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 A PAPER 
 
 READ IN 
 
 CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD, 
 
 IN 1878, 
 BY THE REV. E. S. TALBOT. 
 
 WARDEN OF KEBLE COLLEGE. 
 
 Printed by request for Private Circulation.
 
 
 THE theory of development, urged by a Roman 
 Catholic, has a defensive purpose. It is meant 
 to bar a prima facie case against the Roman Church. 
 The charge against her, which is the easiest to make 
 and to understand, is that Christianity in her hands is 
 different from the Christianity of the Apostles and the 
 early Church ; that she has added to it, altered and 
 modified it, both in doctrine as in the case of in- 
 dulgences, in worship as in the case of the exaggerated 
 homage paid to the Blessed Virgin Mary, in discipline 
 as in the case of the enforced celibacy of the Clergy. 
 Such charges are prima facie valid ; and to destroy 
 this prima facie objection is the aim of a Roman 
 champion. The theory of development promises to 
 do both this and more. It takes a bold line. It 
 aims at converting these stumbling-blocks into 
 evidences. It aims at showing that such alterations 
 and additions are the natural signs of a healthy 
 Church. And thus it seeks to get over to its own 
 side the great advantage of a, prima facie case. 
 
 And it aims at doing this by the appeal to a prin- 
 ciple or law of general application. We may state 
 it simply perhaps in the form "growth is the law 
 of life." Any living thing has a power of change, 
 increase, adaptation : remaining the same, it yet 
 incorporates new matter into itself, and developes
 
 new forms. It is obvious what a multitude of analogies 
 from the phenomena of physical life, vegetable and 
 animal, are suggested by the reference to this large 
 principle a propos of the case of Christianity : or, 
 coming to yet nearer parallels, how the case of Chris- 
 tianity would be illustrated by comparison with the 
 growth, involving both change and enlargement, of 
 political communities, and of such orders and societies 
 as live long enough to come under the principle. 
 But in particular the analogy is urged of an intel- 
 lectual idea, a philosophical doctrine (as it is called) 
 or system. Such ideas, if they live at all, are peculiarly 
 governed by this law of growth and change. They 
 mould themselves afresh in each generation under 
 the influence of circumstances. Now Christianity, 
 it is said, came into the world as an idea, and can 
 be no exception to this rule. * To compare it with 
 itself in time past,' it is urged, 'is to apply an un- 
 reasonable test ; and in fact a directly misleading one. 
 If Christianity were the same as it was long ago, this 
 could only be by its having petrified. As a fact 
 it is not the same : witness your attack upon what 
 you call Roman corruptions or innovations, and this 
 very fact is the best proof of its life.' 
 
 It is plain then how important a matter this one 
 of development is, that it raises the whole question 
 of the character of Christianity as a Revelation. And 
 we have to consider such questions as these : — 
 
 Is Christianity a developing religion at all in the 
 sense just suggested ? Is it not rather one unchanging, 
 eternal ? 
 
 Or, If we say that Christianity was intended to 
 develop, but deny the rightness of Roman develop- 
 ment, what grounds have we for doing this last, and 
 what kind of development do we acknowledge ? 
 
 UIUC
 
 Or to put the same thing in another way. 
 
 We may begin at either end. 
 
 We may deny development, and assert that Chris- 
 tianity is one and unchanging, the final and complete 
 revelation. 
 
 Or we may admit development, and say that Roman 
 development is wrong. 
 
 You will say this is contradictory : it cannot be 
 optional, however convenient controversially, to admit 
 or deny development : it must be either true or false. 
 I reply that the contradiction is one of words ; that 
 Christianity is in one sense, and is not in another, 
 subject to development: and therefore it is at our 
 option whether we use the word development in 
 the Roman sense, in which case we shall reject it; 
 or use it in our own sense, in which case we shall 
 tell the Roman Catholic that he misuses it. 
 
 Now of these two methods I think that the latter is 
 the most adequate and satisfactory ; but that the former 
 brings out most clearly a great truth, which is really 
 the most vital matter in the whole discussion. 
 
 I. Let us begin then with the former, saying, ' We 
 cannot accept the theory of development.' Why ? 
 Now, first, it is well worth while to point out that 
 the theory is new in the Roman Church itself, and for 
 the evidence of this we refer to the standard authority 
 of the Council of Trent. The method of the Council 
 of Trent was to trace back to our Lord and the 
 Apostles the whole ' Veritas et disciplina' which it 
 put forward. Thus in detail, speaking of confession 
 to a Priest, it asserts that " Universa Ecclesia semper 
 
 intellexit omnibus post Baptismum lapsis jure 
 
 divino necessariam existere ;" and again, it declares 
 that"ab ipso Ecclesiae initio," there were all the Orders, 
 and inferior Orders such as acolytes, which there now
 
 are in the Roman Church ^ We may be surprised at 
 the boldness of some of these claims made by the 
 Council: we may think the development theory easier 
 to maintain than this : but still there it is: and we must 
 observe, first, that within the Roman Church there are 
 two ways, distinct and irreconcileable with one another, 
 of defending those points to which we object; secondly, 
 that the one which is authorized is the one which 
 seems hardest to us and most plainly contradictory to 
 history; and that the use of the theory of development 
 is the sign that Roman Catholics feel the difficulty 
 themselves of accepting the view which nevertheless 
 is the authoritative view of their Church, and are 
 casting about for a better. 
 
 Now this has a temporary and immediate importance 
 in regard to that which troubles some of us, the claim 
 of Rome to possess perfect unity and certainty. For 
 here are two diverse theories on a cardinal point. If 
 one is an accredited teaching and the other an in- 
 dividual hypothesis, then there is disunion in the 
 Rome of to-day ; or if the accredited doctrine has 
 changed, then the Rome of to-day is not in harmony 
 with the Rome of Trent. 
 
 But this reference to the doctrine of Trent has 
 another bearing of a less controversial kind, upon 
 which I prefer to dwell. We may think that the 
 Council of Trent was very bold in the claim which 
 it made, that the whole Roman system of the time had 
 come down from the Apostles, and was of universal 
 unchanging authority. But by the fact of making 
 this claim under these obvious difficulties, did not 
 the Roman Church as represented by the Council 
 give her most weighty testimony to that principle 
 with which we have now to do; the principle of the 
 * Cone. Trident. Sess. xiv. cap. v. ; Sess. xxiii. cap, ii.
 
 unchanging character of the Christian Faith and 
 Church, of their catholicity in time, as I may venture 
 to call it; the principle which is the same as that 
 expressed by the famous saying, ' Quod semper, quod 
 ubique, quod ab omnibus '; the principle which is the 
 very foundation and pillar of the Church of England, 
 as we understand it, and as her authoritative formu- 
 laries represent it, and to which, whether Rome 
 exchanges it for a new doctrine of development or 
 not, we must remain faithful ? 
 
 And this brings us to the main point. Why, in the 
 sense that we do reject development, do we reject it? 
 Why do we maintain the unchanging character of the 
 Christian Faith ? 
 
 Now those great words, " Jesus Christ the same 
 yesterday, and to-day, and for ever V' evidently do not 
 decide the matter: they do not exclude development: 
 in a sense they imply it: for is not He, the Ui^ 
 changing One, also the Infinite ? and would He not have 
 us know Him more and more, and pierce deeper and 
 deeper into His Infinity r and is not this development 
 after its own sort ? But yet these w^ords do raise up 
 an image of massive and stately stability, of some- 
 thing entirely adequate and sufficing. And in their 
 context this is heightened both by what comes before, 
 " Remember them which have the rule over you, who 
 have spoken unto you the Word of God, whose faith 
 follow, considering the end of their conversation;" 
 and by what comes after, " Be not carried about with 
 divers and strange doctrines." 
 
 And I suppose we may say, that the fact of the 
 Incarnation is the fact which makes us hesitate about 
 development. Take, for example, the argument from 
 the analogy of the Old Covenant. Through the 
 
 ^ Hebrews xiii. 8.
 
 8 
 
 history of that Covenant (we are reminded) there was 
 development; and the Jewish faith and religion 
 of our Lord's time was very different from that of 
 Moses. But then at once it occurs to us to answer that 
 the Gospel stands to the Old Covenant as the full sun- 
 light to the gradually brightening dawn, and recall such 
 words as, '" God, who in sundry parts and in divers 
 manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the 
 prophets, hath in the end of these days spoken unto us" 
 — not in one part or in one manner, but fully and many- 
 sidedly — " by His Son ^,^' S. John in like manner says, 
 "The darkness passeth, and the true light nowshineth**." 
 "The Light is come into the world e." Similarly, the 
 age of the Gospel is described as " the last days V 
 And, to speak generally, the New Testament writers 
 speak as of living in an age of illumination, except 
 when a contrast is drawn with a future state not in, but 
 beyond, this world : " Now we see through a glass 
 darkly, but then face to face. Now I know^ in part^." 
 We have, then, to notice how this view passes 
 on into the early Church and becomes an axiomatic 
 principle. That the faith was traditional from the 
 beginning; that Christian loyalty consisted in main- 
 taining what Apostles had delivered ; that Apostolic 
 sees were especially authoritative, because the tradition 
 w^hich they handed on had a special guarantee of 
 authenticity ; that new doctrine was a thing to be 
 abhorred ; these, I believe, were theological common- 
 places of the early Church. 
 
 ^ Heb. i. 1. lit. ' at the end of these days.' eV iaxdrov twv rffiepuv 
 rovrojv. There is much that needs investigation in this and like 
 passages. They do not clash with true developmeut, possibly they even 
 point to it, (e. g. " The darkness passeth") But at least they seem to 
 justify an impression of the tinality of the Gospel, as compared with 
 all that preceded it. 
 
 <^ 1 John ii. 8. « John iii. 19. 
 
 f Acts ii. 17. 8 1 Cor. xiii. 12.
 
 What then are the difficulties in accepting this view? 
 
 T mention two. 
 
 The first is one which would perhaps not trouble 
 any one here, implying as it would the want of 
 elementary theological knowledge. May I put it as 
 simply as possible by saying, that it would be grounded 
 on the fact that there is development between the 
 Gospels and the Epistles, and that the religious 
 teaching of the Epistles is in this sense an altogether 
 different thing from that of the Gospels ? But we 
 have only to consider what we mean by the Revelation 
 of Jesus Christ; that (1) it consisted of His whole 
 Manifestation of Himself, His Person, His Words 
 and Deeds, ending with His Death, Exaltation, and 
 (what is sometimes overlooked) Gift of the Holy 
 Spirit at Pentecost as the fruit of His Incarnation, 
 which last are integral parts of the Gospel ; and that 
 (2) until it is thus complete, its manifestation may be 
 said not to begin, — that manifestation or witness, first 
 in the hearts of the Apostles, then through and with 
 them to the world, being especially the function of 
 the Blessed Spirit given at Pentecost. 
 
 The truth then of which we say that it is unchanging, 
 Catholic, sufficient, is not that of our Lord's parables 
 and teaching when as yet the very subject-matter 
 of the Gospel was non-existent, and when the Holy 
 Spirit not being yet given there were many things 
 which He had to say to them which they could 
 not then bear; but it is as the Church has called 
 it, the " Fides Apostolica," the faith of Pentecost, the 
 whole Manifestation of Jesus Christ at once com- 
 pleted in, and interpreted by, the Holy Spirit given 
 to the Church. 
 
 A development then from the Gospels to the 
 Epistles is not a difficulty.
 
 10 
 
 But it has been very seriously urged, that between 
 the Epistles (or New Testament) and the Creed 
 of Nicaea, with its formulated, or, as borrowing the 
 word in question, we might say, its developed doctrine 
 of the Trinity, there is a long development. 
 
 Now this is a very important part of the matter. 
 It is all-important that we should know what relation 
 the Nicene Faith bears to the Faith of the Apostles : 
 and I suppose we shall be glad if we find that the 
 account which the Nicene Fathers would themselves un- 
 questionably have given is the true one ; namely, that 
 it is one and the same truth, expressed more elabo- 
 rately, guarded on this side and on that against mis- 
 interpretation and attack, but absolutely the same 
 and unchanged, as little added to as diminished from. 
 But into this part of the subject I cannot enter now. 
 It deserves to be treated separately, and I hope that 
 
 Mr. will tell us something about it. To consider 
 
 it thoroughly, it would be required to examine single 
 passages, in which individual Ante-Nicene Fathers 
 seem to use language in some sense negative of full 
 Nicene doctrine. These must be examined in 
 context with the whole works of the writer. This 
 great work has been done by Bishop Bull in the 
 Defensio Fidei Nicaenae, for which, by the bye, 
 he received the thanks of the Gallican branch of 
 the Roman Church. I must express my regret at my 
 own want of acquaintance with it. But to express 
 briefly what seems to me the truth, looking at the 
 matter superficially from the outside, I think that the 
 so-called development between the Apostolic times 
 and those of Nicaea is of this kind. It is as though a 
 man who held a conviction broadly, clearly, un- 
 assailably in his own mind, were after a while 
 catechized about it : " Do you mean this r" " do you
 
 11 
 
 mean tliat?" "how do you reconcile this then with 
 the other ?" " may I infer then this from what you 
 hold ?" " do you agree then with so and so, who has 
 used words very like yours ?" and as though to each 
 of these questions, some of which would have occurred 
 to him before, some of which would be new, he w^ere 
 to answer yes or no ; and then at the end, out of 
 these assents and dissents systematically put together, 
 there were drawn up an explicit and formulated 
 statement of his views. The faith of the Apostolic 
 Church seems to me to correspond to the state of the 
 man before he is subjected to the catechetical process, 
 that of the Nicene Church to his state afterwards. 
 There would be no addition, no change, no develop- 
 ment ; but only clearness and explicitness. And just 
 as this supposed individual might easily make slips 
 in the answers which he would give, from not perfectly 
 understanding a question suddenly put to him, or 
 from using language without perceiving that for some 
 reason it would convey to others a different impression 
 from that which he intended, or from not having 
 realized some of the bearings of his conviction which 
 yet afterwards he himself or even another person 
 could correct by comparing the particular answer 
 with the general tenour of the rest ; so it may 
 be that we are to explain the statements of Ante- 
 Nicene Fathers which vary in form or substance from 
 the Nicene exposition of the faith, to say nothing of 
 the aberrations, intellectual or other, of individual 
 minds, for which, in estimating the mind of a Church, 
 vou must allow. 
 
 Taking then some such view as this of the relation 
 of the Nicene position to previous antiquity, let us 
 turn to such points as the infallibility of thePope, 
 purgatory, and most of all the worship of the Blessed
 
 12 
 
 Virgin Mary and the doctrines of her assumption 
 and immaculate conception ; and compare the two 
 cases. Apply the same tests. Imagine the same 
 kind of questions put to the Apostolic Christian ; and 
 could it possibly be said that you could elicit from 
 him, merely by making him put his convictions 
 into explicit form, an assertion of the Roman doctrines 
 to which I have referred ? 
 
 Thus then, for T cannot dwell longer upon this, we 
 are, I think, justified in saying that we cannot accept 
 Roman development because the Christian Faith is not 
 a thing of change, but always one and always the same. 
 
 II. But this was only one of the positions which 
 I submitted to you that we must take. It is clear, 
 broad, effective, true ; but it needs to be supplemented 
 by the other, viz. by saying that there is a development 
 of which Christianity admits, but that Roman develop- 
 ment is not of that kind. 
 
 Now the developing quality in Christianity follows, 
 I suppose, from its human side (as its unchangeableness 
 follows from its divine side) ; from the likeness which, so 
 far as it is a system or idea, its history must have to that 
 of other systems or ideas ; from the fact that it has had a 
 historic course appointed for it by God, and that as it 
 has pursued its way amid ever changing and ever new 
 surroundings, and has had to face new needs and ques- 
 tions, it has been ever producing things newand old, and 
 fresh light has been constantly cast on the ' old Truths 
 ever new,' and fresh meanings drawn out of them. 
 ■ This is true development; this is the glory of 
 Christianity, proving it to be a living religion. And 
 this is the theme and subject of the Christian historian, 
 and of a Christian philosophy of history. 
 
 The question then now arises. Is Roman develop- 
 ment the true outcome and expression of this charac-
 
 18 
 
 teristic of Christianity ? Is this the role which Roman 
 development can claim to have played r 
 
 Now, in the first place, it certainly seems as though 
 we had anticipated the answer to this question by our 
 discussion of the parallel between the Nicene Creed 
 and the results of Roman development. For if it 
 be true that it is a development by method of addition, 
 of new discovery, or of new revelation from the Holy 
 Spirit to the Church ; then it is prima facie at least 
 not such a development as that of which I was just 
 speaking, and which consists in interpreting, explain- 
 ing, realizing, in fuller distinctness the meaning of 
 the same unchanging truths. 
 
 But waiving this, let us consider further. A de- 
 velopment such as Christianity should have ought to 
 have an affinity with the times in which it takes place, 
 ought to produce that which meets their deeper needs, 
 oueht to sanctify the institutions and movements 
 which are characteristic of each period, and also to 
 provide the principles which correct their excesses. 
 And it ought to do this in a way which we should 
 feel to be Divine, because evidently not of human 
 reasoning or framing, but operating by some inner 
 secret of wisdom and power. I say this is what the 
 development of Christianity should be, but we can 
 illustrate by examples of what actually has been. 
 See, for example, how in the ages when the 
 establishment of strong authority was a prime 
 condition of progress Christianity sanctified and 
 strengthened the principle of authority by the re- 
 ligious character which she gave to the imperial and 
 mediaeval monarchies, while at the same time she 
 tempered it by infusing that sense of responsibility 
 which always accompanies the acceptance of authority 
 as a Divine trust; and then, when authority ran into
 
 14 
 
 excess, forgot itself, and distorted its religious sanc- 
 tion into proud theories of Divine right, how the Gospel 
 provided the counteracting motive, revealed a demo- 
 cratic side, inspired the whole movement of modern 
 liberty, and provided the principles which distinguish 
 true freedom and equality from licence or from 
 a coarse grasping for self on the part of each class 
 and individual. 
 
 Surely this accommodation of itself to periods so 
 utterly unlike as the mediaeval and the modern is 
 a most true development in the right sense ; and 
 surely the power by which Christianity meets the 
 period of democracy is not the invention of some- 
 thing new, but simply this, that under pressure of the 
 new demand, and in the light of new circumstances, 
 a side of the New Testament teaching gives out fresh 
 meaning, and speaks home to men with a new clear- 
 ness v^hich was before impossible. 
 
 The case of slavery is only a marked special 
 instance of this development. In that excellent 
 pamphlet, " Does the Bible sanction American 
 Slavery ?" the more valuable as coming from one 
 who is not a professed theologian. Professor Goldwin 
 Smith, we see what light Christianity has to throw 
 on a great moral issue and crisis, such as that of 
 the emancipation question. But while the teaching 
 is truly found in Christianity, yet it is brought out 
 of Christianity by a kind of development, inasmuch 
 as it is only perceived completely when the time 
 is in other ways ripe for the change. 
 
 Or, take a very different instance. The advance of 
 science gives the physical world a much higher place 
 in men's thoughts : it adds to the dignity of matter, 
 and brings out the intimate connection between what 
 is material and what is spiritual in human nature and life. 
 
 'rh
 
 15 
 
 And immediately new meaning reveals itself in 
 the doctrines of the Incarnation and of the Re- 
 surrection of the Body, and in the Sacramental 
 system wherein through material means spiritual grace 
 is given, and given not to souls only, but to body and 
 soul together ; we perceive new fitness in the Para- 
 bles of our Lord, and the analogy which they assume 
 between nature and what is supernatural. I say this 
 new meaning reveals itself, this new fitness is perceived. 
 It was there before. Men did not see it all, because 
 they had not yet reached the other thoughts which were 
 necessary to interpret all the meaning of the doctrine ; 
 just as the whole political and social meaning of the 
 doctrines of Christian liberty, and of the dignity of 
 every Christian, could not be perceived amid the 
 servitude of the Roman empire. 
 
 These are true developments, developments due on 
 the one hand to a light cast upon Christian truth by 
 the unrolling providential order of the world, and (Jn 
 the other hand to the open eyes and earnest insight 
 of faithful and prayerful Christian men watching the 
 unrolling of that order, comparing it with revealed 
 truth, and noting the light which they cast upon one 
 another. Every faithful attempt to consider in a 
 Christian manner new discoveries of natural truth, 
 and to meet by Christian expedients new needs, 
 movements, and emergencies in the life of humanity, 
 is a contribution to this true development. 
 
 How much richer and larger these contributions 
 would be if we had an undivided Church, a burning 
 faith, an undoubting prayer, if so much of the higher 
 intellect were not unconsecrated to God, He Himself 
 only knows. But what weakness we see, and we see 
 much, in this part of the Church's life, in its developing 
 and originating capacity, is at least no additional
 
 16 
 
 stumbling-block to those who guide themselves by 
 the rule, that if " one member suffer all the members 
 suffer with it'=," and who feel that a Church stained, 
 divided, and burthened with infirmity as the Church 
 Catholic now is, must needs shew the evidence of 
 these defects in all parts of her life and action. 
 
 1 urge therefore that we can see of what sort true 
 development is, and that we need not be " offended" 
 because tl^e amount of it which we have is less, 
 and therefore our conception of it more hazy than 
 it should be. We see why, things being as they 
 are with the Church, this must be so. 
 
 I lay great stress on this matter of true development. 
 Our security against spurious forms of any idea is 
 perception of its true form. And I am sui'e that 
 to dwell on this true development will be our best 
 safeguard against the pretentious, but really quite 
 inadequate, or rather quite spurious, form which 
 Roman Catholicism offers. Let me recommend em- 
 phatically, as books likely to help indirectly thought 
 of this kind, two of the graceful little volumes of the 
 present Dean of St, Paul's, — his Sermons before the 
 University 1869, and his Three Lectures on the In- 
 fluence of Christianity on National Character 1878. 
 I should not grudge the time spent on this paper, 
 if it had no other effect than to induce some of 
 you to read these books. 
 
 And we have to remember that in this development 
 we may have, any of us, our own part to play, since 
 it consists in the constant adjustment to surroundings 
 ever new and shifting of a Faith, a Life, and a Church, 
 always one and unchanging, but living and there- 
 fore capable of continually new adjustment and 
 combination. And these must take place through 
 
 i" 1 Cor. xii. 20.
 
 17 
 
 the earthen vessels however mean, the human in- 
 struments however poor, in which at each time the Faith 
 and Life and Church receive human embodiment. 
 
 Our true duty therefore is to bear our part with 
 head and heart in this development, seizing whatever 
 help is given to us by Christian worker's, or even 
 by great writers outside the Christian pale, whose 
 thought bears impress of Christian influences and 
 developes truths or examines problems by a light 
 which at its source flows from Christianity. 
 
 It is but little that we shall be able to see, and 
 little that we shall be able to do. But that little 
 is what God requires of us ; and as I have tried 
 to shew you, we can understand very well how it 
 must naturally be that it is little, done in a field 
 so vast by an agency so imperfect. 
 
 But then (and this is the last of the consi- 
 derations which I have to submit to you) Rome 
 comes before us with very different language. As 
 she professes to offer us a Church which is undivided, 
 and a visible living authority which is infallible ; so, 
 it being once admitted that there is development 
 in Christianity, it is essential to her to be able to 
 claim that she has a perfect development, and she 
 claims it. 
 
 It is part of one and the same great paradox, of the 
 view morally and religiously so unscientific, that 
 Christian faith and love and piety can be dull and 
 weak, and by many deserted, as all, whether Roman 
 Catholics or not, alike admit that they are, and yet that 
 Christian unity and the clear shining of Christian 
 truth in the world shall in no wise share the defect. 
 
 And so Rome offers her developments, and asks us 
 to accept them as one proof the more that she is the 
 true Church.
 
 18 
 
 I can only suggest a few considerations about them 
 for your reflection. 
 
 (1) Are they of the kind which we have seen to be 
 true developments, adjustments to historical needs, in- 
 stances of the new exhibition under new circumstances 
 of the vital power of doctrines ? Take the syllabus with 
 its wholesale denunciations of modern science and 
 civilisation, does this resemble the adjustment of 
 Christianity to the Providential order of secular 
 progress? Do we see that the worship and deifi- 
 cation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or purgatory, or 
 tran substantiation, all of w^hich Dr. Newman would 
 reckon developments, possess at all that wonderful 
 power, which resides in the Incarnation and the 
 Passion, of being fitted to meet the needs and capture 
 the devotion of the noblest hearts and heads of these 
 later generations, while yet they are utterly above what 
 could have been contrived for the purpose ? Are they 
 not on the contrary parts of a development which 
 grows more and more aloof from, more and more con- 
 temptuously hostile towards, the best results of men's 
 thinking and working in the world outside ? But it 
 may be said, in parts we do see the divine corre- 
 spondence, which I have denied, between Roman 
 developments and their surroundings. The develop- 
 ment of the papacy helped to preserve Christianity 
 and the Church in the chaos of early mediaeval 
 history : the belief in purgatory, Mr. Oxenham urges, 
 makes the Roman Church much more able than 
 we are to teach uncompromisingly a stern doctrine 
 of rewards and punishments in the world to come. 
 Neither example is, I think, satisfactory for its purpose. 
 As to the papacy, a closer binding together of the 
 Western Church under a patriarchal head in ages of 
 disorder may well have been providentially intended.
 
 19 
 
 without justifying any conclusion as to an infallible 
 papacy driving many out of its communion or out of 
 Christian faith as it did at the Reformation and ever 
 since by its tenacious maintenance of corruptions and 
 unlawful claims. 
 
 As to purgatory, it is not this that we need, but the 
 early doctrine of an intermediate state, which from 
 the unwarranted teaching of purgatory the Reformers 
 in their reaction too much cast aside. 
 
 I say then Roman developments do not play the 
 part which, if true, was to be expected of them. We 
 have difficulties : they do not help us in them. We 
 are met by many anxious questionings about the 
 future state: Roman development does not help us to 
 meet them. We want clearer teaching about the 
 nature and limits of Inspiration: Roman develop- 
 ment has no counsel for us there. We are beset 
 by questions which science raises about the Bible 
 history of man's origin, and about the existence 
 of spirit or of anything beyond matter and its forces 
 in the world; and we get no help from Roman 
 development. At the most we get general denun- 
 ciations of those who, although they are unfortunately 
 alienated from Christianity, have yet a place and 
 name of honour as honest and devoted explorers 
 in the great library of God's works. 
 
 These, I say, are our great wants, and there is 
 no sign of a true development in Rome to meet them. 
 A true development would be like a " householder 
 bringing forth things new and old ": it would reveal 
 new aspects of the old Christian truths unseen before, 
 but when seen, carrying a conviction of their own 
 truth to our hearts, wearing that special attribute 
 of what is divine, viz. that till revealed we cannot 
 find it, but when revealed it seems natural.
 
 20 
 
 But if Roman development does not do this, what 
 is it? Do we see, judging it fairly, signs of false 
 development about it? Now mark what I mean by 
 false development. I do not mean dishonest de- 
 velopment, development wilfully wrong. But I mean 
 this, a development which is human, while true 
 development is divine : a development such as the 
 reason of man, his logic, or some of his instincts, 
 push him on to ; whereas true doctrine, surprisingly 
 as it meets man's nature, is yet above him, such as 
 he would not have found or worked out. I mean 
 a development which is artificial, the work of our 
 own hands ; whereas true development is the living 
 work of the Spirit. 
 
 And please observe the great importance of asking 
 this question about Roman development, because 
 developments of this sort are always going on. There 
 is no idea in the world but men who hold it are 
 inclined to run it out too far, to forget the limits 
 imposed upon it by other truths, to pass on from 
 the known to the probable consequence, from the 
 probable to the possible, and to treat them all as 
 equally known. There is no institution in the world 
 but the people who care for it tend to make too much 
 of it, and to distort its claims. And Christianity, in the 
 world though not of it, is liable to the influence of 
 these tendencies. There is aprobability of unwarranted 
 and false human development. It is therefore only the 
 plainest wisdom to interrogate sharply any develop- 
 ments, to see whether they can claim a higher character. 
 Our attitude is this: 'we know there will be human 
 developments ; we are less sure that we shall have, 
 that the Church deserves, those which are divine : 
 if we have the divine, they will come speaking with 
 the still small voice : and therefore, when develop- 
 
 I
 
 21 
 
 ments offer themselves, it is not too strong to say that 
 the probabilities are against them, and especially if 
 they have the clear cut limited character which so 
 often marks the handicraft of human inference.' 
 
 We have, then, here an all-important alternative 
 of possibilities about Roman development : if it is 
 not divine, then it is the work of just those agencies 
 which, because they are so human, are always at work 
 with most subtle and steady power to change true 
 religion into mere human forms, — I mean our instincts 
 and logic. You see w^hat difficult questions this 
 alternative gives us to decide. 
 
 There are tendencies of the human mind to which 
 I have referred which are at work upon all religious 
 systems to impair and disintegrate. The man who is 
 to distinguish true from false developments must have 
 taken time and opportunity to gain some adequate 
 knowdedge of these, both directly through knowledge 
 of his own conscience and character, and indirectly In 
 the historical instances of their working. Is not this 
 one of the many reasons for urging that it cannot 
 be God's will that the question of leaving the Church 
 in which one has been brought up for another should 
 be decided in a few days or weeks, or in truth at all 
 by one who stands just at the outset, or in the midst, 
 of the very years of life which do more than any 
 others both to mature the judgment and to acquaint 
 it w^ith the materials from which its conclusions must 
 be drawn ? And such are the years of University 
 education. 
 
 1 cannot now of course do more than suggest in the 
 briefest way the kind of features in Roman develop- 
 ments which seem to indicate for them a human origin. 
 In some of them it seems to me we have the work 
 of a human logic taking a mystery, and with no
 
 22 
 
 warrant but its own seeming consistency pressing it 
 out to consequences. Is not this so with the 
 doctrines about the Saints ? We have the mystery 
 of the Communion of Saints, in which the living 
 and the dead alike and together "live unto Him"; 
 and we can pray for them, and we can hope that 
 they pray for us, though even this perhaps we cannot 
 know of those who are said to ^^ sleep in Jesus ^" But 
 then comes the work of inference. If the saints are 
 alive in the invisible world, they must in Jesus Christ 
 know what concerns us ; and then again another step 
 on, they must be able to receive communications from 
 us ; and then again one step more, it must be right 
 that we should ask them, and spend some of the time 
 which we can give to prayer in asking them to pray 
 for us. And if you do not do this, then the Roman 
 tells you, you do not believe the mystery of the com- 
 munion of saints, from which it all follows. Yes, but 
 why '^follows''''} not by revealed consequence, but by 
 ingenious human inference. 
 
 So again with purgatory. We have the revealed 
 doctrine of the intermediate state; we have strong 
 probabilities, scriptural and rational, that souls need 
 some purifying, perhaps some expiatory, process be- 
 tween earthly life and the heavenly. And out of these 
 inferences Rome extracts a doctrine of purgatory ; 
 and then, again, it borrows other helps, and from 
 the doctrine of purgatory it extracts indulgences and 
 the rest. 
 
 Or, once more, with transubstantiation : is not this 
 the work of philosophizing inference upon a great 
 mystery ? And other developments about the holy 
 Eucharist, worship of the Sacrament reserved for that 
 purpose, benediction by the host; what are these but 
 
 ' 1 Thess. iv. 14.
 
 2.3 
 
 plain developments ? The mystery " This is my 
 body," or Christ with us in the Eucharist, is turned 
 into a logical premise, and inferences are drawn such 
 as these, "This is not bread"; or, "We may use this 
 Presence at all times and in all ways, as well outside 
 as inside the celebration of the Sacrament. We may 
 keep it by us to worship it, and to bless with it." 
 
 I need not multiply examples of this, such as all 
 that relates to the blessed Virgin, where we have a 
 process which is a continuous chain of inferences, 
 ending for the present in the Immaculate Conception'', 
 though one knows not to what it may go on. 
 
 In all cases of this kind of logical development, it 
 is noteworthy that they have an impressive power 
 over the mind and imagination by their consistency, 
 thoroughness, and the like. And in each case, if we 
 resist the conclusion, we are met with the charge, 
 ' you disbelieve, or practically disbelieve, the Mystery 
 from which the inferences are drawn.' • 
 
 This is the developing tendency which we have to 
 watch on the side of the intellect. But this would be 
 comparatively weak, if it did not find allies in our 
 instincts and affections. The emotions have their 
 logic: it is one of our noblest instruments, but, like 
 the logic of the intellect, it has its fallacies. Take 
 the position of relics, was it not evolved from the 
 sacredness of the body of the regenerate man by a 
 logic of the emotions, and then confirmed by a logic 
 of the intellect? "The bodies of the saints partake in 
 redemption, therefore we should treasure their bones, 
 therefore we should expose them to the veneration of 
 the faithful." 
 
 And then to weary you with one more influence 
 
 ^ If indeed the * Mois de Joseph ' does not. already point to further 
 developments.
 
 24 
 
 which leads to development. It is the organizing 
 instinct in human nature. Do you not suppose that 
 the Papacy itself, and the compulsory confession of 
 the Lateran Council in the 1 3th century, and the 
 enforced celihacy of the Clergy in the 11th,* and the 
 Inquisition, owed their acceptance and imposition in 
 no slight degree to the fact that they seemed to do 
 their work effectively; that they were trenchant 
 methods which promised success ; that people iden- 
 tified the defence of them with the defence of the 
 objects which they were to serve, — such objects as the 
 spiritual independence of the Church, or an un- 
 worldly devotion in the clergy, or reality in the 
 religion of the lay people, or preservation of the 
 faithful from temptations to their faith ? 
 
 But I must not prolong this further. My object in 
 these latter remarks has been to ask your attention to 
 the large amount of instigation towards false develop- 
 ment which human nature finds in itself ; and then to 
 the indications which suggest that Roman develop- 
 ments, or the most defined and prominent of them, are 
 of this and not of a higher kind. I have left aside 
 such corroborative evidence as may often be found in 
 the character of the times and surroundings in and 
 amid which these developments received much of their 
 grow*th, and of the men to whom they owed it. 
 
 Let me end by summarizing the course which our 
 thoughts have travelled. 
 
 Our first point was that the Roman theory of 
 development ascribes development to the Christian 
 religion in a sense, degree, and kind which would 
 change the distinctive character of that religion, 
 and in a way which is not only alien to the ancient 
 view, but new even to the Roman Church herself. 
 
 ' pp. 0—9.
 
 25 
 
 And wc saw that the Niconc Faith was not a develop- 
 ment of Apostolic Christianity in any sense which 
 would support this theory"". 
 
 Our second point was to examine the development 
 of which Christianity does admit, the process by which 
 it lives and moves with the life and onward movement 
 of the world. What Christian development, in this 
 subordinate but important sense, should be, we to 
 some extent know, partly a 'priori from the nature 
 of Christian Truths, partly from Christian History, 
 partly perhaps also from our present needs and 
 longings which only such development can satisfy". 
 And, taken broadly, Roman development does not 
 appear 'to be of this kind^. 
 
 But, on the other hand, (^nd this is our third and 
 last point^,) Roman development does appear to 
 belong to another kind of development, which is 
 not divine but human. I have pointed to some 
 features in it which seem to indicate that this fs 
 80^. And as we know that such pseudo-develop- 
 ment is always at work upon all institutions and 
 all beliefs, and know also that it is the result of 
 the combined force of some of the strongest and 
 most permanent human instincts, the indications 
 which I have referred to make it at least terribly 
 probable that this is the true explanation of *that 
 development which Roman writers ask us to accept 
 as strong evidence for their Church, and that such 
 development threatens Christianity with dangers of 
 no ordinary kind. 
 
 "> pp. 10—12. n pp. 12—17. 
 
 " pp. 17—19. P pp. 19—24. 
 
 'I pp. 21—24.
 
 m