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Title: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
Author: John Henry Cardinal Newman
Release Date: January 29, 2011 [EBook #35110]
Language: English
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the text.
AN ESSAY
ON THE
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN
DOCTRINE.
BY
JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN.
_SIXTH EDITION_
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS
NOTRE DAME, INDIANA
TO THE
REV. SAMUEL WILLIAM WAYTE, B.D.
PRESIDENT OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD.
MY DEAR PRESIDENT,
Not from any special interest which I anticipate you will take in this
Volume, or any sympathy you will feel in its argument, or intrinsic
fitness of any kind in my associating you and your Fellows with it,--
But, because I have nothing besides it to offer you, in token of my
sense of the gracious compliment which you and they have paid me in
making me once more a Member of a College dear to me from Undergraduate
memories;--
Also, because of the happy coincidence, that whereas its first
publication was contemporaneous with my leaving Oxford, its second
becomes, by virtue of your act, contemporaneous with a recovery of my
position there:--
Therefore it is that, without your leave or your responsibility, I take
the bold step of placing your name in the first pages of what, at my
age, I must consider the last print or reprint on which I shall ever be
engaged.
I am, my dear President,
Most sincerely yours,
JOHN H. NEWMAN.
_February 23, 1878._
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1878.
The following pages were not in the first instance written to prove the
divinity of the Catholic Religion, though ultimately they furnish a
positive argument in its behalf, but to explain certain difficulties in
its history, felt before now by the author himself, and commonly
insisted on by Protestants in controversy, as serving to blunt the force
of its _primâ facie_ and general claims on our recognition.
However beautiful and promising that Religion is in theory, its history,
we are told, is its best refutation; the inconsistencies, found age
after age in its teaching, being as patent as the simultaneous
contrarieties of religious opinion manifest in the High, Low, and Broad
branches of the Church of England.
In reply to this specious objection, it is maintained in this Essay
that, granting that some large variations of teaching in its long course
of 1800 years exist, nevertheless, these, on examination, will be found
to arise from the nature of the case, and to proceed on a law, and with
a harmony and a definite drift, and with an analogy to Scripture
revelations, which, instead of telling to their disadvantage, actually
constitute an argument in their favour, as witnessing to a
superintending Providence and a great Design in the mode and in the
circumstances of their occurrence.
Perhaps his confidence in the truth and availableness of this view has
sometimes led the author to be careless and over-liberal in his
concessions to Protestants of historical fact.
If this be so anywhere, he begs the reader in such cases to understand
him as speaking hypothetically, and in the sense of an _argumentum ad
hominem_ and _à fortiori_. Nor is such hypothetical reasoning out of
place in a publication which is addressed, not to theologians, but to
those who as yet are not even Catholics, and who, as they read history,
would scoff at any defence of Catholic doctrine which did not go the
length of covering admissions in matters of fact as broad as those which
are here ventured on.
In this new Edition of the Essay various important alterations have been
made in the arrangement of its separate parts, and some, not indeed in
its matter, but in its text.
_February 2, 1878._
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.
OCULI MEI DEFECERUNT IN SALUTARE TUUM.
It is now above eleven years since the writer of the following pages, in
one of the early Numbers of the Tracts for the Times, expressed himself
thus:--
"Considering the high gifts, and the strong claims of the
Church of Rome and her dependencies on our admiration,
reverence, love, and gratitude, how could we withstand her, as
we do; how could we refrain from being melted into tenderness,
and rushing into communion with her, but for the words of
Truth, which bid us prefer Itself to the whole world? 'He that
loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me.'
How could we learn to be severe, and execute judgment, but for
the warning of Moses against even a divinely-gifted teacher
who should preach new gods, and the anathema of St. Paul even
against Angels and Apostles who should bring in a new
doctrine?"[ix-1]
He little thought, when he so wrote, that the time would ever come when
he should feel the obstacle, which he spoke of as lying in the way of
communion with the Church of Rome, to be destitute of solid foundation.
The following work is directed towards its removal.
Having, in former publications, called attention to the supposed
difficulty, he considers himself bound to avow his present belief that
it is imaginary.
He has neither the ability to put out of hand a finished composition,
nor the wish to make a powerful and moving representation, on the great
subject of which he treats. His aim will be answered, if he succeeds in
suggesting thoughts, which in God's good time may quietly bear fruit, in
the minds of those to whom that subject is new; and which may carry
forward inquirers, who have already put themselves on the course.
If at times his tone appears positive or peremptory, he hopes this will
be imputed to the scientific character of the Work, which requires a
distinct statement of principles, and of the arguments which recommend
them.
He hopes too he shall be excused for his frequent quotations from
himself; which are necessary in order to show how he stands at present
in relation to various of his former Publications. * * *
LITTLEMORE,
_October 6, 1845_.
POSTSCRIPT.
Since the above was written, the Author has joined the Catholic Church.
It was his intention and wish to have carried his Volume through the
Press before deciding finally on this step. But when he had got some
way in the printing, he recognized in himself a conviction of the truth
of the conclusion to which the discussion leads, so clear as to
supersede further deliberation. Shortly afterwards circumstances gave
him the opportunity of acting upon it, and he felt that he had no
warrant for refusing to do so.
His first act on his conversion was to offer his Work for revision to
the proper authorities; but the offer was declined on the ground that it
was written and partly printed before he was a Catholic, and that it
would come before the reader in a more persuasive form, if he read it as
the author wrote it.
It is scarcely necessary to add that he now submits every part of the
book to the judgment of the Church, with whose doctrine, on the subjects
of which he treats, he wishes all his thoughts to be coincident.
FOOTNOTES:
[ix-1] Records of the Church, xxiv. p. 7.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENTS VIEWED IN THEMSELVES.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 3
CHAPTER I.
The Development of Ideas 33
Section 1. The Process of Development in Ideas 33
Section 2. The Kinds of Development in Ideas 41
CHAPTER II.
The Antecedent Argument in behalf of Developments in Christian
Doctrine 55
Section 1. Developments to be expected 55
Section 2. An infallible Developing Authority to be expected 75
Section 3. The existing Developments of Doctrine the probable
Fulfilment of that Expectation 92
CHAPTER III.
The Historical Argument in behalf of the existing Developments 99
Section 1. Method of Proof 99
Section 2. State of the Evidence 110
CHAPTER IV.
Instances in Illustration 122
Section 1. Instances cursorily noticed 123
§ 1. Canon of the New Testament 123
§ 2. Original Sin 126
§ 3. Infant Baptism 127
§ 4. Communion in one kind 129
§ 5. The Homoüsion 133
Section 2. Our Lord's Incarnation, and the dignity of His
Mother and of all Saints 135
Section 3. Papal Supremacy 148
PART II.
DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENTS VIEWED RELATIVELY TO DOCTRINAL CORRUPTIONS.
CHAPTER V.
Genuine Developments contrasted with Corruptions 169
Section 1. First Note of a genuine Development of an Idea:
Preservation of its Type 171
Section 2. Second Note: Continuity of its Principles 178
Section 3. Third Note: Its Power of Assimilation 185
Section 4. Fourth Note: Its Logical Sequence 189
Section 5. Fifth Note: Anticipation of its Future 195
Section 6. Sixth Note: Conservative Action upon its Past 199
Section 7. Seventh Note: Its Chronic Vigour 203
CHAPTER VI.
Application of the First Note of a true Development to the
Existing Developments of Christian Doctrine: Preservation
of its Type 207
Section 1. The Church of the First Centuries 208
Section 2. The Church of the Fourth Century 248
Section 3. The Church of the Fifth and Sixth Centuries 273
CHAPTER VII.
Application of the Second: Continuity of its Principles 323
§ 1. Principles of Christianity 323
§ 2. Supremacy of Faith 326
§ 3. Theology 336
§ 4. Scripture and its Mystical Interpretation 338
§ 5. Dogma 346
§ 6. Additional Remarks 353
CHAPTER VIII.
Application of the Third: its Assimilative Power 355
§ 1. The Assimilating Power of Dogmatic Truth 357
§ 2. The Assimilating Power of Sacramental Grace 368
CHAPTER IX.
Application of the Fourth: its Logical Sequence 383
§ 1. Pardons 384
§ 2. Penances 385
§ 3. Satisfactions 386
§ 4. Purgatory 388
§ 5. Meritorious Works 393
§ 6. The Monastic Rule 395
CHAPTER X.
Application of the Fifth: Anticipation of its Future 400
§ 1. Resurrection and Relics 401
§ 2. The Virgin Life 407
§ 3. Cultus of Saints and Angels 410
§ 4. Office of the Blessed Virgin 415
CHAPTER XI.
Application of the Sixth: Conservative Action on its Past 419
Section 1. Instances cursorily noticed 420
Section 2. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin 425
CHAPTER XII.
Application of the Seventh: its Chronic Vigour 437
CONCLUSION 445
INTRODUCTION.
Christianity has been long enough in the world to justify us in dealing
with it as a fact in the world's history. Its genius and character, its
doctrines, precepts, and objects cannot be treated as matters of private
opinion or deduction, unless we may reasonably so regard the Spartan
institutions or the religion of Mahomet. It may indeed legitimately be
made the subject-matter of theories; what is its moral and political
excellence, what its due location in the range of ideas or of facts
which we possess, whether it be divine or human, whether original or
eclectic, or both at once, how far favourable to civilization or to
literature, whether a religion for all ages or for a particular state of
society, these are questions upon the fact, or professed solutions of
the fact, and belong to the province of opinion; but to a fact do they
relate, on an admitted fact do they turn, which must be ascertained as
other facts, and surely has on the whole been so ascertained, unless the
testimony of so many centuries is to go for nothing. Christianity is no
theory of the study or the cloister. It has long since passed beyond the
letter of documents and the reasonings of individual minds, and has
become public property. Its "sound has gone out into all lands," and its
"words u...
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