i8 74 ] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 213 



Christianity lies in a series of formulae expressing eternal 

 abstract truths or unchanging principles of morality, 

 which before the time of Christ were obscurely revealed, 

 but which He, in His quality of the great Prophet and 

 Lawgiver of His people, set forth clearly. No room was 

 left for a recognition of the fact that salvation is made 

 possible to man not merely by a revelation of Divine 

 truth, but by an exertion of Divine power by a historical 

 work of redemption : that the Old Testament dispensa 

 tion prepared the way for Christ, not by the enunciation 

 of theoretical dogmas, but by the actual manifestation in 

 a long miraculous history of a special redemptive activity ; 

 and that Christ Himself was incarnate, died, and rose 

 again, not merely to announce Divine truths, but to 

 complete the Divine work begun in the former dispensa 

 tion. It was impossible to ignore the meaning of the 

 Old Testament history, and yet to understand the 

 historical position and work of Christ, or to appreciate 

 the historical ground on which the Apostles stand in 

 their delineations of Christianity. The life and work of 

 Christ, even the resurrection, to which in Paul s teaching 

 justifying faith stands in so direct a relation, sink into 

 the background, and the Saviour appears simply (I quote 



from Origen, Prin. 4, 156) as o eiV^yryn)? TWI/ Kara 

 XptcrTLavicr/Jibv (TWTTJ/HWV Soy/xariov dogmas which, COnsist- 



ing partly of truths to be believed, and partly of a law 

 to be obeyed, become saving to us if we give an intellectual 

 assent to the regula fidei, and submit our lives to the new 

 Law of Christ. In a word, the Church was speedily cut 

 off from all historical appreciation of Revelation and 

 Redemption, became unable to grasp in their fulness the 

 deepest teachings of the Gospel, and was thrown back 

 on an unhistorical intellectualism, that found its ex 

 pression in a neonomian theology and an allegorical 

 exegesis. 



The allegorical exegesis was not the invention of the 

 Old Catholic Church. It had already been applied to 



