; to continue regarding as un
doubted Christian saints the self-same persons whom it
had all along regarded as such, and paying them, to all
time, the same honours, — observing their festivals, chanting
their praises, recording their mhacles, invoking their in
tercession. In fact, the Eoman Church was wilhng to
receive the whole body of Eastern canonised saints. We
must add, that to be wiUing to do so was to be willing to
allow the real churchship of the Church of which they
were members. How could they be made Christian saints,
unless they were made members of the Christian Church ;
and how could they be made members of the Christian
Church after their death, if they were not so during their
life ? How can a fact be created ex post facto, and a thing
which was not, be afterwards made to have been ? — an act
of power which, Aristotle says, the gods themselves are
not equal to. It may be said that it is possible to suppose
them members of the Christian Church in heaven, with-

140 Theory of Development.
out supposing them to have been members of the Chris
tian Church upon earth. But it is the latter of these two
which the Church of Eome was willing to allow the
Easterns to believe, and not the former only. It is the
latter of these two beliefs which is involved in the act of
a whole Church keeping up the memory of departed
saints. You allow a whole Church to go on taking the
same view of a certain body of saints which it had done ;
but it had always regarded them as members of the
earthly Church, therefore it is allowed to continue to do
so. And really, without anything more being wanted, if
you allow millions of Christians to go on reciting the holy
deeds and miracles of their departed saints, observing their
festivals, and dwelling in thought upon the examples of
their earthly lives ; to say that you need not allow them,
in doing so, to regard them as members of the same earthly
Church as themselves, would be at once inane and trivial.
On the principle here mentioned, the Church of Eome
could canonise the Hindoo saints on converting a Hindoo
population. You may suppose the Hindoo saints, as
saints in heaven; "for in every nation, he that feareth
God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him." But
you could not make them Christian saints ; and why not,
but because they were not members of the Christian
Church upon earth ? If then you do recognise a body of
Christian saints, you do imply that they were members of
such a Church.
The substantial subject, however, with which we are con
cerned throughout these reflections, is simply the sanctity
of the Eastern Church, as an ordinary and common sense
fact discernible in it, without bringing in other aspects or
considerations. All we want to say is, that there are dis
cernible in the Eastern Church real, and high, and solid
effects of some spiritual life, as we must needs suppose it

Theory of Development. 141
to be ; that its sanctity is upon the primitive and ecclesi
astical type ; that it holds up the standard of Christian
mortification to its people ; and that that standard is not
a practically unproductive one, but has had all along, and
has now, its genuine fruits. If that Church exhibits the
same spiritual marks which the Eoman Church can, the
latter cannot call her decayed, or her doctrine a dead and
lifeless one ; and such Christianity cannot be put aside
under the designation of " an inveterate odour." Certainly,
Eastern sanctity shows marks of the soil on which it grows ;
and the world is much mistaken if Eoman sanctity does
not do the same. Eastern sanctity, too, presents features
of uncouthness, rudeness, strange simplicity — in a word,
some barbarian features to the European eye; but we
have yet to l^arn that the Gospel distinguishes, so long as
men love God and hate their own flesh, whether they are
barbarians or not. Many a saint ofthe early Church must
be rejected on such a rule. The Eastern Church has gone
on comparatively outside of the great movement of
intellect, science, and civilisation in the world ; and,
therefore, its Christianity is open to remarks on this head.
But it is a smaU thing to be judged of by man's judgment.
Mr. Newman must permit us to say that his judgment on
this head has signs of being something very like " man's
judgment." He refuses, in a certain case, to see and
recognise the Christian type, because it does not come
before him in the Latin shape, and with the accompani
ments of intellectual grace and refinement which it has
incorporated on its European area. It comes before him
in the shape which antiquity, and not " movement," has
attached to it ; and he puts it aside under the name of "an
inveterate odour," the " venerable peculiarity " of a parti
cular population ; analogous, it might seem, to any case of
old custom, law, or costume. This is " man's judgment,"

142 Theory of Development.
we must say. The early Church gloried in a religion
which made all men equal — the refined Greek or Eoman,
and the barbarian, whose name had but just reached the
threshold of the civilised world — absolutely equal. The
genius of Christianity broke down the barriers of artificial
types and standards in character, and with a holy violence
levelled the formations of human genius, phUosophy, and
will, to make way for one substantial, fundamental
character for man. That was love. Pervading all Chris
tian natures, and, running the same invariable substance
through all outer character, and all modifications of human
sentiment and feeling, the principle of love was his moral
being and life ; and one universal type converted all other
distinctions into childishness and nullity. Eudeness,
civilisation, ignorance, science, uncouthness, grace, were
all one — for love was deeper than all, and men were new-
formed, " after the image of Him who had created them ;
where there was neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor
uncircumcision. Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but
Christ was all, and in all."
To return to our main subject.
We have examined the presumptive part of Mr. New
man's argument for the Papal Infalhbility. It is not our
intention to follow him into the historical, or examine how
far his original presumption is sustained by the evidence
of fact. That has been already ably, acutely, and in the
most fair, candid, and tempered tone of controversy, done
by a writer whose work was noticed in the last number of
this Eeview. Mr Newraan himself admits that his pre
sumption is the strongest part of his argument, and
alludes to the historical evidence for the Papacy as a sub
ordinate and secondary part of it. "AU," he says,
" depends on the strength of that presumption." * " The
1 Page 170.

Theory of Development. 143
absolute need of a spiritual supremacy is at present the
strongest of arguments in favour of its supply." * With
respect to the historical evidence — the evidence, that is,
of early Church history to its divine institution, as a
matter of fact — he is content if it only gives a negative
support : " Supposing there is otherwise good reason for
saying that the Papal supremacy is part of Christianity,
there is nothing in early Church history to contradict it." ^
Having gone through these two stages of argument on
the main question which Mr. Newman's Essay brings
before us, we approach a third. It has appeared that
the principle of development in itself, however enlarged
upon, cannot be any pledge for absolute correctness in
development, or secure the truth of a certain mass of
developments which has grown up. It has appeared that
for the existence of what alone can secure this absolute
correctness in developing, and alone can prove the absolute
truth of certain developments, as well as the right to
impose them as articles of faith ; — for the existence of a
constant, infaUible, developing authority, or standing
revelation in the Church — the argument advanced is an
insufficient one ; inasmuch as this argument is based on a
presumption for which we have no warrant. The argu
ment of the Essay now takes another line, and one of a
very different character from what it has hitherto. It
adopts the line of a reductio ad absurdum. It asserts that
the fundamental doctrines of Christianity are developments ;
and that therefore we must either give them up, or admit
that continuing developing authority in the Church which
established them. It instances the Nicene Creed. That,
it proceeds, is regarded by both sides as essential, and
that is a development ; we are therefore committed already
to the principle of development, and must either receive
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144 Theory of Development.
the whole cycle of Eoman doctrine, or be prepared to give
up Nicene. It says, in short, that we have no standing
ground between Eome and Infidelity. Let us admit then,
though not logically required to do, the conditional truth
of this argument ; we then say, truth is the end of con
troversy, and this is a fair argument if its fundamental
fact is a true one. At the same time it is not too much to
say that considerable responsibility attaches to the use of
such an argument as this.
Now here the first question to be settled is obviously
that of the sense in which the word development is used.
The creed which contains our fundamental articles of faith
is called a development ; in what sense is it meant that
it was one ?
One sense of development makes it a simply explana
tory process. Development is explanation ; explanation
is development. A man in conversation makes an
assertion, which another misapprehends ; in reply, he
explains the meaning, or develops the meaning of his asser
tion. His meaning is exactly the same with what it was
before ; it is in order to show what it was before that the
explanation is given ; the meaning before the explanation
or development of it, and the meaning after, are by the
very nature and aim of the process the same. It so
happens that language, or the medium by which we con
vey our ideas to one another, is capable of misinterpreta
tion; we have therefore often to alter or add to the
language in which we expressed an idea, and express it
anew, — not because our idea itself was imperfect, or was
different at all from what it is, but because some person
has construed our language in a way in which we did not
intend it to be construed. This explanation again, inas
much as language still continues our medium, may be
misinterpreted, and a second explanation become necessary

Theory of Development. 145
for the benefit of some second objector. A thhd, a fourth,
a fifth, an indefinite number of explanations may succeed
on the same principle which produced the first. An idea
may thus, in course of discussion, be said to be developed ;
i.e. may go through fresh successional stages of language,
according as preceding stages are found not adequate to
prevent it from being mistaken and confused with some
other idea, different from, or short of it. Each miscon
struction, as it shows itself, makes a fresh defence
necessary : when three or four defensive explanations have
been made, these again have to be reconciled to each
other ; and the creation of language becomes larger and
larger. The case is not unfrequent of a single arguer
having to maintain in conversation a particular point
against a whole circle of opponents. He adheres firmly,
consistently, and with all unity and simplicity, to the one
point which he defends, and is only bent on defending it.
But, with that one object in view, what a vast formation
of language does he raise as he goes on ! what distinctions
accumulate, and what protests and safeguards grow up
out of, and surround the original statement ! He would
be surprised at the end of the argument to see the edifice
he had built. And yet nobody would say that his idea
had altered, and was not just the same as it was when he
began. It was for the very purpose of so maintaining
it, that he explained it again and again anew, as miscon
struction threatened it, and so formed all that body of
expression around it ; and a bystander wUl make the
special remark on such an occasion, that the arguer has
kept to his own point, amidst a varied and complex
opposition. Cases of legal amplification illustrate the
same principle. What a testator or seller of an estate
wants to do, is able to be expressed in two words for any
fair man's understanding ; but the law has the responsi-
K

146 Theory of Development.
bUity of guarding against all the possible constructions
which may be put upon a statement, and not only that of
satisfying an ordinary and simple construction. The case,
in short, is a common everyday one, in which the idea in
a person's mind is exactly the same, whether more
shortly and simply, or more fully and guardedly expressed.
It is not meant that it may not become clearer by such
a process ; but the additional clearness is an external
argumentative one ; not affecting its substance, or making
it, as regards natural straightforward thinking, any other
than the identical idea which it was before. Such is
simply explanatory development.
On the other hand, there is a kind of development
which is a positive increase of the substance of the thing
developed, — a fresh formation not contained in, though
growing out of, some original matter. The developed
substance here is not the same actual one with the
original, but a very different one. Growth-out- of is a
wholly different thing from identity- with. The develop
ment of a seed into a plant is one of growth, for example ;
and it does not carry with it identity. It is a pure
metaphor by which we say the acorn is the oak ; it is so,
if by saying so be meant that the acorn is the thing in
consequence of which (coupled with other causes) an oak
whl exist, but it is not identical with it actually. As
things actual, things cognisable, an acorn is one thing, an
oak is another : the one is a smooth oval piece of
vegetable matter, about an inch long, and of that consist
ency and appearance of which it is ; and the other is a
large, wide-spreading tree, with rough bark, and thick
branches bearing leaves. When one of these phenomena
exists, indeed, the other does not, and this succession in
two things is able to be called the existence of one and
the same thing in different stages ; but it is self-evident

Theory of Development. 147
that they are not actuaUy one and the same thing, and
that, however intimate may be the relation of growth in
the two, they have not the relation of identity. This is,
perhaps, the most common and natural sense of develop
ment ; the word, either from etymological or from conven
tional reasons, is suggestive of an actual enlargement of
substance in the thing developed. Power develops, i.e.
becomes actually larger ; there is more of it. Eome was
a smaU power at first ; it developed into a larger one.
The " march of mind " development is of this kind ; it
consists of new ideas and forms of thoughts, new dis
coveries in science, new social comforts and conveniences
arising. Philosophical development may be partly
explanatory only, partly an actuaUy enlarging one. Such
are two sorts of development ; that of explanation simply,
and that of substantial growth. The one begins with what
the other ends in ; explanation starts with its substance,
growth arrives at its substance graduaUy. In growth it
is the ultimate formation of aU which is the substance of
the thing growing ; the substance before that point only
existing on a kind of antedating view. The oak is the
grown oak, not the acorn ; the Eoman empire is Augustan
and not Eomulean Eome. The original thing is not the
real, the substantial thing, in this kind of development ;
it is only the imperfect, half-existing, ambiguous, and
strugghng element of future reahty and proper being.
Now, of these two kinds of development, the former is
of course conceded in the case before us. All allow that
Christian fundamental truth has been explained. The
whole of scientific theology is an explanatory development
of it. To take the doctrine of the Incarnation, the truth
that God became man. A whole body of Christian
theology, from the short decrees of the earliest councUs to
the full volumes of the Schoolmen, explain this truth.

1 48 Theory of Development.
The former guarded it from misconstruction ; the latter,
besides this, brought out, in detail, the logical contents of
the truth. There are inexhaustible logical contents in it.
God comprehends all that God is ; man comprehends all
that man is. All that was logically comprehended under
these two terms was brought out ; and all that was logically
comprehended in the idea ,of the union of the two was
brought out. There is question upon question in Aquinas,
!De Modo Unionis Verbi Incarnati, extending from the
most fundamental to the most distant parts of the truth : —
" Utrum Unio Verbi Incarnati sit facta in natura ml
pcrsond ; Utrum Unio Verbi Incarnati sit facta in Sup-
posito vel Hypostasi ; Utrum Hypostasis Christi post Incar
nationem sit composita ; Utrum natura humana fuerit
¦unita Verbo Accidentaliter ; Utrum Unio sit aliqwid
creatum ; Utrum idem quod assumptio ; Utrum facta per
gratiam ; Utrum merita prcecesserunt ; Utrum gratia
Unionis fuerit homini Christo naturalis!' There follow
questions, " De Modo Unionis ex parte Personce assumentis;
and then questions, " De Modo Unionis ex parte Naturce
assumptce; " the former runs out into the questions, " Utrum
Perso^nce Divince conveniat assumere naturam creatam;
Utrum Naturce Divince conveniat; Utrum una Persona
sine alia possit assumere ; Utrum plures Personce Divince
possint ; Utrum una Persona Divina possit assumere duas
naturas humanas ; " and many others. The latter runs out
into the questions, " Utrum Filius Dei assumpserit per
sonam ; Utrum assumpserit hominem ; Utrum assumpserit
humanam naturam abstractam ab omnibus individuis, vel
in omnibus individuis." Then succeed questions, " De
modo Unionis quantum ad ordinem; Utrum anima d,
Filio Dei prius fuerit assumpta quam caro ; Utrum tola
natura fuerit assumpta mediantibus partibus, vel partes
mediante toto :" Questions, " De Gratia Christi; Utrum in

Theory of Development. 149
Christo gratia hahitualis ; Utrum virtutes ; Utrum, fides ;
spes, timor:" Questions, " De Scientia Christi; De Seientia
Christi in Communi ; De Scientia Beata Animce Christi ;
De Scientia Indita; De Scientia Acquisita:" Questions,
" De Potentia Animce Christi," — aU running out into their
respective subdivisions. Here, in short, is a field of
explanatory theology, which takes the idea of the Incarna
tion, and brings out aU the possible inferences and aspects
which can be elicited from it, some nearer and more
obvious, others remoter and minuter, tiU the subject
multiphes into a whole world of subtle, and, so to caU it,
microscopic theological science. But such manifold
evolutions do not profess to add anything to the sub
stantial idea of the Incarnation, — the truth that God
became man. There is a great difference between the clear
ness, accuracy, and circumstantiality in the intellectual
image of the doctrine, which such an explanatory develop
ment as this produces, and the inteUectual image in an
ordinary Christian mind unversed in scholastic divinity ;
but the doctrine entertained is the same identical one.
But it is the latter kind of development, that of growth
and not that of explanation only, which Mr. Newman's
argument desiderates in the present case. His argument
parallels the Eoman doctrinal developments with the
doctrinal development at Nice. The latter, therefore, to
make the argument hold, must be a development in the
same sense as the Eoman ones. That is to say, that as
the doctrines of purgatory and the Papal InfalhbUity are
obviously positive substantial advances upon the doctrines
of the early Church on the subjects of the intermediate
state and the Eoman see, so the doctrine of the divinity
of our Lord, as declared at the Nicene Council, was a
positive substantial advance upon the earher teaching of
the Church with respect to our Lord's nature. It is not

150 Theory of Development.
enough for the consistency of this argument, to say that
the doctrine as to our Lord's nature was explained,
defended, and secured by additional language from mis
construction at that Council : it is necessary to say that
the doctrine positively itself grew, was itself 'more than it
had been, more at the Nicene epoch than it had been
formerly. No instance of simple explanation, however
extensive and copious, can afford a parallel case to that
positive growth to which Mr. Newman has to find a
parallel. According to Mr. Newman, those Eoman de
velopments to which he parallels the Nicene, though
caUed developments, still are distinct doctrines* from the
elementary ones on the same subject; that is to say,
other truths than what were known before, different pieces
of knowledge from former ones ; a person might know the
former and not know the latter : when he comes to know
them, he knows something which he did not know ; he
has positive fresh truth, a substantial idea in his head,
which he had not before. Consequently to the Nicene
doctrine of our Lord's divinity, for the parallel to hold,
the same must apply. There is, first of all, a development
which is identical with simply understanding a statement.
''When it is declared," says Mr. Newman, "that the
' Word became fles.h,' three wide questions open upon us
at the very announcement. What is meant by ' the
Word?' what by 'flesh?' what by 'became?' The
answers to these involve a process of investigation, and
are developments ;"^ but this kind of development will not
do here. There is then a further development which
explains a statement, and carries it into additional and
more formal statements — " a multitude of propositions,
which gather round the inspired sentence of which they
come, giving it externally the form of a doctrine."^ And
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Theory of Development. 151
this development wiU not do here either. There must be
more here. There must, in the case of the Nicene
doctrine of our Lord's nature, be positive growth of, and
such substantial addition as growth implies to, a former
elementary doctrine of the Church on that subject.
This kind of development and this basis of essential
doctrine being necessary for Mr. Newman's argument in
the present instance, it is to be observed that the hne of
thought which runs through his Essay as a whole does
not keep back such a theological position, and that his
language extends the hypothesis of growth to the funda
mental articles of Christian faith, making them to be
developments from some former elementary and seminal
doctrines ou the subjects to which they refer ; just as the
Papal Infallibihty is made the development of the early
respect to the see of St. Peter, and just as the doctrine of
purgatory, of the deification of St. Mary, and others, are
made the developments of former shadowy, primordial,
and scattered anticipations of those doctrines. He puts
both these classes of doctrines on the same ground with
respect to development. " That the hypothesis he adopts,"
he says, " accounts not only for the Athanasian Creed, but
for the creed of Pope Pius, is no fault of those who adopt
it. No one has power over the issues of his principles ;
we cannot manage our argument, and have as much of it
as we please and no more."* Eeverse the order of the two
eredenda, and the hypothesis he adopts accounts not only
for the creed of Pope Pius, but also for the Athanasian
creed. The same appeal to Church testimony, he pro
ceeds, " cannot at once condemn St. Bernard and defend
St. Athanasius ;"^ that is to say, that if the former taught
what was new about the Blessed Virgin, the latter taught
what was no less new about our Lord's divinity. With
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152 Theory of Development.
this alternative, he boldly meets the use of the Vincentian
rule, " Q^uod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus." The
Vincentian rule, as apphed by English divines, claims for
certain doctrines the evidence of early and general testi
mony; testimony to the fact that they were originally
taught by the Apostles, and received through successive
generations of Christians ultimately from their hands.
It asserts this of the doctrine of our Lord's divinity
taught by the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, and of
other doctrines. Mr. Newman does not meet this appli
cation of the rule with a direct, but a conditional answer.
He says, if the rule proves the one set of doctrines, — ^the
English, — it proves the other too, the Eoman ; if it does
not prove the latter, it does not prove the former either.
He meets the rule itself with a demand for fairness and
impartiahty in its application, whether in the negative
or affirmative, and protests against the " Lesbian " use of
it, upon which English divines have proceeded. This
conditional answer, reduced into a direct one, is simply
that the rule does not prove the later doctrines, and there
fore does not prove the earlier either. His application of
the rule is negative in the former case ; and is therefore
negative in the latter also. Indeed what he professes to
supply in this Essay — it is his very object in writing it —
is a basis for later Eoman doctrines, which is not Vincen
tian ; that is, which does not appeal to an original recep
tion, but to a law of growth as their proof; and which
does not assert the fact of an early behef, but gives a
rationale for a later one. He applies, therefore, this law
and this rationale to the case of earlier doctrines as well.
He claims anticipations in the case of the Eoman doctrines ;
and he will claim anticipations in the case of the Nicene ;
but his argument does not claim more for Nicene than for
Eoman, and asserts in either case the existence of a

Theory of Development. 153
seminal elemental doctrine, anterior to that of the subse
quently, and now, established one. How far indeed that
early received doctrine respecting the nature of our Lord,
for example, went, or what it was, his argument does not
inform us ; but its parallel does not require more than a
very seminal elemental one. The seminal doctrine in the
case, for instance, of the Papal Infallibihty is confessedly
very small and shadowy. In the case, then, of the Nicene
doctrine of our Lord's divinity, it need be no more. But,
without entering into the detaUs of the paraUel, the argu
ment asserts with sufficient force the general point, that
the Vincentian appeal to early reception cannot be
supported in the case of the Nicene, any more than it can
in the case of later Eoman doctrine ; and that the anterior
and primordial idea with respect to our Lord's nature, is
not, going by such evidence, the same with, but the seed
of, the Athanasian doctrine on that subject.
Thus commences and proceeds, then, the great course
of doctrinal development which this Essay maintains.
Starting from the smaU and seminal beginning of primi
tive doctrine, it gradually grows and enlarges, and goes
through a career analogous to the progress of science and
the march of civilisation. Truth gains fresh augmenta
tions at Nice, at Ephesus, at Chalcedon, at the Lateran
Councils, at Florence, at Trent : its first one is at Nice,
where our Lord's divinity is declared ; that step gained,
in course of some centuries it proceeds, under the infaUible
sanction, to establish the cultus of St. Mary. " Christianity
came into the world as an idea,"* and an imperfect idea. In
the case of such an idea arising, " Its beginnings are no
measure of its capabilities nor its scope. At first no one
knows what it is or what it is worth. It remains perhaps
for a time quiescent ; it tries, as it were, its limbs, and
1 Page 116.

1 5 4 Theory of Development.
proves the ground under it and feels its way. ... It seems
in suspense which way to go : it wavers. * There wiU be a
time of confusion, when conceptions and misconceptions
are in conflict ; and it is uncertain whether anything is to
come of the idea at all."^ " The dogmatic principle was in
the history of Christianity what conscience is in the his
tory of an individual mind. . . . Conscience mistakes error
for truth; and yet we believe, that on the whole, and
even in those cases where it is UI- instructed, tf its voice
be diligently obeyed, it will graduaUy be cleared, sii](ipli-
fied, and perfected. I would not (but he gives no reason
why he should not) imply that there is indistinctness
so great as this in the knowledge of the first centuries."^
" The statements of the early fathers," we are told, " are but
tokens of the multiplicity of openings which the mind of
the Church was making into the great treasure-house of
Truth; real openings, but incomplete and irregular."*
" The Church went forth from the world in haste, as the
Israelites from Egypt 'with their dough before it was
leavened, their kneading-troughs being bound up in the
clothes upon their shoulders.'"^ But out of this indistinct,
vague, and chaotic state of the original Christian idea, at
last " some definite form of doctrine arose." When one
"generation of teachers was left in ignorance, the next
generation of teachers completed their work, for the same
unwearied anxious process of thought went on."^ "The
doctrine of the Holy Trinity," found at most only in its
" rudiments "'' in earlier writers, grew up. When they had
" duly secured in the affections of the faithful the supreme
glory and worship of God incarnate, . . . they determined
the place of St. Mary in our reverence."^ "Tbe conduct
of Popes, Councils, Fathers, betokens the slow, painful,
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Theory of Development. 155
anxious taking up of new elements into an existing body
of behef."* This course of doctrine moved on; and time,
which " is necessary for the full comprehension and perfec
tion of great ideas," ^ graduaUy brought out and substan
tiated the original idea of Christianity.
We are not at present engaged in disproving, but only
in representing Mr. Newman's doctrine of development,
and showing in what sense he uses the word. We wiU,
however, just aUude to one or two arguments used about
it. The analogy of the development of the Mosaic dis
pensation appears to us, then, an obviously untrue one.
The Mosaic dispensation was not a final but a preparative
one; it suggests its own want of finality; it ever prophesies
its own issue in a higher revelation, and confesses through
out its own incompleteness and shortcomings. The
Christian dispensation, on the other hand, is a final one.
As a dispensation which is not final proceeds, by the very
force of the hypothesis, towards something which is, tends
to an issue, and aspires to a development different from,
and higher than, itself, so a dispensation which is final,
by the very force of the hypothesis, does not. The Law
was a shadow of good things to come. When those good
things came, therefore, they, and not things still further
on and beyond them, were the substance. Otherwise one
side of a relation is met by what is not its correlative one ;
and type is responded to by type, and not by antitype.
Substance is the correspondent to shadow, as son is the
correspondent to father, giver to receiver, ruler to subject :
father does not generate father, nor shadow introduce
shadow. The Law's foreshadowings, the gradual evolutions
of prophecy, anticipation strengthening, type becoming
clearer, a preparation growing age after age more critical,
and step by step approximating to that to which it led, —
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156 Theory of Development.
this ascent to a chmax, this slowness and solemnity in
ushering in an end, — the whole course of development, in
a word, in the Jewish Dispensation, so far from affording
a paraUel for the same in the Christian, makes us expect
the very contrary, for it points to that Eevelation as itself
the development which that course of Judaism had
developed into, and therefore opposes it, instead of
paraUeling it to that course, on the development point.
We do not argue from the length of the journey the length
of the end of the journey ; or from the time it takes learning
the time it must take knowing ; or from the gradual nature
of acquisition the gradual nature of possession. We can
not argue from the development of the seed to the develop
ment of the fruit ; nor from the growth of Judaism to the
growth of Judaism's consummation — Christianity. It wiU
be said that a Eevelation may be the development of an
anterior one, and may yet be developed itself into a
further and larger one, but, if so, it is not the develop
ment of that anterior revelation. It may be said that the
Christian Eevelation is only as a whole, and including all
subsequent growth, the development of the Jewish ; but
this is an ambiguous explanation here. The question is.
Was that particular revelation which immediately suc
ceeded to Judaism itself the development of Judaism, or
only the seed of a prospective grown revelation which
was to be? If the latter, all we can say is, that it
falsifies the whole process by which it was introduced.
That whole course of preparation in which Judaism
consisted, designed and adapted as it professedly was for
ushering in something ultimate and perfect, certainly fell
short of its obvious purpose, and balked expectation, if it
ushered in with so much pomp of gradual evolution, not
a climax and end, but a small beginning, a seed and
element of a future grown revelation. The same kind of

Theory of Development. 157
answer may be given to another argument urged in behalf
of this sort of development in Christianity, the argument,
viz., that the Apostles brought out the truth by degrees
in their preaching ; for this kind of reserve is, of its own
nature, only temporary, and has reference to the individual
addressed only, and not to the condition of the truth itself,
— the very fuUest and most perfect knowledge of the truth
being able to be coincident with the most gradual method
of communicating it.
Again, there is a general argument which has consider
able weight with some minds in favour of such a develop
ment of Christianity as we are speaking of, — an argument
which appeals to their intellectual prepossessions and
aspirations. There is something imposing in the idea
of a revelation growing and enlarging ; stationariness
appears to them hke stagnation; and to be tied to an
original Eevelation looks like adhering to "beggarly
elements." They see an apparent poverty and meagre-
ness, an antiquarian dryness and naiTowness in the latter
view; that of growth and development seems a larger
one. Largeness, freedom, and depth of mind seem thus
concerned in its reception, and mental qualities are
appealed to which we value and encourage in ourselves.
We like the sensation of growth and progress in our own
minds ; we sympathise with such a progress in the
system of truth to which we belong; we identify our
selves with the system, and like progress in both together.
Of this feeling, then, there is a right side and a wrong.
The love of progress, considered as the love of truth, is
right. We ought to be glad of truth growing, provided it
does grow ; and if it was less yesterday, there is a dis
interested pleasure and triumph in its being more to-day.
But there is another feehng which mixes very subtly with
this disinterested triumph, and that is the feeling arising

158 Theory of Development.
from the consideration of that knowledge, as possessed by
ourselves, in favourable contradistinction to others. The
tone of speakers who talk of the " march of mind," and
the discoveries of the nineteenth century, for example,
has obviously a considerable mixture of the flattery of
comparison in it. An age hkes to imagine itself ou some
highest ground ; sharpens the vertex for itself to stand on,
and dwells with complacency on the slowly unfolding
knowledge of its predecessors. This is applicable to
rehgion. The idea of a fixed settled Eevelation, simply
continuing, impressing the self-same truth from century
to century upon the human heart, and only guarding
itself from time to time a,gainst misconstruction ; applied
to a thousand different cases, and meeting a thousand
different positions as ages roll on, but itself standing
still, and being neither more nor less than what it was
eighteen centuries ago, does not satisfy the feeling we
speak of so well as the idea of its substantiaUy growing
up to the present day. And under this feeling the prin
ciple of progress may proceed to claim more ground than
it has a right to, may begin to usurp, and make out a case
of elementary commencement, in order that it may enjoy
the sensation of subsequent growth. It may raise pre
judices to the disadvantage of earlier times, in order that
it may gain by the contrast ; elevate unnaturally and un
truly present thought and system; give sensations of
largeness and height at the expense of humUity ; use truth
as a material for mental exercise and prowess ; and idolise
movement and advance, because it feels itself the mover.
On the other hand, the mind has another and counter
acting line of thought to this ; if it has a love for progress,
it can also see through progress ; it can see through the
accumulation of the verbal reflections of truth into the
substance which they reflect, and see that they after aU only

Theory of Development. 1 5 9
reflect it. It can say to itself, in surveying some highly,
— in appearance,— developed department of Christian
doctrine. Certainly here is a vast machinery of language
and apparatus of divisions and defences ; here is much
detail of thought and minuteness of evolution : I see that
one idea has a quantity of questions and inferences con
tained in it, which issue out of it, just as all the mathe
matical aspects of a triangle issue out of the triangle ;
nevertheless, I have only more expressions than the
early Christian had, and he had quite as fiUl and rich a
substance, because the self-same one. The doctrine of the
Incarnation, for example, the truth that God was man,
and man God, furnished to his devout imagination aU that
the greatest multiphcation of mathematical issues from it
can give me. He had aU those issues in the idea before
him. He did not consciously apprehend them indeed ;
and no more do Christians now apprehend them. If an
early Christian lived before the times of scholastic and
controversial divinity, — with the great body, not of ordinary
only, but of the most spiritual and deep Christians now,
it is the same as if they did. Nay, the very theologian
whose subtlety elicited them, could only, by a painful
effort of his inteUect, momentarily arrest his own educ
tions : his mind, hke that of the primitive Christian,
reposed in its natural devotional state, upon the one
fundamental idea. His meditation carried that idea
indeed into all those directions where meditation could
naturally foUow it ; could dweU on all the graces of our
Lord's human, and the mystery of His divine, nature ; and
so could the meditation of the early Christian too. The
same deep, rich, mental development of this truth was
admissible to his devotion, which was to the schoolman's.
He had the same devotional imagery, because he had the
same doctrinal substance. Mr. Newman's argument of

i6o Theory of Development.
development indeed gives these inferential issues a sort of
separate substantiality, and converts them into actual
growth of the body of the doctrine : " the treasure-house
of truth" is opening to the Church's theological search,
and she is beginning to enjoy, in these issues, the real
substance of the doctrine, of which she has hitherto only
had the element. Her " unwearied process of thought "
has at last brought her to the solid reality of that faith of
which she has only had as yet the foretaste. But another
view exhibits them as only the manifold reflections and
aspects of that substance which existed one and the same
all along : tells us that the devotional thoughts of St.
Ignatius and St. Polycarp dwelt on the same identical
perfect truth of an Incarnate God on which St. Thomas
Aquinas or St. Bernard dwelt; presents them following
the mystery into all that region of awe and love into
which it leads the highest Christian of to-day ; soaring in
contemplation as far as any Christian souls did after them ;
and enlightened by the self-same mentally enlarging, ex
panding, enriching dogma, which has enlightened, and
will enhghten, all saints, past and present and to come.
Such a line of thought as this, we say, will not com
pel us to give an artificial elevation to mere additions of
definition, to convert mere shadows of language into actual
new knowledge, and so attach an unreal and mechanical
character to truth. We wiU give a case in point. In the
year 1215, an opinion of a certain Abbot Joachim on the
subject of the unity of God was condemned by the CouncU
of Lateran. Joachim maintained, as the Council tells us,
a " Unity of the Divine Nature which was not a true
and proper unity, but a collective and metaphorical one :
a unity in the sense in which many men are called one
people, and many faithful one Church." Joachim adduced
the texts — " The multitude of them that believed were of

Theory of Developm,ent. 1 6 1
one heart;" "He that planteth and he that watereth are
one ;" and others of the same kind : and especially the
text, " That they may be one, even as we are one!' He
said " they,'' the faithful, are not one thing ("una res quce
communis sit omnibus"), but only one in the sense of being
one Church and one kingdom ; and thence argued that
the Divine Nature was not one thing either, but only one
in the way in which one Christian society is one. For
this the Council condemned him, and asserted that the
Divine Nature was one thing — "una res." Upon this
Mr. Newman's comment is, that the numerical unity of
the Divine Nature had, till the year a.d. 1215, only existed
as " an impression or implicit judgment in the mind of
the Church,"* and was now for the first time declared.
Ideas, he says, go on in the mind of an individual often
in a vacant, half-conscious way : " The impression made
upon the mind need not even be recognised by the parties
possessing it. . . . Nothing is of more frequent occurrence,
whether in things sensible or intellectual, than the exist
ence of such unperceived impressions. What do we mean
when we say that certain persons do not know themselves,
but that they are ruled by views which they do not them
selves recognise?"^ Such an " unperceived impression,"
such an "unrecognised view" on the subject of the unity
of God does he consider there to have been in the Church
up to the year 1215, when, for the first time, there was
a direct and distinct ecclesiastical decision upon the
numerical unity of the Divine Nature. Now, we ask,
what does the " numerical " unity or " una res!' declared
by the Lateran Council, mean or convey to us more than
simple unity, as the Church had aU along used the word ?
Here is a certain Abbot Joachim who gives a plainly
evasive and polytheistic meaning to the word Unity, and
1 University Sermons, ed. 1872, p. 323. 2 /jj;;. p. 32I.
L

1 62 Theory of Development.
the Council asserts that it has not that polytheistic mean
ing. Any other Abbot Joachim who chose to contradict
the plain meaning of a word, might explain " numerical"
unity exactly in the same way in which his predecessor
explained unity ; nor in either case, the two being con
demned, is anything more done by the Church than simply
repelling an absurd meaning from the word. To speak
of such a declaration as the coming to light of an " implicit
judgment of the Church'' which had been indeed the
"secret life of millions of souls"* hitherto, but only as
secret unconscious truth, — to speak of it as an instance of
the " birth of an idea, the development in explicit form
of what was already latent," the realisation by the Church
of " an unperceived impression," " an unrecognised view,"
which had lain hidden in her from the first, waiting for
this moment of emission, — does appear to us, we must say,
a very obvious case of making a great deal out of nothing.
The truth which Abbot Joachim contradicted was not
declared for the first time at the Council of Lateran ; it
was declared long enough before on Mount Sinai. No
orthodox Jew or Christian ever dreamed of a unity of God
which was any other than numerical unity; and the
Lateran condemnation of the notion that the Divine
Nature was only one Divine Nature in an inclusive sense,
as human nature, which contains all the individuals in it,
is one human nature, was a simple assertion of God's
unity, and no more. What we mean by God being one,
is that he is one as truly as one thing {rei), one man, for
example, is one. " Una res" is not mentioned indeed in
the Nicene Creed, but has any Council yet defined that
God is good ? Yet supposing that formally declared,
would it not be, or would it be, self-evidently absurd to
say that an implicit unconscious judgment in the Church
1 University Sermons, ed. 1872, p. 323.

Theory of Development. 163
as to the Divine goodness, now became explicit and posi
tive knowledge ? *
But to return : we have seen the kind of development
which Mr. Newman means, and of which he maintains
the Nicene Creed to be an instance, viz., a development
of positive growth, parallel to the later Eoman ones of
Purgatory, the Papal Infallibility, and others.
Now a development of this kind the Nicene Creed was
not. The Nicene Creed only asserted and guarded a
doctrine which had been held from the first, viz., that of
Christ's true and proper Divinity. The original Christian
Eevelation declared that Christ was God. If Christ was
God, He was true God ; He had true and proper Godhead.
The Nicene Creed asserted this of Him, and no more ; it
expressed this truth, and no more, by the word Homo
ousion. The word Homoousion declared that Christ was
very God with God the Father. His oneness of substance
with the Father was the term by which the Nicene Fathers
declared His true Godhead with the Father. And this
true Godhead was attributed to Christ by the original
Christian Eevelation, which declared Him to be God, and
commanded Him to be worshipped as God. Should it be
said that the word God is doubtful, and might mean
secondary as well as true Godhead, let it be weU observed
to whom the Christian Eevelation was given. The Chris
tian Eevelation was not engrafted on Paganism, which
had not the belief, but on Judaism which had the behef
in the unity of the Divine nature. " Hear, 0 Israel," was
the Law's voice, "the Lord thy God is one Lord." The
unity of God was the great dogma of the Jewish dispen
sation ; the Jews were separated from the rest of mankind,
and made a peculiar people in order to preserve that
doctrine amid the polytheism of the whole world around
1 Ibid.

164 Theory of Development.
them, and be a standing protest against it. Christ, there
fore, being revealed as God to the Jews, was revealed as
the one God, for they had none other God but one. Had
the Christian Eevelation been made to Pagans in the first
instance, and the Godhead of Christ been communicated
to people whose notions of Godhead were altogether cor
rupted and polytheistic, we cannot say what additional
safeguards would have been necessary in order to dis
tinguish the revealed true Godhead from the false godheads
of numerous other divinities. But to a Jew it was suffi
cient to say that Christ was God, to express the meaning
that he was true God, The Eevelation came to a people
whose ideas of Godhead had been purified and preserved
in strictness. Their education under the Law presented
them guarded from the risk of misapprehending Christ's
Divinity when it should be revealed ; and the faith of the
old dispensation was a security for the faith of the new.
We can hardly, indeed, understand what Mr. Newman
means by saying that there was little importance attached
to religious opinion under the old dispensation. He says
" that opinions in religion are not matters of indifference,
but have a definite bearing on the position of their holders
in the Divine Sight, is a principle which, ... I suppose,
had hardly any exercise under the Law ; the zeal and
obedience of the ancient people being employed in the
maintenance of Divine worship and the overthrow of
idolatry, not in the assertion of opinion."* Surely in
overthrowing idolatry, in maintaining a certain worship,
they asserted an opinion, and a behef, and that a strong one.
Nor was Jewish thought in that neutral and indistinct
state as to the nature of God which would fit it for being
the receptacle of an indistinct shadowy doctrine of Christ's
Godhead. The Apostles and first Christian preachers were
1 Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 339.*

Theory of Development. 165
Jews then, and came to the new truth of Christ's Godhead
with the Jewish doctrine of the unity of God in their minds.
And Christianity gave its own strict sense to the word
God by the fact of its speaking to minds who understood
it in such a sense. In this true sense, then, the Divinity
ofChrist, along with the Divinity of God the Father, and
consistently with the unity of the Divine Nature (Chris
tianity retaining all the truth of Judaism while it added
to it), was handed down to the succeeding Church. But
in course of time a heresy arose, denying that Christ was
God, and asserting Him to be a creature. The Nicene
Fathers met this heresy at the Council of Nice, and framed
a test to exclude it. That test was the " Homoousion."
The Arians used the word God in their own sense, and
therefore the word God did not exclude in their case the
wrong sense, and was not a test. But the " Homoousion"
was a test, and did as a fact answer in excluding their
sense, and therefore the orthodox adopted it. And the
Nicene Creed was an explanation, and not a growth, of
the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity.
Moreover, this ground of development is a totally
different and directly opposite ground from that which the
Nicene Fathers themselves professed in their enunciation
of doctrine. A modern theorist may plead development
for them, but would they have pleaded it for themselves ?
Would they have been thankful for the explanation, or
would they have anathematised uno ore the broacher of it ?
A person must know very httle of ecclesiastical history
who does not see what they would have done. Imagine
any one of that age, with a benevolent wish to extricate
the Fathers from what he considered a difficulty, inform
ing them that they were developers, and that their ground
was perfectly good on that view. It appears to us toler
ably certain that if such a person had maintained his

1 66 Theory of Development.
theory after his publication of it, he would have main
tained it outside the Church, and not inside. The Fathers
would have been utterly astonished at his audacity ; and
they would have told him to communicate his assistance
to heretics, for that they wanted none of it. To have
called them developers would have been to take away, in
their opinion, the very ground from under them, and to
falsify their whole position. The hypothesis would have
come into direct collision with the special declared ground
on which the whole of their doctrinal teaching went, and
would have just interfered with the very essence of their
argument. Their argument, on every occasion of heresy
arising, was one and the same thing, viz., that they had
received a certain doctrine from the first, and that this
heresy was contrary to it. They said. This is the old
doctrine that we have, the old doctrine which the Apostles
delivered, which has been the doctrine of the Church ever
since, which we received from our predecessors as they
received it from theirs, and which we now here maintain
as we received it. The same, the very same, they re
peated ; they professed to hold it because it was the same,
and for that reason only. They would not receive or
listen to any other, for the simple reason that that other
was not the same. They shut their ears in horror, the
very sound of novelty shocked them, and they seemed
polluted by the mere contact of their ears with it. " Who
ever heard of such things ?" was the universal cry of the
orthodox on Arianism appearing ; " Who is not astounded
at them ? " The Arians positively ridiculed the extreme
and obstinate simplicity of their arguments ; they taunted
the Nicene Fathers with being a^eXet? Kat IStdora'i, poor
unintellectual men, who neither had nor put forward any
reasoning whatever as the basis of their doctrine, but kept
on one unceasing, unvarying, untiring appeal to simple

Theory of Development. 1 6 7
fact. They would have drawn them by taunts from this
ground, but the Nicene Fathers were not to be taunted
off a ground of which they were sure. And they went
on, and tbe whole Churcli with them, appealing icno ore
to a simple fact ; asserting uno ore that the doctrine they
had, and which they now at the Nicene Council enunciated,
was the same, very same, self-same, original doctrine which
the Apostles had delivered and handed down. Compare,
e.g., the whole mode in which the doctrine of the "Homo
ousion" was maintained against Arius, and the mode in
which the doctrine of Transubstantiation was maintained
against Berengarius ; there is just the difference which
the fact of the one being an old fundamental received
truth, and the other being a view of gradual, later growth
in the Church, would naturally make.
Here, however, Mr. Newman introduces a counter
argument, and, to the actual inference which would be
drawn from this universal testimony, opposes certain
asserted deficiencies and ambiguities, in the expression of
the doctrine of our Lord's proper divinity in the documents
of the ante-Nicene age, now extant. He asserts that the
ante-Nicene documents do not of themselves prove the
reception of this doctrine in those times, and takes us upon
the ground which Bishop Bull went over with Petavius.
On,this point we have a word to say to begin with.
It does not, we conceive, devolve upon us then, in this
state of the case, to refute a doubt which is a contradic
tion to the plain traditional testimony of the Churcli
Universal. The Church Universal has had those docu
ments before them since the time they were written, and
it has, from the time they were written down to the
present day, asserted the fact that the doctrine of our
Lord's true and proper divinity was the received doctrine
of the Primitive Church, and communicated to it straight

1 68 Theory of Development.
by the Apostles. As far as the unanimous testimony of
age after age from the first, receiving and handing down
in turn the report of a fact, can settle the truth of that
fact, the truth of this fact is settled. The Church Catho
lic now at this moment in all her branches. Eastern and
Western, from every authorised book of instruction,
declares this fact. It does not devolve upon us to argue
for the truth of a fact under such circumstances against
an all but unsupported contradiction to it Still less,
when a view approximating to Mr. Newman's on this
subject was put forward about a century and a half ago in
the Church by a particular writer, and was formally, and
with great weight of solid intellect and learning, answered
by another, — of which answer no notice worth the name
has been taken by Mr. Newman, — does it devolve upon
us to repeat that defence of early belief which the latter
writer made. When Mr. Newman puts forward an answer
to Bishop Bull's arguments on this subject, it will then be
proper time for somebody to reconsider Bishop Bull's
arguments in connection with Mr Newman's reply. But
as yet Bishop Bull has received no reply, and therefore as
yet his arguments stand good. A note on the irplv ryevvr)-
O^fjvai, showing that Bull has made a mistake (as what
theologian, however accurate and solid, has not in some
matter of detail?) in his interpretation of that clause;
and a hint thrown here and there, intended to create a
disparaging impression of Bull's argument, but hardly
tangible enough, or indeed sufficiently declaratory even of
the objector's own meaning or purpose, to be able to be
replied to, are not an answer to Bishop Bull. An objec
tion must be made in a certain way to be properly fit for
argumentative notice at aU ; and if indefiniteness makes
it unanswerable, it makes it also nothing to be answered.
When Petavius threw doubts upon the orthodoxy of the

Theory of Development. 169
ante-Nicene period. Bull met him with a regular answer,
in which he went in detail through the whole extant body
of theology of that period, and first brought forward
copious positive evidence from that theology of those
writers having held the Nicene doctrine ; and then, as
another part of his treatise, brought forward arguments
explanatory of certain passages in it, which appeared out
of harmony with that doctrine. Now such a work cannot
be thrown aside with such a notice as the following : —
"In the question raised by various learned 'men in the
seventeenth and following century, concerning the views of
the early Fathers on the subject of our Lord's Divinity, the
one party estimate their theology by the literal force of their
separate expressions or phrases, or by the philosophical
opinions of the day; the other, by the doctrine of the Catholic
Church, as afterwards authoritatively declared. The one
party argues that those Fathers Tised not have meant more
than what was afterwards considered heresy; the other
answers that there is iwthing to pretent their meaning more.
Thus the position which Bull maintains seems to be nothing
beyond this, that the Nicene Creed is a natural he'll for inter
preting the body of ante-Nicene theology. His very aim is
to explain difficulties; now the notion of difficulties and their
explanation implies a rule to which they are apparent ex
ceptions, and in accordance with which they are to be ex
plained. Nay, the title of his work, which is a " Defence of
the Creed of Nicsea," shows that he is not seeking a conclu
sion, but imposing a view. And he proceeds both to defend
the Creed by means of the Fathers against Sandius, and to
defend the Fathers by means of the Creed against Petavius.
He defends Creed and Fathers by reconciling one with the
other. He allows that their language is not such as they
would have used, after the Creed had been imposed ; but he
says in effect that, if we will but take it in our hands and
apply it to their writings, we shall bring out and harmonise
their teaching, clear their ambiguities, and discover their
anomalous statements to be few and insignificant. In other

170 Theory of Development.
words, he begins with a presumption, and shows how natur
ally facts close round it and fall in with it, if we will but let
them. He does this- triumphantly." — Page 158.
That is to say, Mr. Newman puts aside the whole
work of Bull's ab initio; and in order to justify that
attitude to it, fixes a particular aspect upon the work.
The writer of it, he says, " imposes a view," and shows
" how facts fall in with a presumption, if we will but let
them " in other words, colours facts according to an
hypothesis ; assumes without evidence a Nicene belief in
these writers in the first instance, and then interprets
their language to signify this belief. This view of Bull's
work relieves an opponent of all necessity of going into
the contents of it, and meeting his facts ; he has only to
deny Bull's hypothesis, and the erection upon it falls to
the ground at once. He can even afford to allow that
Bull proves what he wants upon his hypothesis trium
phantly : a thing, by the way, impossible for him in the
nature of things to avoid doing on this view, seeing Bull's
hypothesis, as thus made for hiin, is itself the exact thing
which Bull wants to prove. But surely' to answer Bull's
work thus is simply to avoid it. It is to answer an op
ponent's evidence by not hearing what he has to say ; by
assuming at starting that his evidence is valueless, and
that he gets his conclusion out of his own head. Instead
of meeting what a writer's argument brings forward, his
argument itself is assumed to be a totally different one from
what he declares it to be, and metamorphosed into one
which an opponent can afford to call " triumphant," be
cause he has made it nugatory. The whole aspect here
fixed on Bull's work requires wrong statements to support
it, — statements which are made here : " The one party
argues that these fathers need not have meant more than
what was afterwards considered heresy : the other (Bull)

Theory of Development. 171
answers that there is nothing to prevent their meaning
more." This is not Bull's answer. Bull's answer is that
they must mean more, — that there is satisfactory positive
evidence from their own statements that they did mean
more. Again, "The position which Bull maintains seems
to be nothing beyond this, that the Nicene Creed is a
natural key for interpreting the body of ante-Nicene
theology." The position which Bull maintains is a great
deal beyond this. He expressly tells us what it is in his
preface to his work. — " Duriora veterum dicta catholicutn,
sensum non modo admittere sed et postulare, observato cujus-
que auctoris scopo et proposito, adductisque etiam ex singulis
sententiis aliis, luculentioribus, solide probare conatus sum!'
And if it be objected that a writer gives a partial view of
the nature of his own argument, it is sufficient in answer
to refer to the work itself, which unquestionably does
what the writer says it does. Bull, that is to say, does
not explain the duriora dicta of these writers by an appeal
to subsequent doctrine, but by an appeal to much fuller
and clearer statements from, and to the whole pervading
fundamental teaching of, those very writers themselves.
The plain state of the case is, that Bull asserts a fact and
brings forward evidence for it. If books teach something,
it is surely possible for them to show from their own
language v^hat they do teach : he asserts that the language
of the books in question shows that they teach the Nicene
truth of our Lord's absolute Divinity. It is open to any
one to call proving a fact " imposing a view,'' and a person
who brings forward evidence for a particular fact in a
court of justice, may be looked on as "imposing a view"
upon the evidential matter which he brings forward ; but
a judge would hardly interfere with an arguer on such a
ground, and stop him in limine with the distinction that
he must not " impose a view, but seek a conclusion."

172 Theory of Development.
There is no call then upon us, we repeat, to reply to an
argument to which a reply has been already given and
not answered. But as our readers may require some
specimens of Mr. Newman's mode of arguing, we will
subjoin one or two.
In the first place, then, he maintains that there is not
evidence enough in quantity, in these extant ante-Nicene
documents, to show that certain, now considered, funda
mental truths were held by the early Church. " One
divine is not equal to a Catena. We must have a whole
doctrine stated by a whole Church. The Catholic truth
in question is made up of a number of separate proposi
tions, each of wliich, if maintained without the rest, is a
heresy. In order then to prove that aU the ante-Nicene
writers taught it, it is not enough to prove that each has
gone far enough to be a heretic, — not enough to prove that
one has held that the Son is God (for so did the SabeUian,
so did the Macedonian), and another that the Father is
not the Son (for so did the Arian), and another that the
Son is equal to the Father (for so did the Tritheist), and
another that there is but one God (for so did the Uni
tarian), — not enough that many attached in some sense a
threefold power to the idea of the Almighty (for so did
almost aU the heresies that ever existed, and could not
but do so, if they accepted the New Testament at all) ; but
we must show that aU these statements at once, and
others too, are laid down by as many separate testimonies
as may fairly be taken to constitute a ' Consensus of
doctors.'"* Again, "The creeds of that early day make
no mention in their letter of the Catholic doctrine at all.
They make mention indeed of a Three ; but that there is
any mystery in the doctrine that the Three are One, that
They are co-equal, co-eternal, all increate, all incompre-
1 Page 11.

Theory of Development. 173
hensible, is not stated, and never could be gathered from
them."* Again, "If we limit our views of the teaching
of the Fathers by what they expressly state, St. Ignatius
may be considered a Patripassian, St. Justin arianises,
and St. Hippolytus is a Photinian."^ Again, " It may be
questioned whether any ante-Nicene Father distinctly
affirms either the numerical unity, or the co-equality of
the three persons."^ One large class of statements, he
decides, in early writings, is thus not sufficiently clear and
explanatory He adds that that class of statements which
is sufficiently clear and explanatory, is not sufficiently
large. " We find the word Trinity used by St. Theophilus,
St. Clement, St. Hippolytus, Tertullian, St. Cyprian,
Origen, St. Methodius ; and the Divine Circumincessio, the
most distinctive portion of the Catholic doctrine, and the
unity of power, or again of substance, are declared, with
more or less distinctness by Athenagoras, St. Irenaeus, St.
Clement, Tertullian, St. Hippolytus, Origen, and the two
SS. Dionysii." "This," he concludes with saying, "is pretty
much the whole of the evidence,"* and this is not enough.
We will forestall our answer here, so far as to say that
unless the want of evidence from other quarters as well is
shown, the mere insufficiency of evidence in ante-Nicene
documents, were it even conceded, has nothing decisive in
it ; — especiaUy such a kind of insufficiency as is instanced
here, which simply proceeds from the inability of writers
to express all the aspects of the truth they are speaking
of at once ; and that perhaps when they are purposely
giving prominence to some one or other aspect. To say
that no one of the statements in these writers, taken singly,
would logically contain the whole, i.e. aU aspects of the
doctrine in question ; that a Sabelhan interpretation may
be put upon one, a Macedonian upon another, an Arian
1 Page 12. 2 Page 14. 3 /jj^. 4 page 115.

1 74 Theory of Development.
upon another, a Tritheist upon another, an Unitarian
upon another, according as each statement in succes
sion does not of itself supply all the enunciations , of
truth which would be the contradictions to those errors,
is not saying much. Who could possibly expect such
completeness of them? Is it to be found in writers
of the latest age even ? Take up the last volume of
sermons of ever so orthodox a divine, and could not just
the same remark be made, that different statements in it
were in themselves incomplete, and that the void might
be fiUed up with SabeUian, Macedonian, Arian comple
ments, as might be? What human being ever could
possibly write a single page, on the condition that he was
to express the whole of the truth which he beheved in
each sentence ? To make such a demand as this of the
ante-Nicene Fathers, would be as much as to say, do what
you cannot do, accomplish some feat of language which
the constitution of human thought makes impossible, and
then you may command my attention.
But besides this negative ground of insufficiency, Mr.
Newman has a positive one in the actual discrepancies
of language in ante-Nicene and post-Nicene writers,
which appear so great to him, that he infers an actual
difference in their respective doctrines themselves on the
fundamental points in question, — such a difference as is
parallel to the primitive and later state of the doctrine of
Purgatory, the Papal Infallibility, and the like. Early
Fathers reject expressions which later ones use, and use
expressions which later ones reject, on the subject of our
Lord's nature.
Now the question of certain discrepancies of language,
and the inferences to be drawn from them, is evidently one
that comes under the general head and department of
language ; and is to be settled in accordance with the rules

Theory of Development. 175
and principles by which we decide on questions of lan
guage in general. And, speaking generally, it is not, we
hope, explaining away language, but simply and literaUy
explaining it, to say that language, in the case of the
persons using it, only means what they mean by it.
Language, as language only, has no meaning whatever.
A certain coUection of sounds or marks, as such, no more
means one thing than another. The question is, what
people using them understand by such sounds and marks ?
We are speaking here of the matter practically, the only
way in which we are here concerned with it, and do not
enter at all into the great and important metaphysical
controversies on the subject of language. Mr. Newman
himself says, " Ideas may remain (remain the same ideas
we presume he means, not different ones) when the
expression of them is infinitely varied."* This common
sense truth about language leads necessarily to a certain
line of judging with respect to discrepancies of language.
It is evident that it is not enough in such cases, for prov
ing the discrepancy of the ideas, to point to the discrepancy
of the language. In ordinary literature words alter their
meaning often in the course of ages ; and we do not infer,
because one word is used in one age, and another in
another, that therefore the ages had different ideas; but
only that the words themselves have different senses.
And this rule applies to the department of theological
language as well as that of others. It is not enough to
say that the early Fathers, in particular instances, used
language which later ones avoided, to prove a difference
of doctrine in the two ; it must appear that they used it
in the same sense in which the others avoided it. It may
turn out, on a reference to history, as the plainest matter
of fact in the world, that they did not. A great deal may
1 Page 60.

176 Theory of Development.
actually appear in history with respect to this matter, of
the meaning in which words were regarded, whether to use
or not use them. Writers may tell us totidem verbis in
some cases, in others by the context and whole drift of
their writing, that they do not use or reject such a word
or phrase in the obnoxious meaning in which it was
regarded afterwards. Indeed, such language in them may
often not only show no incorrectness of idea, but in the
writers no incorrectness to the very smallest extent even
of language. For the bad meaning we see constantly in
the history of theological language arose after the use of
the phrase. The early Fathers expressed themselves in
language such as suggested itself in the act of writ
ing on certain sacred subjects : heretics afterward used
this language in an obnoxious sense, and so the language
itself became obnoxious ; but the heretics and not the
early Fathers made it so. Language is able to bear
different senses ; and you cannot, by using it in one sense,
prevent others after you from using it in another. From
such a law, as from a mathematical principle, proceeded
inevitably some changes in theological language in the
early Church ; such changes proving simply, not that bad
language was used, but that language was. Language
was used ; and having been used, was perverted. What
was to prevent this course of things ? Nothing, except
that no language should have been used to begin with at
all. Some persons must live before others ; write before
others : in language antecedency is enough to create per
version. Had the early Fathers never spoken, their
words would never have been used in an unfavourable
sense ; if they afterwards were, it only proves that they
spoke. Some limitation, in particular instances, theo
logical language thus underwent as the necessary condi
tion of its existence. It was more free at first, because

Theory of Development. 177
it was then anterior to its misuse ; and the early Fathers
wrote more naturally and pliably, and were less afraid of
venturing on some of the tender parts of doctrine ; and
shrunk less from some mysteries which later theology,
though holding their truth, avoids; were less stiff, and
trusted themselves nearer the verge. And who can say
that diminution of that freedom of language is in itself
a privilege ; or, .while he respects the orthodoxy which
subsequently avoided what was misinterpreted, elevate
avoidance so caused, from a remedy for an evil, into an
advantage in itself ? Such facts are interesting ones in the
history of theological language ; but the history of lan
guage is one thing, and the history of doctrine is another.
And to go up straight from modern language to ancient,
and accuse the ancient of unsoundness because we our
selves bring with us associations of unsoundness to it, is
not philosophical or just.
We have said thus much on the point of language, to
show that words may be rejected at an earher time and
used at a later, or used at an earlier time and rejected at
a later, without any difference of idea and doctrine being
proved. An instance of the former we have in the history of
the word " Homoousion." Mr. Newman makes a point
of the word " Homoousion " having been rejected at the
CouncU of Antioch sixty years before it was received at
the Ecumenical Council of Nice. "There is one and
only one great doctrinal councU in ante-Nicene times.
It was held at Antioch, in the middle of the thhd century,
on occasion of the incipient innovations of the Syrian
heretical school. Now the Fathers then assembled, for
whatever reason, condemned, or at least withdrew, when it
came into the dispute, the word " Homoousion," which was
received at Nicsea as the special symbol of Catholicism
M

1 78 Theory of Development.
against Arius."* Now we have already, in what we have
said, answered this statement ; for Mr. Newman says, " for
whatever reason," as if it made no matter, so long as the
word was rejected, what reason it was rejected for ; whereas
we have maintained that that makes all the difference.
It so happens, however, that we have an explanation of
this fact from St. Athanasius himself, who expressly
vindicates the Antiochene Fathers from having meant, in
rejecting the word, any other than the same precise
doctrine which the Nicene Fathers meant in adopting it ;
and attributes the difference of theh respective lines about
it entirely to an accidental difference of view about the
word itself He says, " If we examine their real meaning,
we shall find that both CouncUs agree. The former was
condemning the heresy of Samosata, the latter the Arian
heresy. They who condemned the Samosatene heresy
took the word ' Homoousion ' in a corporeal sense. For
Paul sophisticated, and said, if Christ was consubstantial
with the Father, it necessarily followed that there must
be three different substances, one which is prior, and two
other sprung from that. To avoid that sophism of Paul,
the Fathers said that Christ was not consubstantial, i.e.
that He was not in that relation to the Father which
Paul said the word meant. On the other hand, those
who condemned the Arian heresy saw through the cun
ning of Paul, and considered that in things incorporeal,
especially in God, consubstantial did not mean this, and
asserted the Son to be begotten of the substance of the
Father, and yet not to be separate from the Father. . . .
The more simple Antiochene bishops did not apply that
nicety and discrimination in their treatment of the word
consubstantial, but gave it the meaning which they were
told it had. They wished to condemn Paul, and they
1 Page 13.

Theory of Development. 179
were wholly intent on that." * Here is an explanation of
the fact, then, from an authority which nobody can dispute.
It appears that there was a heretic, Paul of Samosata, at
that time, who held the modern Socinian view, or some
thing near it, that Christ -was only a man naturally, aud
was made God from being a man. They wished to test
Paul by the word " consubstantial," and make him say or
deny that Christ was of one substance with the Father.
He had a subtler head than his judges, and perplexed
them with an inference which he drew from the word,
that if the Son and the Holy Ghost were of the same
substance with the Father, the original substance of the
Father was divided into three substances. The Fathers
not seeing their way at the time as to whether the word
implied this or not, simply withdrew the word, and con
demned Paul without it. Here, then, is no difference
whatever from strict Nicene doctrine, though an abstinence
from a Nicene word ; and so far from abstaining from the
word, because it went too far for them, the Antiochene
Fathers actuaUy wish to use the word for the very purpose
for which it was used at Nice, viz., for expressing the
proper divinity of the Son; and are only turned from
doing so by the sudden suggestion of an unfavourable
meaning which the word might bear in another direction
from that in which they were then speciaUy employing it.
We wiU add that, in other ways besides the one just
exemplified, the word " Homoousion " has a history of its
own, as many words have ; and that, when it is objected
that it was sometimes bestowed in early times where it
was afterwards withheld, just as we have seen it withheld
where it was afterwards bestowed, it is saying no more
than that the word " Homoousion " is, as a word, recipient
of different meanings, which it undoubtedly is. As far
1 8. Athanas. de conciliis Arimin. et Seleuc, ch. iii., § 45.

i8o Theory of Development.
as the word itself is concerned, it does not tell us whether
it means that oneness of substance with God which the
Deus ex Deo has, or such oneness of substance with Him
as might mean simply coming from Him, and which
creatures might have ; for we express creation sometimes
as a kind of derivation, meaning nothing in so caUing it
more than creation. If instances then can be found in
which, as says a modern reviewer of the Petavian school,
angels and souls were called by early writers " Homoou-
sioi " with God, what does the fact prove ? Simply that
the word was sometimes used then in a vaguer mean
ing than that to which it was afterwards confined. To
argue from such a fact, that a certain doctrine, afterwards
tested by that word, was then only partially held, would
be to imply that the word itself made the doctrine which
it tested. The Church had a doctrine which she wanted
to preserve and guard : she had to choose from the words
which language gave her for this purpose, and she took
the word " Homoousion." It did not in itself necessarily
convey that one exclusive meaning which she vpanted it
to convey, but her own use of the word in that exclusive
meaning, in time gave it that exclusive meaning. But for
this imposition of a meaning on the word " Homoousion,"
a modern Socinian might use it ; there is nothing in the
word itself to prevent him from putting his own sense
upon it, and in that sense acknowledging our Lord to be
" Homoousion" with the Father. It is a great, providential
mercy, indeed, that the Church is thus enabled to conquer
the essential uncertainties of language. Had the whole
Arian party taken the test of the " Homoousion," her
difficulties would have been greater than what they were.
But this mercy is shown to her. By a course of steps
which we cannot analyse or follow, a word gets to have a
particular meaning so stamped upon, and conuaturalised

Theory of Development. 1 8 1
with it, that it becomes an obvious hypocrisy and deceit
for any one to take that word in a different sense of his
own. The history of language, indeed, would, we doubt
not, if accurately and deeply examined, exhibit in this
very point of view as signal proofs of the overruling
providence of God as any other department of history.
The Church, by her use of the word " Homoousion," had
fastened her exclusive sense upon it so strongly before the
Nicene Council, that the Arians encountered it defined
and pre-occupied, and were shut out by it. But all this
belongs to the history of language and not of doctrine.
The Church gave her own definite meaning to the word
"Homoousion;" that definite meaning, therefore, pre
ceded her use of the word, and her doctrine must have
been antecedently the same with that which the " Homo
ousion" subsequently expressed, in order to have made
the " Homoousion" express it.
We have anticipated, in these remarks, the other point
we are coming to. We have, then, in the second place,
particular phrases and expressions rejected in after times
used in earlier. The expressions brought forward by a
writer of the modern Petavian school are such as St.
Ignatius's, the Son of God, "according to the wUl and
power of God ;" St. Justin's, " Him who, by the wiU of
the Father, is with God, as being His Son, etc. ;" St.
Justin's again, " Derived from the Father before aU crea
tures by His power and wiU;" Tatian's, "The word
springing forth from the Divine simplicity at His will ; "
St. Hippolytus's, " Whom God the Father having wUled,
begat as He willed ;" Novatian's, " From whom, when He
wiUed, His Son the Word was born :" that in the Eecogni-
tions attributed to St. Clement, that "God begat Him,
voluntate proecedenti : " TertuUian's, " As soon as God '
willed:" that in the Apostolical Constitutions, "At the

i82 Theory of Development.
pleasure of the Father:" the inrovp^ia (ministration) of
the Son of God, found in St. Theophilus and St. Irenaeus :
St. Hippolytus's again, " God over all, because God tbe
Father has put all things under his feet;" St. Justin's
again, " caUed God from His being the first-born Son of
all creatures." Now, without entering into the question
of the genuineness of all the passages in which these
expressions are found, or the genuineness of all works iu
which the passages are, or the comparative authority of
the different writers (for some names here are heretical
ones, and others of unsound estimation from the first),
it is evident that we have here a set of expressions on a
particular subject, one of a most mysterious, incompre
hensible, and awful character, the subject, viz., of God
the Son's derivation from, and subordinateness to, qua
derivation from, God the Father. It is obvious that this
is a subject on which it is most difficult to speak with
perfect accuracy, so as to avoid, in expressing the idea of
derivation and subordinateness, the ideas of posteriority
in time, and inferiority of nature. Our natural and ordi
nary idea of derivation connects posteriority with it, and
proceeds to connect a certain inferiority of nature with
that posteriority. Here is a subject, then, on which it
would be most unfair to judge particular expressions on
a standard of literal accuracy, and throw upon them the
whole meaning which can be extracted from them by
themselves without alleviation or set-off. Persons in
expressing one side of truth will sometimes express it
too boldly, while, after aU, they only profess it to be an
expression of one side of truth, and not to contradict
another. We have, accordingly, a set of expressions put
before us, which, taken as a whole (though of some of
them we doubt whether even this can be said), are not
what later writers would use; and they are extracted

Theory of Development. 1 8 3
from the books of all their respective writers, and put
before us in that collective insulation which teUs upon
the imagination. But what, after aU, can any fair mind
draw from this, which can seriously shake our confidence
in the faith of the writers, if their works, as a whole, and
any other valid evidence about them, exhibit them as
sound? What if St. Ignatius says, "The Son of God,
according to the wiU and power of God ;" we really cannot
see the harm of the words, though such expressions may
doubtless be perverted. If it is true that the Son is de
rived from the Father, it cannot be in itself wrong to say
that He is derived from the Father in accordance with the
Father's attributes ; and will and power are attributes of
the Father. He is not derived against the Father's will
and power, and therefore He is derived in accordance with
them. The idea of " will," indeed, carries one or two of
the expressions before us into the idea of precedence in
that will, because we naturally look upon will as pre
cedent to what it wills ; and so in the order of nature it
is, though in order of time the eternal wiU and eternal
act are coeval, — a truth with which these expressions are
compatible. However, tbe writers are here wishing to
express a sacred truth most difficult to express ; and if,
before the experience of the perversion of such modes of
speaking by subsequent heretics, they do occasionally,
and quite as an exception, carry such modes of speaking
too far, it proves very little. Indeed, in some instances
which are urged, it is quite obvious on the surface that
the writer is reaUy wishing to express the idea of tbe
Son's generation being absolutely coeval with the eternal
Being of the Father ; and is using the examples from the
natural world, where the derivation is most immediately
consequent upoh the existence of the thing derived from,
in order vividly to impress that idea of coeval upon the

1 84 Theory of Development.
reader's mind. " The Son," says St. Clement of Alexan
dria, " issues from the Father quicker than the light from
the sun." Here, however, the very aim of the illustration
to express simultaneousness is turned against it, and
special attention is called to the word "quicker" as if we
were to infer that the writer had only degrees of quickness
in his mind, and only made the Son's generation from
His source "quicker" than that of light from its, not
absolutely coeval with it. We have no time, however, for
dwelling on the frivolity of such criticism. We only want
to have it understood what the task of these early writers
was, and what the subject they had to deal with, in the
instance of these casual expressions quoted from them.
In connection, again, with these modes of speaking, and
with the general doctrine of our Lord's derivation and
subordinateness as the Son, is the view held by some of
the early Fathers of the X0709 ei'Sta^ero? and X070? "wpo-
(f>opiKo<;, which we will just notice, as an interpretation is
suggested by Mr. Newman for it. Some early Fathers,
besides the eternal generation of the Son, attributed a
second and external generation to Him on His going
forth to create the universe. He had, from aU eternity,
resided as the J0709, the second Person in the Godhead,
in the bosom of the Father. But He left the bosom of
His Father, in a sense, when He went forth to create ;
and therefore the act of creation was described as a kind
of second generation on the Son's part. He was thus
spoken of, occasionally, as generated in time, just before
the creation of the world — the Aoyo^ -rrpo^opiKo^ ; such
generation, in reality, not at all interfering with His
eternal generation and Personal existence from all
eternity, as the ^do'-yo? eVSta^ero?, to which the same
writers perpetually testify. The doctrine is thus first
stated, and then has an explanation suggested for it.

Theory of Development. 185
" Five early writers, Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus, Hip
polytus, and Novatian, of whom the authority of Hippolytus
is very great, not to speak of Theophilus and Athenagoras,
whatever be thought of Tatian and Novatian, seem to speak
of Divine generation as taking place immediately before the
creation of the world, that is, as if not eternal; though at
the same time they teach that our Lord existed before that
generation. In other words, they seem to teach that He was
the Word from eternity, and became the Son at the beginning
of aU things, some of them expressly considering Him, first,
as the \o^o'i ivSiaderoi!, or Eeason, in the Father, or (as may
be speciously represented) a mere attribute; next, as the \cr/o^
'rrpo(j>opiKb'i, or Word. This doctrine, when divested of figure,
and put into literal statement, might appear nothing more or
less than this, — that at the beginning of the world the Son
was created after the likeness of the Divine attribute of Eeason,
as its image or expression, and thereby became the Divine
Word ; was made the instrument of creation, called the Son
from that ineffable favour and adoption which God had be
stowed on Him, and in due time sent into the world to
manifest God's perfections to mankind, — which, it is scarcely
necessary to say, is the doctrine of Arianism." — Note upon
Athanasius against the Arians, p. 272.
With respect to such an explanation as this, whether
Mr. Newman means to suggest it as a true or false one,
from whatever quarter it comes, we might make some
obvious remarks, and say that, on such principles of
criticism, it will be utterly impossible for any author to
protect his meaning. If writers directly attribute
personality from all eternity to the Aor/o<; before His
going forth to create the world, and a critic interprets
that personality into a metaphor, and leaves the \ojo<; a
mere Divine attribute, he has taken the law simply into
his hands. But we are calling attention now to the
Patristic view itself, and the particular subject upon
which it and the ambiguities of expression hkely to be
connected with it turn.

1 86 Theory of Development.
Here, then, is a whole line of expression before us,
which is, be it observed, the line of expression which is
urged against the early Fathers, and which has, as we
see, reference to and gathers round a particular doctrine.
It is to be remarked next that that doctrine is one
which has been allowed by the Church, since their time,
to fall into the shade ; and so been made, with all the
language connected with it, comparatively strange to
modern ears. The doctrine of the subordination, qua
origination, of the Second Person of the Trinity, with all
that mode of viewing and speaking of it which went
along with it, has been thrown into the background in
later ages ; and the Church has, since that day, avoided
all verbal dangers on this subject, by avoiding the sub
ject itself altogether. " As the Arian controversy pro
ceeded," says Mr. Newman, " a tendency was elicited to
contemplate our Lord more distinctly in His absolute
perfections than in His relation to the First Person of the
Blessed Trinity. Thus whereas the Nicene Creed speaks
of the ' Father Almighty,' and ' His only-begotten Son
our Lord, God from God, Light from Light, Very God
from Very God,' and of the Holy Ghost, ' the Lord and
Giver of Life,' we are told in the Athanasian of 'the
Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost
eternal;' and that none is afore or after other, none
is greater or less than another." " The doctrine of the
Son's subordination to the Eternal Father, which formed
so prominent a feature in ante-Nicene theology, com
paratively fell into the shade."* By " having fallen into
the shade," we suppose he does not mean ceased to be
true : for once true, it must be so always ; and we recite
it in the Nicene Creed at this day. And therefore what
such a statement of the case on the whole amounts to, is
1 Page 400.

Theory of Developm.ent. 187
little more than this : That a very mysterious and awful
doctrine, connected with our Lord's nature, was contem
plated and treated of by theologians of the early Church ;
but that though a perfectly true and sacred doctrine in
itself, its tenderness as a matter of theological handling
led to expressions, occasionally, among theologians, which
Arians and other heretics took advantage of, and that
therefore the Church thought it wisest to discourage
further dwelhng upon it. Such a statement of the case
as this, we say, does not make the real doctrinal meaning
at the bottom of all these expressions an erroneous and
unsound one, but only one which has been thrown into
the background and not attended to in later times ; and
therefore, at the worst, make such expressions over
statements of real truth, and not statements of error.
Upon objections, then, in general to the orthodoxy of
the ante-Nicene Fathers, on the ground of this whole
line of expression which is found in them, there is one
very obvious remark, suggested by what we have been
saying, to be made, and that is, that the modem objector '
forgets, in making such a charge, that those Fathers held
a deep view on this subject, which is not put forward in
the Church now, and with which the objector himself is
not familiar. He comes to a particular part of their
language, without carrying their idea to it, and says, what
strange language ! But carry their idea to it, and the
language is not strange. It is just like any other case of
theological difference of view on a subject. One theolo
gian charges another with unsound language : the latter
says. You accuse my language because you do not under
stand my idea : let me acquaint you with my idea, and if
you think that wrong, then you have a good and solid
ground against me ; but do not go on assaihng fragments
and outsides, this word, and that phrase, blindly and

1 88 Theory of Development.
without having the key to them. The ante-Nicene
Fathers may make the same answer to their modern
interpreters. They may say, You are judging our lan
guage, and yet, in the same breath, you confess that you
have allowed the idea which animated and explains it " to
fall into the shade." You come to us, you confess,
without the key to us, and then judge us as if you had it.
You attack our language, here and there, in this and that
word, half word, half sentence ; is not this poor work ?
What if you can pick a hole in our mere language here
and there? you prove nothing more in our case than
what, in the full hght of all post-Nicene doctrine, happens
in your own every day. Condemn our idea, our doctrine ;
and that is a fair, sohd argumentative line to take. But if
you cannot do this, — if that idea and doctrine confronts
you in the Nicene Creed, and you can only say that,
though perfectly true, " it has faUen into the shade," — it
is trivial and frivolous work carping at particular expres
sions of it. Such appears, we say, to be the state of the
case with respect to ante-Nicene writers. The modern
interpreter comes and sees occasional language there
which he is not accustomed to. He instantly assumes
that such language expresses a rude, incipient, and elemen
tary state of Christian truth, and forgets that it may only
express, after all, a particular truth which he is not
famUiar with : he assumes that it expresses the absence
of a doctrine which has been now arrived at, and forgets
that it may express the presence of a doctrine which has
been laid aside. Mr. Newman is constantly referring to
the " Catholic doctrine of the Trinity," as not having been
held by the early Fathers, i.e. being then only in process of
formation, in an incipient and elementary state. But would
it not be much truer to say that they held it just as much
as he himself does, but held a particular doctrine in connec-

Theory of Development. 189
tion with it, which, with him, has " faUen into the shade."
He has one mode of holding the doctrine of the Trinity
which puts aside the doctrine of the subordination of the
Second Person ; the Fathers had another mode of holding
it which put forward that doctrine. Their theology on
the subject was different from his. But it is a further
question, if this doctrine is true, as it undoubtedly is, and
the Fathers held the doctrine of the Trinity with, and the
modern interpreter without, the appeal to it, whether
their theology is, therefore, less sound and less perfect
than his.
Thus much for the aUeged insufficiency, arising either
from defects or difficulties of ante-Nicene documentary
evidence : and now for a concluding remark upon this
argument as a whole. The argument then is, that coming
to the ante-Nicene documents with no other evidence to
depend on for the fact in question but those documents
themselves, — coming to them with nothing to prepossess
or guide our judgment from any other quarter, coming to
them as simply so much extant covered parchment, with
our minds blank, — we could not gather the fact from them
that the writers held the true orthodox belief which the
Church held afterwards. Now to this we might answer
that we did not admit such insufficiency in those docu
ments even upon this isolated basis ; that if the New
Testament would as a whole, without other aid than its
own letter, prove to a really candid and rehgious mind
the proper Divinity of the Son of God, the ante-Nicene
documents would do the same. And we might appeal to
statement upon statement of the doctrine of the Deus
ex Deo as accurate, subtle, and unquestionable as could be
found in any post-Nicene writer. But it is not necessary
to recur to such a ground as this.
For, be it observed, the whole line of argument which

T 90 Theory of Development.
we have been deahng with here, simply omits the strong
positive historical testimony there is, before we come to
examine the documents of the ante-Nicene Church, to the
y fact of what the doctrine of that Church was. We have
the unanimous testimony of the whole body of Nicene
Fathers to the fact that they had received the doctrine
they asserted from their predecessors in the Church;
which predecessors had asserted that they had received it
from their predecessors, and so on up to the age of the
^ Apostles. It was the full historical belief of the Nicene
'^ Church that its doctrine had been the doctrine of the
ante-Nicene up to the commencement of Christianity. Mr.
Newman appears, indeed, to acknowledge this evidence,
but does not ; for though he maintains the " subsequent
profession of this doctrine as a presumption that it was
held before," he only means the presumption from the
subsequent profession of a truth that there were previous
elementary anticipations of it ; and makes no mention of
a declaration ever accompanying that subsequent profes
sion, which spoke to that truth's antiquity and existence
as the same identical truth as then professed from the
first. So here is a body of plain, historical evidence,
before coming to ante-Nicene documents, which the
argument before us simply omits. And whereas Mr.
Newman invalidates all explanation of difficulties in the
ante-Nicene Fathers, on the ground that to enter upon it
" is to assume that they are aU of one school, which is the
point to be proved :" here is this very point proved upon
unanimous historical testimony ; that is, if, as orthodox
members of the Church of their day, to have all one creed
is to be " of one school." We have, we say, this positive
evidence as to what the creed of the ante-Nicene Church
wag, prior to coming at all to the examination of the
documents of the ante-Nicene Church. We come to the

Theory of Development. 191
examination of them, as we do to that of the Scriptures,
with the rule of historical tradition to guide us, — a tradi
tion speaking directly to the fact of what the belief from
which those documents issued was. Every rule of proof
requires that the insufficiency of evidence in one quarter
should be no obstacle whatever to the weight of evidence
in another ; and not only permits, but compels the weaker
and obscurer part of evidence to receive light from the
stronger. Granting, then, ever so much insufficiency in
the ante-Nicene documents, taken by themselves, to prove
the point of ante-Nicene belief, here is positive evidence
from another quarter, on that point, which only requires
the absence of positive counter-evidence to be of force
and hold its ground. Let but the ante-Nicene documents
not positively contradict the historical testimony which
accompanies us to them ; let them but simply fall in with,
and negatively coincide with it, and that negative coin
cidence becomes at once a confirmation of the positive
truth, instead of that positive proof being weakened by
the negative one. It is a case which we meet with every
day in questions of evidence. How much more than this
negative proof there is in the ante-Nicene writings we
are not, as we say, concerned with proving here ; it is
sufficient that they, only bear out this universal and
undoubting testimony with respect to the faith which
produced them, and that the tradition of the Nicene age
on that point is clear, unanimous and uncontradicted.
It wUl be said, perhaps, that this argument is, after all,
only an appeal to the later doctrine as a key to the earlier
one, and that is just what the doctrine of development
does. It appears to be thought by some impossible to
refer to subsequent evidence with respect to early belief,
without referring to it as a proof of the elementary state
of that belief prior to the age of this. subsequent evidence;

192 Theory of Development.
and, accordingly, they meet all appeal, of whatever kind,
to evidence of a later age, with the general assertion that
we are implying an after-growth by appealing to it. But
this is to confound two totally distinct things ; later evi
dence may prove what was early doctrine, without later
growth having formed it. An historian does not create
by relating ; evidence does not make by proving. Nicene
testimony can appeal to ante-Nicene fact as its subject
simply, and not as its work. If it is testimony it must do
so. For testimony must act as testimony, and cannot
possibly act in any other capacity.
Such is the fact, then, which the argument before us
omits. We will add that Mr. Newman does notice it in
another place, and out of this argumentative connection ;
and we will give first his notice, and then his explanation
of it.
" Christians were bound to defend and to transmit the faith
which they had received, and they received it from the rulers
of the Church ; and, on the other hand, it was the duty of
those rulers to watch over and define this traditionary faith.
It is unnecessary to go over ground which has been traversed
so often of late years. St. Irenseus brings the subject before
us in his description of St. Polycarp, part of which has already
been quoted, and to it we may limit ourselves. ' Polycarp,'
he says, when writing against the Gnostics, ' whom we have
seen in our first youth, ever taught those lessons which he
learned from the Apostles, which the Church also transmits,
which alone are true. . . .' Nor was this the doctrine and
practice of one school only, which might be ignorant of philo
sophy; the cultivated minds of the Alexandrian Fathers,
who are said to owe so much to Pagan science, certainly
showed no gratitude or reverence towards their alleged in
structress, but maintained the supremacy of Catholic Tradition.
Clement speaks of heretical teachers as perverting Scripture,
and essaying the gate of heaven with a false key ; not raising
the veil, as he and his, by means of tradition from Christ, but

Theory of Development. 193
digging through the Church's wall. . . . 'When the Mar
cionites, Valentinians, and the like,' says Origen, ' appeal to
apocryphal works, they are saying, " Christ is in the desert ; "
when to canonical Scripture, "Lo, He is in the chambers;"
but we must not depart from that first and ecclesiastical tra
dition, nor believe otherwise than as the Churches of God by
succession have transmitted to us.' And it is recorded of
him in his youth that he never could he brought to attend
the prayers of a heretic who was in the house of his patroness,
from abomination of his doctrine — ' observing,' adds Eusebius,
' the rule of the church.' Eusebius too himself, unsatisfac
tory as is his own theology, cannot break from this funda
mental rule ; he ever speaks of the Gnostic teachers, the chief
heretics of his period (at least, before the rise of Arianism),
in terms most expressive of abhorrence and disgust. The
African, Syrian, and Arian schools are additional witnesses ;
Tertullian, at Carthage, was strenuous for the dogmatic prin
ciple, even after he had given up the traditional. The Fathers
of Asia Minor, who excommunicated Noetus, rehearse the
creed, and add, 'We declare as we have learned ;' the Fathers
of Antioch, who depose Paul of Samosata, set down in writing
the creed from Scripture, ' which,' they say, ' we received from
the beginning, and have, by tradition and in custody, in the
Catholic and Holy Church until this day by succession, as
preached by the blessed Apostles, who were eye-witnesses
and ministers of the word. . . . Who ever heard the like
hitherto V says St. Athanasius, of ApoUinarianism : ' who was
the teacher of it? who the hearer? "From Sion shall go
forth the Law of God, and the Word of the Lord from Jeru
salem;" but from whence hath this gone forth? What hell
hath burst out with it ? ' The Fathers at Nicsea stopped their
ears ; St. Irenaeus, as above quoted, says that St. Polycarp, had
he heard the Gnostic blasphemies, would have stopped his
ears, and deplored the times for which he was reserved. They
anathematised the doctrine, not because it was old, but be
cause it was new."*
Now, such a passage as this appears to, and to an
ordinary reader would, convey the notion that Mr. New-
1 Page 343.
N

194 Theory of Development.
man thoroughly estimated the testimony we have been
aUuding to for the perfect identity of Christian doctrine
in subsequent and in earliest times ; for the antiquity, in
the obvious sense of the word, as opposed to the after-
formation of Christian fundamental knowledge. But on
coming to what immediately foUows it, we find that all
this acknowledgment of early testimony has been intro
duced for the very purpose of stopping this natural infer-
j ence from it. The writer proceeds immediately to tiirn
i this very testimony against itself, and to draw, by an
ingenious turn of reasoning, from that express witness to
the fact that such doctrine was old, the immediate infer
ence that it was new. Let us see : Christians were very
much startled at the contrary doctrine, as soon as ever
taught by heretics, and shut their ears in horror. The
obvious inference from such a fact would be, that this
doctrine contradicted some old known familiar truth.
But no, says Mr. Newman, it shows just the contrary :
1 " The doctrine in question being strange and startling, it
I follows that the truth, which was its contradictory, had also
ibeen unknown to them hitherto."* We must reaUy say
that we hardly know how to reply to such reasoning as
this. There is something so strange in inferring from the
intensity with which men felt a contradiction, — the fact
that they had never known that which it was a contradic
tion to. Ordinary people would ask with some surprise,
how the contradiction could be seen before the truth was ;
but Mr. Newman asks, with equal and quite as sincere
surprise, how the truth could be seen before the contradic
tion was. Is no truth, however, seen till it is contradicted ?
And is it in the power of shameless and unlimited
* Page 344. In the recent edition (page 351) the passage stands,
" It fpUows that the truth, which was its contradictory, was also in
some respects uuknovm to them hitherto."

Theory of Development. 195
paradox to create at any moment the new truths, that
fire burns and water flows, that the eye sees and the ear
hears, and that we have bodies and souls ? Contradic
tion certainly cannot do this. And if it cannot, we do
not see how it could create and make known the great
Christian dogmas. The dogma, as plain, simple, and
matter-of-fact to tbe belief as it is incomprehensible to
the intellect and unfathomable to meditation, the early
Christian knew as he knew a fact, because he was told it ;
— just as persons know other things, because they are told
them. You tell a person a thing ; he apprehends what
you tell him ; then he knows that thing. It is not neces
sary that somebody else should come and contradict
it in order that he may know it. There is something
indeed which contradiction does do, but wUl what it
does do be much to Mr. Newman's purpose in this argu
ment? Contradiction, undoubtedly, has the effect of sharpen
ing our logical view of a truth, and we gain in the process
of answering a contradiction a more definite and fuller
logical image of the truth we defend. Contradiction to
what we know elicits new expressions of that knowledge,
and new aspects and inferences of that class which is
identical with it. But to do this is not to give us that
knowledge in the first instance. All that it gives us,
which we had not before, is that series of aspects and in
ferences, that argumentative and mathematical issue from
the substance, which is identical with the substance. As
we find ourselves only taken back, however, here to an
old subject, and have in this view of the powers of con
tradiction only another name for the view of development
itself, we need not repeat arguments which we have al
ready given ; and need only say that the new expressions
of truth which contradiction elicits, just as the expressions

196 Theory of Development.
which explanatory development, i.e. explanation, makes,
being one and the same thing, are neither of them addi
tions of substantial truth ; that there is an inference from
truth which the precise answer to contradiction expresses
for the first time, and that there is a truth itself which it
does not ; and that to perceive one of these inferences from
the truth for the first time, is not to perceive the truth for
the first time ; and that it must be shown that it is the
truth itself which is so seen, in order to answer the pur
pose of the arguer in the present case.
One remark, however, before leaving this subject. It
appears that the unanimous testimony of the early Church,
age after age, asserts that the doctrine it taught was
the same identical doctrine with the doctrine which was
delivered by the Apostles, and was received in the most
primitive days. It appears there was a doctrine so strong,
so decided, so familiar, that it was able on the very first
rise of any contradiction instantly to see and reject it.
The process of actual rejection was long, because heretics
argued and explained, and it took time to expose their
sophistries. But the feeling of rejection was full and im
mediate. Orthodox Christians closed their ears in horror
at the plain contradiction to plain known sacred truth.
Here then is strong, plain, unanimous testimony to what
was early doctrine. An ordinary thinker would certainly
say, Here, in the first place, is so much deliberate testi
mony to that point ; and here, moreover, is the ipso facto
unconscious testimony which the doctrine itseK gives to
its own antiquity, by being able from the very first to
reject immediately anything contradictory to it. We
argue the existence of substance from what comes against
it being immediately cast off: we argue the existence of
the truth, from its immediately casting off the error op
posed to it. How could anything but the idea that the

Theory of Development. 197
Son was Very God, ever exclude the idea that He was not
Very God : and this latter was immediately excluded as
soon as it arose, and nobody can doubt that it would have
been immediately excluded from the first. Nicene doc
trine's antiquity and simple identity with the truth of
original revelation is thus what these facts naturaUy take
us to. But here comes an argument which does not bring
counter evidence— a different step altogether, and quite a
legitimate one, — but which explains away this very evi
dence itself into meaning something quite contrary to
what, upon a plain common sense view, it does mean.
For here is an argument which proves that this very testi
mony of the Church to the fact of its doctrine being old,
is a testimony to the fact of its being new ; and infers
from early Christians being astonished at error, that they
did not know the truth. Here is an argument which
explains away, and turns against itself, the very fact of
that universal testimony to its own antiquity, by which
the Church's teaching, to a natural view, establishes that
antiquity. An esoteric interpretation explains the loud
assertions of the Nicene Fathers and all the after Church
as to this fact, to mean something different from what one
would naturally understand from them ; or says that the
assertors themselves did not really mean what they thought
they meant ; and that thinking they meant that they had
exactly the same doctrine with the early one, they only
really meant that that early doctrine was the seed and
rudiment of their own, it having grown so imperceptibly
that they did not perceive the change. A philosophic
criticism, that is to say, refines upon the facts of history,
analogously to the way in which one school of speculation
refines upon the idea of Inspiration, and another upon the
idea of Conscience. And the plain witness to the absolute
identity of later doctrine with early melts away.

198 Theory of Development.
What we maintain then is, that the Nicene truth is not
a development in the sense in which Mr. Newman uses
the word, that the whole testimony of antiquity declares
the contrary, and that Mr. Newman's arguments to prove
that it was not held, but only some rudiments of it, in
ante-Nicene times, are forced and unsatisfactory.
Our argument has now to take another direction, and
to caU Mr. Newman's attention to a certain result of his
theory, if true, which we cannot see how it can avoid. If
it be really true, as his theory imphes, that the doctrine
of the Divinity of our Lord maintained at Nicsea was not
the received doctrine of the earlier Church, we cannot,
for our own part, understand how he can beheve that that
doctrine was an original doctrine of the Christian revela
tion, and one which the Apostles and first promulgators
of Christianity taught. We are, of course, dealing with
Mr. Newman's argTiment here, and not for an instant with
his personal belief. His argument appears to us to run,
distinctly and quite inevitably, into the denial of the
doctrine of our Lord's Divinity as an original doctrine of
revelation. For if that doctrine was not the received one
of the early Church, and of the age of the ante-Nicene
Fathers, it could not possibly have been communicated at
the Apostolic era. If it had been, it would have been
preserved, and been the received doctrine ; not being pre
served, the necessary inference is that it had never been
dehvered. The argument throws us back upon an early
Christianity, of which the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity
was no part, and denies that doctrine to be a revelation
from tbe mouths of the first teachers of Christianity ; in
other words, to be an immediate truth of inspiration at all.
Indeed, Mr. Newman is himself not insensible to this
tendency of his theory, and he endeavours to ward it off'.
He does this by occasional disclaimers, by the balance of

Theory of Development. 199
clauses, by protests in a succeeding sentence against the
obvious meaning and necessary force of the immediately
preceding one ; and he endeavours to counteract the sub
stantial tendency of the argument by arbitrarUy putting
aside its result when he comes across it. His whole mode
of argiung here shows the uneasy and conflicting position.
He glides out of one statement into another, and ghdes
back again, as the argument itself, or as its check, requires;
he leaves the reader in doubt what he really means to say :
he asserts, he denies : though how the denial is reconcil
able with the assertion does not appear, and which of the
two he means to stand does not appear. Under the general
haze and ambiguity which conflicting sentences create, he
admits what he wants to admit into his development
theory, and excludes what he wants to exclude ; and while
he makes Nicene truth the development of something
before it, does not fairly face the result that what was
before it was not Nicene truth. For example, the ambi
guity between denial of the fact, and denial of the evidence
for it. He leaves us in doubt whether he means to say that
the Nicene doctrine was really not received in early times,
or that it was received, and that there is only not evidence
for its reception. For, after a refutation of the evidence
for that doctrine, of which the apparent effect is to prove
that there really was notthat doctrine, he adds, " It is true
that the subsequent profession of the doctrine creates a pre
sumption that it was held even before it was professed ;"*
and of certain early Church documents he says, "The
Creeds of that early day make no mention in their letter of
the Catholic doctrine (of the Trinity) at all. They make
mention indeed of a Three ; but that there is any mystery
in the doctrine that the Three are One ... is not
stated, and never could be gathered from them. Of course
1 Page 12.

200 Theory of Development.
we believe that they imply it, or rather intend it. God
forbid we should do otherwise;"* as if he meant to
say that the doctrine was held, but only that certain evi
dence was wanting. And after arguing against the ante-
Nicene Fathers, he adds in the same way : " I must not
be supposed to be ascribing any heresy to the holy men,
whose words have not always been sufficiently full or
exact to preclude the imputation."^ "Let it not be for
a moment supposed that I impugn the orthodoxy of
the early divines."^ Again we have the old ambiguity
in the meaning of the word " development " itself, as to
whether development affects the substance, or only the
expression and mode of representing a doctrine. In the
latter sense it does not, of course, prove that the doctrine
did not exist before ; and he leaves it doubtful on parti
cular occasions whether he does not use it in the latter
sense only, calhng the " developments in the doctrines of
the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation mere portions of
the original impression and modes of representing it."*
Again, a general distinction between explicit and implicit
doctrine suggests that doctrine may be held implicitly
before it is held explicitly, held latently and unconsciously
before it is held distinctly and positively. Mr. Newman's
Eoman Catholic opponent in America describes his theory
here powerfully and accurately. Mr. Newman, he says,
maintains
"a slow, painful, and laborious working out, by the Church
herself, of dogmatic truth from implicit feelings,— though
what kind of feeling an implicit feeling is, we are unable to
say. ' Thus St. Justin or St. Irenaeus might be without any
digested ideas of Purgatory, or original Sin, yet have an
intense feeUng, which they had not defined or located, both
of the fault of our first nature and of the liabilities of our
nature regenerate.' It is obvious from the whole course of
1 Page 12. 2 j,,ia_ 3 Page 15. 4 page 55.

Theory of Development. 201
Mr. Newman's reasoning, that he would predicate of the
Church, in their time, what he here predicates of St. Justin
and St. Irenseus. The Church had a vague yet intense feeling
of the truth, but had not digested it into formal propositions
or definite articles. She had a blind instinct, which, under
secret, supernatural guidance, enabled her to avoid error and
to pursue the regular course of development. She had a
secret feeling of the truth, as one may say, a natural taste for
it, and a distaste for error ; yet not that clear and distinct
understanding which would have enabled her at any moment,
on any given point, to define her faith. She only knew
enough of truth to preserve the original idea, and to elaborate
from her intense feelings, slowly and painfully, as time went
on, now one dogma and now another. What in one age is
feeling, in a succeeding age becomes opinion, and an article of
faith in a still later age. This new article gives rise to a new
intense feeling, which, in its turn, in a subsequent age becomes
opinion, to be finally, in a later age yet, imposed as dogmatic
truth. This is, so far as we can understand it, Mr. Newman's
doctrine of development, and what he means by ' working out
dogmatic truth from implicit feelings.' " — Brownson's Quarterhj
Review, No. XI., for July 1846, Boston, U.S. (a Eoman Catho
lic periodical.)
Such is the mode of explanation which would reconcile
the fact that the Nicene doctrine of our Lord's Divinity
was the development of anterior doctrine, with the fact
that it had been the doctrine of the Church from the first;
and denies its primitiveness at one argumentative call,
and allows it at another.
Now, with respect to these ambiguities and modes of
warding off the plain consequences of an argument, we
have one answer, and that is the argument itself. Here
is an argument before us, aud the question is, what does
that argument go to prove ? For example, with respect
to the ambiguity first mentioned : Does that argument
aUow Mr. Newman reaUy to oscUlate between denying the
reception itself of a certain doctrine in those early times.

202 Theory of Development.
and only denying the evidence of it ? Certainly not.
However he may alternate himself between both grounds,
his argument stands upon one. His argument requires
that, really and as a fact, the belief entertained by the
Nicene Fathers should not have been held by the ante-
Nicene. For his argument wants a parallel case to the
gTowth of later doctrines, such as Purgatory and the Papal
InfallibUity. It must, therefore, maintain that there is
that parallel case, and not only that there is no evidence
that there is not. It urges a case in point, viz., that of
Nicene growth as sanctioning Eoman growth : it must,
therefore, maintain that there is Nicene growth, and is
ante-Nicene shortcoming. Moreover, where is the differ
ence between saying that there is no evidence at aU for,
and that there was not, the belief of Nicene doctrine in
those times ? An arguer, indeed, who maintains the
existence of any positive evidence in one channel for a
fact, can, in proportion to the strength of that evidence,
afford the sUence or neutrality of another channel, for
that silence or neutrality does not negative that evidence ;
but an arguer who comes with ,no evidence from any one
channel, to no evidence in any other too, has no evidence
at all for a fact, and therefore that fact does not exist in
his opinion. A person who takes the unanimous witness
of the Nicene Fathers to the early belief in Nicene doctrine
as decided evidence for that early belief, can afford silence
or neutrality in ante-Nicene quarters without displacing
that fact; but Mr. Newman, who does not do this, and
comes with his mind blank to the ante-Nicene region of
evidence, if he disaUows the evidence there for the early
belief in question, disallows all evidence for it at all, and
therefore must hold that there was not such early belief.
However, we need not go into such considerations as these.
Mr. Newman's parallel requhes Nicene doctrine to be a

Theory of Development. 203
real substantial development of an earher doctrine as to
our Lord's nature. Eequiring the fact of an earlier doc
trine, he cannot possibly have the right to take the tone
of allowing the then reception of the later one, in spite of
want of evidence for it. His argument does not regret
the veil over a complete truth, but demands the existence
of a seminal one.
So, again, with respect to the ambiguity of the mean
ing of development, which makes Nicene development
mean substantial growth when it has to bear out Eoman,
and only explanation when it has to guard itself : the
answer is the same. Here is an argument before us.
That argument proceeds upon a parallelism, — that paral
lelism is the parallelism of Nicene growth to Eoman
growth. Let the arguer then choose whichever he likes
of these two meanings of the word development, as far as
himself is concerned ; but if his paraUel commits him to
one, that one he must take, and he must keep to it. He
says that the doctrines of Purgatory, of the Papal Infalli
bUity, of the cultus of the Virgin, are the developments of
the primitive ideas on those subjects. Does he mean to
say that they are simple explanations of those ideas, and
that if an intellectual primitive Christian had explained
to a simple one the Church's then idea of the authority of
the Bishop of Eome, and had said, ' The Bishop of Eome
is the absolute Monarch of Christendom, and has the power
himself of imposing articles of faith,' that the simple one
would have replied that that was what he believed, and
that the explainer only expressed his belief accurately and
scientifically ? If Mr. Newman does not say this, and by
the argument of his book he does not ; if the Eoman de
velopment is a vast, solid, substantial change upon the
primitive rudiment, then those Eoman doctrines are more
than explanations of the primitive ideas on these subjects,

204 Theoiy of Development.
and therefore Nicene doctrine, to support the parallel,
must be more than an explanation of the primitive idea
on its subject.
So, again, with respect to the distinction between explicit
and implicit knowledge : the answer is the same. Here
is an argument. Here is a parallelism. We must go
where they lead us, and take what they give us. Mr.
Newman may allow an implicit knowledge of the truth
of our Lord's proper Divinity in the Primitive Church ;
but it makes no difference calling it by a particular name,
if whatever he allows can only be what his argument
allows, and just as much and no more. Indeed, to allow
an implicit knowledge is not to allow much ; because
implicit knowledge in multitudes of cases is no knowledge
at all, and there is no saying what a man does know and
what he does not, in the sense of this implicit knowledge.
A man may be in time present, and as far as any actual
perception and all that we mean by knowledge goes,
totally ignorant of a truth ; and yet when the truth
afterwards is brought to him, he may discover, on looking
back into the state of his own mind, some implicit
unconscious idea of it before, — some knowledge which did
not know, and some perception which did not perceive.
In this sense the world has from its commencement
known the theory of gravitation, the theory of the arch,
the principle that water finds its own level, and number
less other scientific laws. But such implicit knowledge
as this is not what we mean by knowledge. Knowledge
is a definite perception of something : we go on for a long
time not knowing ; then there is a positive change from
this not knowing to knowing : we know a thing then,
and before we did not. No mental analysis can penetrate
to the point of transition, but practically a point of
transition there is, where the mind passes from ignorance

Theory of Development. 205
to knowledge. The world went on for ages with the
phenomena of water and its movements before it ; and
men knew that water moved, and that it moved in the
way in which it did ; and their mental eye gazed sleepily
and vacantly on it, and there were some inert tendencies,
which they could not help having, from the fact of seeing
such phenomena, to the knowledge of a law about them.
At last the law struck some one in whom the tendencies
were rather less inert than in the rest, and a spring in
his mind was touched ; something was lit up, and know
ledge took place : he caught the point ; he knew the
principle that water finds its own level Then as soon as
he had made the discovery, the rest of the world might
say that they had had implicit knowledge of it aU along.
But it is evident that the knowledge which they had
was not what we mean by knowledge : it was ignorance
with the capacity of knowledge. A mere implicit know
ledge then, attributed to the Primitive Church, of subse
quent truth need not amount to much. However, if we
were left to words to guide us in the present case, we
could not extract any plain result from them, however
their obvious meaning might seem to contain it, for the
arguer frequently says under such circumstances that he
means more than you mean by the words. The mere
words, we say, — seed and growth, elementary doctrines
and developed, implicit and explicit knowledge, and other
modes of expressing a certain relation of primitive truth
to Nicene,— -ought not simply as such, however naturally
they may convey a particular meaning to our minds, to
have that meaning imposed upon them, if the writer gives
us to understand, by his argument, that he does not use
them in that meaning. Nay, and if a writer's argument
is not attended to in interpreting his words, it will very
frequently happen that much injustice wUl be done him

2o6 Theory of Development.
in giving meanings to his words which they do not
according to the argument bear. And one writer will
under such circumstances sometimes go on for a whole
controversy, totally misunderstanding another, and arguing
upon a supposed meaning in his adversary's words, which
his real line of thought does not give them. But, as we
say, we are not left to words here. We have a parallel
to guide us to the meaning of them : we have an illustra
tion from fact of the kind of knowledge which implicit
knowledge in the present case is ; of the kind of relation
which doctrine implicit has to doctrine explicit. Nicene
development is made to sanction Eoman ; Eoman develop
ment appeals to Nicene as its parallel. Whatever relation
therefore the explicit doctrine has to the implicit in the
Eoman development, that same relation must it have in
the Nicene. Now in the case of the Eoman development
it cannot possibly be asserted that the ultimate doctrines
on the subject it is concerned with, are what could upon
any common sense and natural standard, be called the
same doctrines with the primitive ones. It could not
possibly be asserted that the Eoman doctrine on the
intermediate state is the same with the primitive one ;
that the Eoman view of the sedes Petri is the same with
the primitive one ; that the Eoman regard to St. Mary is
the same with the primitive one. To speak of the primi
tive Christian holding the Eoman Purgatory, Papacy, and
Cultus of the Virgin, would be a solecism, which would
have immediately to be explained into meaning quite
another thing than the words naturally suggest. It is
obvious that iu these instances the development has been
of a kind which leaves the primitive doctrine a mere
element and seed, compared with the real substantial
later one. Who would deny that in the instance of the
Papal Infallibility, — to fix our eye upon one, — the growth

Theory of Development. 207
had not been so enormous that the. ultimate grown
doctrine was, as far as anything cognisable goes, literaUy
one thing, and the asserted primitive element of it another
thing ? Indeed, as we have said, Mr. Newman does nol^
caU these the same doctrines, for the very object of his
Essay is to dispense with the necessity of this identity,
and give a rationale for change. Thus on the Eoman
side of the parallel, the implicit doctrine has the relation
to the developed of no more than a seed or element.
Then on the Nicene side it must be the same. The
Nicene doctrine of the proper Divinity of our Lord must
be the development of an early doctrine as to our Lord's
nature, as truly seminal and elementary as the early
asserted anticipation of Eoman doctrine is. And if it be
argued that the Nicene growth was only the first sample
aud beginning of a course, and need not be equal in
amount to, in order to sanction, later growth, the same
thing has stUl to be repeated ; if it sanction the later, it
must be real growth : now the Nicene doctrine as to our
Lord is no more than that He was very God ; the primi
tive doctrine then must have been less. The conclusion
stUl is that as an anterior doctrine preceded the Eoman
one of the Papal Infallibility, which was substantially a
different one from that of the Papal Infallibility, so an
anterior doctrine preceded the Nicene one of the proper
Divinity of our Lord, which was not the doctrine of His
proper Divinity.
Such is the result of an argumentative paraUel, though
far be it from us to press it in any other than this con
nection, or to impose the result if the parallel is not
imposed. But if Mr. Newman has the advantage of the
parallel, he must take the disadvantage of it. He has,
on the one hand, the option of allowing the Nicene
development to be of a different sort from the Eoman ;

2o8 Theory of Development.
and if he takes that, he escapes this result with respect
to Nicene doctrine, but has no benefit of parallel with
respect to Eoman. He has, on the other, the option of
saying that they are the same sort of development and of
asserting the parallel ; and if he takes that, he has the
benefit of it with respect to Eoman doctrine, and the
disadvantage of it with respect to Nicene. We are unable
to see any middle ground between these two.
It does, then, as we have said, appear to us to be a
necessary result from this line of argument, that the
doctrine of the proper Divinity of our Lord was not a
doctrine of inspiration. If it was not the received doctrine
of the Primitive Church, the first inspired teachers of that
Church could not have communicated it to her. For to
say that it was communicated and not at first understood
by the Church, or anything of that nature, would be so
much mere hypothesis. We can only know of its original
communication by the fact of its early reception. More
over, if it was not communicated, we have no ground for
saying that tbe Apostles themselves knew it, and were
inspired as to that truth. For vain would be the dis
tinction, if attempted to be urged, between what inspired
men might know from God and what they communicated
to men. We have no presumption for saying that they
knew from God any other doctrines than what they were
commissioned to communicate, or that inspiration had
esoteric dogmas for the individuals inspired to keep to
themselves. It follows that, on this theory, we have no
reason for saying that the Apostles themselves were
believers in, i.e. knew this doctrine, or therefore that, as
far as any conscious meaning in the minds of the writers
is concerned, the New Testament, from beginning to end,
contains it. A great number of texts, which Arians and
Socinians have taken advantage of, receive as a conse-

Theory of Development. 209
quence a very different interpretation from that which we
have been accustomed to give them. The New Testament
becomes an ante-Nicene document, containing those errors
and shortcomings which are charged upon the ante-
Nicene Fathers, and containing them in the same sense ;
not simply in the sense, that is, that the words of the
writers are to be explained to mean what universal tradi
tion witnesses that they did, as a fact, mean, but in the
sense that the actual doctrinal meaning of the writers was
a rudimental and defective one, — that what St. Paul, St.
John, St. Peter actuaUy meant in what they wrote was
not the Nicene truth of the proper Divinity of our Lord,
but an earher truth, the truth of that day as to our
Lord's nature, whatever that was; an elementary truth
indeed, which was capable of being expanded in the
course of centuries by the " unwearied thought " of the
Church and her theologians into that truth, but which
was not that truth itself, any more than the acorn is the
oak. In short, if a doctrine of inspiration means, as
everybody supposes it to mean, a doctrine of which the
Apostles were informed by inspiration, and being informed
of, taught, the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity is, upon
the theory we are dealing with, not a doctrine of inspira
tion ; and a whole view of early Christianity and apostohc
teaching, different from what we have been ever taught,
goes along with that fact.
And now it is time that this article should draw to an
end; a prospect which affords as much satisfaction to
ourselves as it wUl to our readers. We have trespassed
almost unprecedentedly upon established limits ; and the
task of the arguer, hard, cold, and hostUe, and though
lengthy enough to be tedious, short enough to oppress
him with the continual memento of points whoUy omitted,
and thought just begun and left off, has not been reheved
0

2 1 o Theory of Development.
by the consideration of that name which the Essay he
has been examining bears, and which he has had so
often to repeat, in a very different tone and connection from
that in which the pages of this Eeview have mentioned
it in former times.
What we have to say now is httle more than what the
reader will gather for himself, if he has gone along with
us. We have to say, that having foUowed Mr Newman's
argument through the three stages through which it has
taken us, we do not feel ourselves convinced by it. His
tests of a true and false development did not convince us
in the first place ; his argument for the Papal InfalhbUity,
the only logical hypothesis which could then settle that
question of development in his favour, did not convince
us in the second place ; his argument of reductio ad
absu/rdum, which imposes that development upon us as a
thing to which we have already committed ourselves in
the acceptance of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity,
and thrusts upon us the alternative between Eome and
infidelity, does not convince us in the third place.
Some obvious reflections, first upon the way in which
this theory of development affects the Eoman controversy
in general, and then upon this theory of development
itself in particular, shall follow in conclusion.
With respect, then, to this whole theory of develop
ment, we have to observe that its propounder introduces
it into the theological arena with this assertion : " This is
an hypothesis to account for a difficulty."* There is, then,
a difficulty, acknowledged in the Eoman development of
Christianity ; and an hypothesis is said to be wanted to
account for it. The phenomenon does not explain itself ;
it has to be explained upon an hypothesis. We recom
mend this observation, in the first instance, to the
' Page 27.

Theory of Development. 2 1 1
attention of some who appear to think that they decide
the question against the Enghsh Church, if they can
appeal to obvious difficulties on her side. It seems that
there are difficulties on both sides ; and that if one side
has to explain, the other has to explain too. Chris
tianity has now run through eighteen centuries, says
Mr. Newman, and has a history. " Christianity," there
fore, "may now legitimately be made the subject-matter of
theories." "It has been long enough in the world to
justify us in dealing with it"* in this way. Moreover,
that history has brought along with it difficulties ; for
them an hypothesis is absolutely demanded. The writer
of this Essay, then, does not give much encouragement to
what may be called the simple method of deciding the
question between the Eoman and Enghsh Churches.
He gives the Eoman Church a "theory," " an hypothesis,"
which accounts for "her difficulties;" but he does not
profess to say that she has a position free from them.
We might suggest a comparison between the Eoman
Church with this ground, and St. Augustine's Church
with its : the latter had a good deal more simple a posi
tion, if we are to judge by the greater simphcity of the
argument ; which was, if we mistake not, a simple appeal
to people's eyes. The phenomenon of St. Augustine's
Catholic Church explained itself; but the phenomenon
of the Eoman Cathohc Church, it seems, does not
explain itself, but requires an hypothesis. But we must
proceed. Having observed, then, that the thing before us is an
hypothesis, our next observation is that it is an additional
and a directly counter hypothesis to another, which has
always had, and has now, the general, public, and autho
ritative acknowledgment of the Eoman Church. The
1 Page 1.

2 1 2 Theory of Development.
pubhc and authoritative hypothesis of the Eoman Church
is that the whole of the Christian faith was revealed
entire from the first : Mr. Newman's hypothesis is that
the whole of the Christian faith has been a development
from the first. It is wholly needless for us to cite the
names of aU the Eoman divines who have, without
hesitation or quahfication, maintained this as the regular
hypothesis of theh Church : it would be, with hardly an
exception, simply transcribing the whole index from
beginning to end. It is enough to say that it is the ground
of Bellarmine. The hst exhibits at the end some dis
tinguished names of the present day; and the present
representatives of Eoman theology at Eome, and in
England, appear as the undoubting and dutiful supporters
of it. " We beheve," says Dr. Wiseman, " that no new
doctrine can be introduced into the Church, but that
every doctrine which we hold has existed and been taught
in it, ever since the time of the Apostles." "The
Apostles," says the Jesuit Perrone, the present Professor
of theology at Eome, " having been instructed by Christ
in the truths of the faith, delivered these same truths to
successors chosen by them, that they in like manner
might transmit them entire, even to the latest posterity,
such as they had received them." I admit [progress], he
says, i.e. greater elucidation o/i(Ae doctrine already received;
1 deny [progress] by the introduction of new dogmas."
" The doctrines of the faith are so many truths divinely
revealed, which the Church received from Christ to be
transmitted to posterity, and inviolably preserved from
the gnawing tooth of innovation." "The Pontiffs and
CouncUs never obtrude anything of their own, but are
witnesses of the doctrine which Christ taught and the
Apostles dehvered." " It is the constant rule of Catholics,"
says another living theologian of the Eoman Church, that

Theory of Development. 213
" no change can take place in what concerns the doctrines
of revealed rehgion." With respect to Purgatory, says
Dr. Wiseman, " Nothing can be more simple than to
estabhsh the belief of the universal Church on this
point. The only difficulty is to select such passages as
may appear the clearest. These passages ooh^&yo. precisely
the same doctrine as the Catholic Church teaches."
With reference to Indulgences, the same writer says,
" The Church in the earhest time " claimed and exercised
this power. With reference to the Invocation of Saints,
he says, " I can have only one fear in laying before you
passages on this subject. It is that in the authorities
from the Fathers, their expressions are so much stronger
than those used by Catholics at the present day, that
there is a danger (if I may so speak) of proving too
much ; they go beyond us." In a word, the ground ofthe
Eoman Church hitherto has been, that aU the Eoman
doctrines were actually revealed to the Apostles, and
really in the Church from the first, though some were not
taught publicly. This hypothesis Mr. Newman denies.
He says of the " hypothesis put forward by divines of
the Church of Eome, caUed the Disciplina Arcani, It is
maintained that doctrines which are associated with
the later ages of the Church were really in the Church
from the first, but not publicly taught,"* " This is no key
to the whole difficulty," ^ that is to say, it is not a true
hypothesis ; and he puts forward the hypothesis of
development expressly to supply its place. So then here
are two directly conflicting hypotheses put forward in
the Eoman Church as the account of her faith.
Now, upon this state of the case, one reflection, which
necessarily arises, is that with regard to general ante
cedent claim upon attention and respect, both hypotheses
1 Page 25. ^ Page 26.

214 Theery of Development.
are considerably weakened by this opposition. So long as
one account of her creed is put forward by a whole
Church, that account comes with a certain imposing
introduction to us ; but if another account is put forward
which directly conflicts with the old one, it is natural for
a person to say, ' You come to persuade me, and yet you
are fighting among yourselves as to the very foundation
upon which your own whole belief rests. The early
Church had one account, but you have two contrary ones.
You must reaUy make up your own mind before you
come to persuade me. Choose which of the two you
please, but if they oppose each other, do let me have one
of them, and not both together. Otherwise you simply
puzzle me.' The Eoman Church, we say, if she admits
two contrary hypotheses, ceases ipso facto to argue at all.
Schools and individuals in her argue, but the Church does
not. As a Church, she abandons the field of controversy
because she contradicts herself. For, be it remembered,
this is not an affair of simple phenomena, the truth of
which is visible to the eye, and does not depend at all on
the hypothesis which explains them, such as the fact that
matter faUs to the ground, the truth of which does not at
all depend on the hypothesis of gravitation ; but it is a
case where the hypothesis is appealed to for the truth of
the fact itself We want to know why we are to beheve
a doctrine, say Purgatory or any other. BeUarmine
gives one reason, and Mr. Newman a totaUy contrary one.
Nor would the remark that it was the Church's teaching
all the same in either case be to the purpose, for the
reason of the Church's teaching is the argumentative
ground on which we beheve the Church's teaching ; and
this reason is a contrary one as BeUarmine and as Mr.
Newman give it.
We must add, that Mr. Newman's hypothesis is

Theory of Development. 215
especiaUy affected by this state of the case. We have
naturally and reasonably so little confidence in our own
private judgment, that when an individual writer comes
before us with the information that he has an hypo
thesis for, a rationale to give of, the whole of Christian
doctrine, we first ask him whom he represents, and what
testimonials he can give primd facie recommendatory of
it. And when he says that it is a new one, that it is only
his own, or that of a particular circle of thinkers, and
that it is not only not borne out by, but opposed to, and
intended to supplant the whole account of the Christian
faith maintained by the Universal Church from the first,
it is then natural to say that we should not trust our own
reason enough to accept such an hypothesis, even sup
posing it to exhibit, upon examination, great argumenta
tive force. Nor are we surprised at Mr. Newman's
Eoman Catholic opponent putting the question to him
rather sharply.
" In regard to all this, we simply ask. Does the Church her
self take this view ? Does she teach that she at first received
no formal revelation, — that the revelation was given as
' unleavened dough,' to be leavened, kneaded, made up into
loaves of convenient size, baked, and prepared for use by her,
after her mission began, and she had commenced the work of
evangelising the nations 1 Does she admit her original creed
was incomplete, that it has increased and expanded, that
there have been variation and progress in her understanding
of the revelation she originally received, and that she now
understands it better, and can more readily define what it is,
than she could at first 1 Most assuredly not. She asserts
that there has been no progress, no increase, no variation of
faith ; that what she believes and teaches now is precisely
what she has always and everywhere believed and taught
from the first. She denies that she has ever added a new
article to the primitive creed ; and affirms, as Mr. Newman
himself proves in his account of the Council of Chalcedon

2 1 6 Theory of Development.
(p. 1 45), that the new definition is not a new development, a
better understanding of the faith, but simply a new definition,
against the ' novel expressions ' invented by the enemies of
religion of what, on the point defined, had always and every
where been her precise faith. In this she is right, or she is
wrong. If right, you must abandon your theory of develop
ments ; if wrong, she is a false witness for God, and your
theory of developments cannot make her worthy of confidence.
If you believe her, you cannot assert developments in your
sense of the term ; if you do not beheve her, you are no
Catholic." — Brownson's Quarterhj Eeview, p. 352.
We say if any person maintained that he did not feel a
logical call even to give a consideration, in the first
instance, to an hypothesis coming before him as this does,
we should not be prepared, for our part, to contradict such
a view. If the bare possibility of turning out true gave
an hypothesis a claim upon our consideration, we should
be living every hour of our hves in the greatest possible
neglect of our duties as rational beings; inasmuch as
many a theory comes before us daily, of which we cannot
say that it is self-evidently false, and which we yet do
not feel called upon to consider ; and these theories too
upon important subjects. To draw the line between
hypotheses which have a claim upon our consideration
and those which have not, appears to be an important
part of practical logic, and one perhaps which, however
intimately depending upon each man's common sense,
might be brought, to a certain extent, under rule, as
ordinary logic is.
To proceed. There being then now two contradictory
hypotheses put forward by the Eoman Church, or schools
in her, each of which is weakened, — and especiaUy the
latter, as far as the a priori claim upon our attention goes,
—by this contradiction ; what we thirdly observe is, that
on an actual examination and comparison of the two

Theory of Development. 2 1 7
hypotheses, we do not see that the new one is more free
from difficulties than the old one. Its difficulties indeed
have another character, and lie in another quarter ; but
they are as real. The old one hes under a great disad
vantage with respect to the department of later doctrine,
for it has to assert of such doctrine that it was actually
revealed tp the Apostles, and communicated by them to
the Church, — an assertion which is contradicted by aU
history. The new one, on the other hand, is able to take
a natural view, as far as history is concerned, of the origin
of later doctrine, and fairly to face and acknowledge the
fact of its lateness ; but it compensates for this advantage
when it comes to the department of earlier; and the
necessity of proving growth becomes as onerous to it as
the necessity of proving antiquity was to the old one. It
is now its turn to falsify history, to be unreal and arti
ficial, to make much out of nothing. It has to . convert
explanation into growth, new expression into new sub
stance ; to raise the definition of a truth, — because it moulds
it into more verbal accuracy, — into truth's rising manhood
compared with former infancy, into the plant compared
with the seed ; it is to be obviously hollow and bombastic.
Nor is this all which the new hypothesis has to do, for
it has to explain away the loud, clear, unanimous assertion
of the whole Nicene Church that its doctrine was not a
development. It has not to see a whole body of evidence
on this subject, which stares it in the face; or to put
ingenious aspects upon such evidence when it does come
across it; and "make out that it is evidence for the very
contrary of what it professes to be evidence for. Nor is
this all, for arriving at last at the era of Eevelation it
has to face the awkward result of its own argument, that
the fundamental doctrines of Christianity were not in
existence then; and a whole Socinian view of early

2 1 8 Theory of Development.
Christian theology meets it. Such are the two hypotheses ;
and if the old has difficulties on the later ground, the new
one has no less on the earher.
To this new hypothesis, then, a member of the English
Church has the same answer to make that he had to the
old one. He has only to take his stand on the old ground.
As a matter of evidence, he maintains that there is a
distinction between these two classes of doctrines, between
Nicene doctrines and Eoman, between primitive and
later ; and whereas here are two hypotheses, which, in
different ways, — one by making the whole an original
revelation, another by making the whole a development,
— attempt absolutely to identify the two, he says that,
looking to facts and history, he cannot do so. He observes
that each of these hypotheses falsifies fact according as
they maintain their respective modes of identifying these
two classes of doctrines ; according as one makes Eoman
doctrine originally revealed, and the other Nicene doctrine
subsequently developed. And he accordingly adheres to
his ground which distinguishes between them, and, avoiding
the unnatural, takes the natural part of both hypotheses.
Upon this distinction of evidence, again, it necessarily
follows that he makes a distinction in his belief as to the
two respectively, and accepts the one class of doctrines as
articles of faith, and not the other. And whereas each
of these hypotheses presses the charge of illogicalness
upon him for making this distinction in his belief, caUing
upon him to accept all or none, and denying a standing
ground between Eome and infidelity, he naturally rephes
that, supposing he took that view of evidence which they
take, it would be very illogical for him not to accept all ;
but that making a distinction in evidence, it would be
very iUogical for him not to make a distinction in belief.
Again, if he is taken off the ground of evidence into the

Theory of Development. 219
only other one, the a priori ground, he takes his stand
upon the argument of analogy ; and whereas his opponents
argue a priori that there must be an Infalhble Authority
always at hand in the Church, and therefore that there is
one, he does not aUow the presumption, and therefore
does not aUow the fact built upon it. And here again he
considers he is logical, for though if he aUowed the
necessity of a Standing InfaUible Authority, it would be
iUogical for him to deny the fact ; not aUowing that neces
sity, it is not Ulogical for him to deny it. But the denial
of the a primi ground leaves him perfectly at hberty
with respect to other grounds. And, therefore, if an
Authority presents itself to him claiming on other grounds
to be an InfaUible Authority, he may on consideration of
such grounds accept it as such, and for the purpose for
which there are grounds for thinking it infallible. And
such an authority he admits in the Universal Church,
accepting aU those definitions of the faith which it has
given, or may hereafter give. But this does not com
mit him to the decrees of the Eoman Church, because he
believes, upon evidence, the Eoman Church not to be the
Universal Church.
But after making the comparison between Mr. Newman's
hy^iothesis and the old one, and deciding that the former
has equal difficulties with the latter ; the fourth and last
observation we shaU make is one which we should not
like to omit on taking leave of the present subject.
For we must confess that, after the most attentive con
sideration which we have been able to devote to this
Essay, viewing it as a whole, we are unable to discover
that Mr. Newman has any regular hypothesis at all. We
have supposed him indeed to have one, because he teUs
us he has one, and has given it a name and called it a
Theory of Development. If a person comes forward with

2 20 Theory of Development.
a theory, it is right to presume that he wUl fairly go upon
it, and fairly make it his theory, by argumentative con
sistency, tUl we find the contrary. And therefore we
suppose beforehand Mr. Newman will do so. But on
coming to inspect his own argumentative relations to his
own theory, we discover a looseness and inconsistency
which seems to break up his theory as a theory altogether.
Mr. Newman's professed theory is indeed a simple one.
All grows out of one seed. Christianity came into the
world an elementary idea ; and from that idea all that it
subsequently gained of belief and organisation grew. So
— first on the point of belief — here is a theory which
commits the holder of it to a certain elementary exordium
of Christian belief Now, ask a Socinian what was the
exordium out of which Nicene belief grew, and he wUl
give you an exordium and a very simple one ; he will say
that Christians began with thinking our Lord a mere
man, and that the idea of His nature then grew, tUl at
the Nicene era it arrived at the idea of Godhead. This is
an intelligible exordium of Christian doctrine, supposing
Christian doctrine is really a growth. But going into the
substance actual of Mr. Newman's theory, we cannot
discover what exordium it makes, or if it makes any
exordium at all, which can be said legitimately to answer
to the assertion of growth. If the theory of development
enlarges forward, it must diminish backward ; if you say
that such a doctrine is a growth, then you imply that it
was a seed, — you must make it less as you trace it to its
beginning, tUl you come to some ultimate atom which it
originally was. Such should, according to the theory, be
Mr. Newman's original "Christian idea," when he says
" Christianity came into the world an idea," and develops
all doctrine and institution whatever out of that idea.
We naturaUy say. Here must be the original atom of

Theory of Development. 221
Christianity; and what is it? Your theory demands a
real bona fide exordium : show it. But we make the
demand in vain; we try in vain to find out what this
briginal idea is ; it nowhere appears ; we can make out
nothing of it. As soon as ever Mr. Newman's theory
approaches its elementary region, it disappears, and we
are left without any theory at all to make out the original
idea" of Christianity, to be as much or as httle as we like.
We may make it out to be fuU Nicene doctrine if we like ;
he does not prevent us : he scrupulously abstains from
preventing us, and says he has only meant to say that
there is not evidence for that doctrine having existed then,
but that we may believe it did if we like. In fact, this
exordium, on the elementary nature of which we have, in
accordance with the theory, counted aU along, turns out
to be a regular dogmatic creation when we approach it.
After all the assertion of the Nicene " Homoousion " being
a growth, he actuaUy allows us to assunie " that there is
a consensus in the ante-Nicene Church for the doctrines
of our Lord's Consubstantiality and Co- eternity with the
Almighty Father.'' He says, " There is not an article in
the Athanasian Creed concerning the Incarnation which
is not anticipated in the controversy with the Gnostics ;
there is no question which the ApoUinarian or the
Nestorian heresy raised which may not be decided in the
words of Irenseus and TertuUian."* Why, then, he has
taken us as far back as he can in the Christian history,
and instead of an elementary idea we have a full dogmatic
Nicene behef Nor is the expedient by which he tries to
make this dogmatic behef a seminal one again, and restore
consistency to his theory after he has destroyed it, a very
fortunate one. What does he say ? — " Let us aUow that
the whole circle of doctrines of which our Lord, is the
1 Page 10.

222 Theory of Development.
subject was consistently and uniformly confessed by the
Primitive Church, though not formally ratified by councU.
But it surely is otherwise with the Catholic doctrine of the
Trinity." But what is the Catholic doctrine of the
Trinity, but that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are
each God, and aU Three but one God ? So, on Mr. New
man's view, the Godhead of the Father and the Godhead
of the Son being acknowledged as the doctrine of the
early Church, and the doctrine of the Trinity not acknow-^
lodged, we have for the behef of the early Church, Duahsnij
But surely Mr. Newman wUl not assert the absurdity that
the creed of the Church was ever a Dualistic one. If the
doctrine of the Trinity is defective in such circumstances,
it can only be by the non-acknowledgment of the Divinity
of the Holy Ghost, or by His oneness with the Con
substantial Father and Son not being acknowledged : in
either case there is Dualism. Or if we have not Duahsm,
what is it that we have? And this is the elementary
idea of Christianity which the theory comes to after all ;
— a full dogmatic behef as regards one doctrine, arbitrarUy
made to stop short of another, which it is quite absurd to
suppose it should stop short of, if it existed at all. We
naturaUy say, Let us have one thing or another : a seminal
origin fairly agrees with your theory; a full dogmatic
origin fairly disagrees with it. But here is neither a
genuine dogmatic nor genuine seminal origin for Christi
anity, but an artificial, arbitrary, grotesque, unmeaning
medium between the two. Such is the course which the
theory takes when it has to make itself actual, and embody
itself in fact.
So then we ask Mr. Newman what is his theory ?
For we confess we are unable to make it out. He calls
upon the member of the Enghsh Church for his theory :
What is his own ? As far as he has explained it hitherto.

Theory of Development. 223
it is a theory of growth without a seed, — development
without an exordium. We come to what is his original
idea of Christianity, and expect to find a phUosophical
elementarity in it ; but we find nothing of the kind. The
truth is, the author is afraid of his own theory as soon as
ever it comes to its trying part ; he finds it — it is not a
grave word, but we use it gravely — beginning to pinch
him, and he drops it. He then begins, as we said before,
arbitrarUy to balance, and qualify, and do what he has
allowed none of his opponents to do in his whole Essay
— explain. His theory goes on with an easy swing
enough over its easy ground ; but it comes to its difficult
ground, and it begins to halt. Now is its turn to be
lame, feeble, confused, and unnatural ; to be as impotent
as it is arbitrary, and expect to be beheved for no kind of
reason. The Theory of Development gets over the ground
of later doctrines with a bold assurance ; but when it
comes to fundamental ones, it stops and wavers. It dares
not face its own result. But surely it does not deserve
the name of a theory if it does this. Any theory can get
over its easy ground well : it is the difficult ground which
tries it. Theories geological, chemical, astronomical, all
go on successfully enough over their easy ground, and
nobody thinks anything of them for doing it.
Again, with respect to the ecclesiastical question. We
must confess ourselves unable to see how Mr. Newman
can get a Church at all, much less a Papal Church, with
its local centre and monarchy, out of an "idea." To
quote his .American opponent : —
" Mr. Newman evidently proceeds on the assumption that
Christianity can be abstracted from the Church, and considered
apart from the institution which concretes it, as if the Church
were accidental and not essential in our holy religion.
' Christianity,' he says, ' though spoken of in prophecy as a

2 24 Theory of Development.
kingdom, came into the world as an idea rather than an insti
tution, and has had to wrap itself in clothing, and fit itself
with armour of its own providing, and form the instruments
and methods of its own prosperity and warfare.' ... Its
Divine Author, then, sent Christianity into the world a naked
and unarmed idea. By its action on us, and ours on it, it
graduaUy develops itself into an institution, which, feeble at
first, as time and pvents roll on, strengthens and fortifies itself,
now on this side and now on that ; pushes deep its roots into
the heart of humanity, sends out its branches, now in one
direction and now in another, till at length it grows up and
expands into that all-embracing authority, those profound and
comprehensive dogmas, those pure and sublime precepts, and
that rich and touching ritual, which together make up what
we to-day call the Eoman Catholic and Apostolical Church."
— Brownson's Quarterly, pp. 354, 355.
All this is to come out of the "idea," but the writer
adds —
" Ideas, not concreted, not instituted, are not potencies, are
not active, but are really to us as if they were not. The ideal
must become actual before it can be operative. If Christianity
had come into the world as an idea, it would have left the
world as it found it. Moreover, if you assume it to have
come as an idea, and to have been developed only by the
action of the human mind on it, the institutions with which
it is subsequently clothed, the authorities established in its
name, the dogmas imposed, the precepts enjoined, and the
rites prescribed, are all really the products of the human
mind ; and instead of governing the mind, may be governed,
modified, enlarged, or contracted by it at its pleasure. The
Church would be divine only in the sense philosophy or civil
government is divine." — Ibid. p. 356.
We do not see how Mr. Newman can escape this
reasoning, so far as the point for which we have quoted
it is concerned. He educes all Christianity whatever
out of an " idea." Then how can that idea become ever
more than an idea ? It may expand indefinitely, but it

Theory of Development.

must expand as an idea. It was that to begin with, and
that it must continue. Whenever it becomes an " institu
tion," something arises quite additional to the idea and
the phUosophical simplicity of the theory gives way. It
may be said that an idea can clothe itself with such an
institutional body in course of time ; but an idea can do
no such a thing. What is wanted is an external institution
or society, membership of which is necessary on its own
account ; and not merely as expressing agreement in cer
tain ideas. It is not enough for a man to think with the
Church : he must be in it. An idea cannot develop into
an institution such as this ; — into a body of which
membership is, as membership, sacramental. It may form
an association certainly, such as the Platonic philosophy
did ; the virtue of belonging to which was no more than
that of agreement in the philosophy. But this would be
a school and not a Church. As soon as ever the principle
of a Church comes in, and there is a body which it is
necessary to belong to, as such, there is something which
the " idea " does not give us. The ideal exordium which
Mr. Newman assigns to Christianity must, unless added
to from without, make Christianity continue to all time a
philosophy and not a Church. This is what the German
Eationalist educes from it; and it is the fair legitimate issue
of it. But Mr. Newman brings it to another issue, and
contrives to incorporate with it, as he works it up, the
adventitious principle of a Church.
What we say then is, that Mr. Newman has no con
sistent theory whatever. He professes a theoiy, but
admits, as circumstances require, into it, things which
contradict it, and things which it does not account for.
He has a theory on paper, and none in fact : he begins
with phUosophical simplicity, and ends in arbitrary
mixture. His theory is an inclusive one simply, and not
r

226 Theory of Development.
an explanatory one ; embracing a great number of hetero
geneous facts within one pale, but leaving them as far as
ever from making one whole. We expected on opening
this Essay to find Mr. Newman's theory for Eoman facts,
but we find nothing of the kind. What he does is to
assert the old ultra-liberal theory of Christianity, and to
join the Church of Eome ; but he does not show — what it
was the object of his Essay to show — the connection of
the two, — the accordance of his theory with his act. And
after professing to give us an hypothesis which accounts
for and fits- on to the facts of Ecclesiastical History, he
ends with having an hypothesis indeed, and having facts,
but having his hypothesis and his facts in separation.

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