THE 



329 



THE 



tian writers it recognises members of the true church and 

 authorised teachers in it ; and therefore it regards the 

 doctrines taught in their writings as the true doctrines o: 

 Christ. The obvious difficulty presented by the different 

 opinions of various writers is removed in various ways. 

 Vincent of Linns has stated the Catholic dogma in the 

 following form : ' That which has been held always, every- 

 where, and by all, is true.' (Quod semper, quod ubiqiie, &c.) 

 But who are the all? All the orthodox: and it is the 

 province of the church to determine who are orthodox 

 and who are heretics ; and if the decision of the church 

 on this point be doubtful, the appeal lies first to its autho- 

 rised teachers individually, and then to their collective 

 voice as given in the decrees of a general council. 



On the other hand the Protestant system recognises in 

 the early Christian writers nothing more than persons of 

 various degrees of ability and information, whose state- 

 ments and opinions are to be accepted or rejected entirely 

 upon the grounds of ordinary criticism, and neither their 

 teachings nor those of any other person whatever are 

 allowed to have any authority beyond that due to their 

 intrinsic worth and to their agreement with Scripture. 



The application of these principles to the canon of Scrip- 

 tun' is an important point of difference between the Roman 

 Catholic and Protestant systems. The former rests upon 

 the authority of those books which have been declared 

 canonical by the voice of the church as expressed in gene- 

 ral councils ; the latter looks to historical and critical evi- 

 dence to determine the genuineness and authenticity of 

 the books of Scripture, and then it finds the evidence of 

 their inspiration, and consequently of their authority, in 

 the statements and claims of the writers themselves, which 

 not merely on the established honesty of the writers, 

 but chiefly on the attestation of the miracles they wrought, 

 v : MIRACLES.] 



3. Another mode of interpretation leads to the systems 

 of theology which are embraced under the name of mys- 

 tiri\m, the irrcat principle of which is, that within the 

 mind of the true believer there exists a sense of truth 

 which will always lead him to a surer and higher know- 



of religion than he could ever gain from his own 

 il inquiries or from the teaching of other men. 

 r:cs ; MYSTICS.] 



4. To trace the relation of one set of truths to another, 

 and to show the coincidence of the same truths when 

 proved by different trains of reasoning, is one of the high- 

 c~t objects of true philosophy: and, on the other hand, an 

 unwillingness to renounce a cherished belief when it is 

 found opposed to a newly discovered truth, is one of the 

 strongest tendencies of the human mind. Hence have 

 arisen numerous theological systems according as men 

 have brought the tenets of Judaism, the systems of heathen 

 religion, and the reasonings of philosophy, into comparison 

 with the statements of the New Testament. From the first 

 of these processes arose the Judaizing sects of the first two 

 or three centuries, from the second many of the early 



ie, such as Manichaeism [HKHF.TICS ; MAMCHEES], 

 and from the third the theology of the New Platonists and 

 others of the early Alexandrian school, and that of the 

 schoolmen of fhe middle aces. 



.">. Besides the classification, which we have thus at- 

 tempted, of systems of theology, according to the funda- 

 mental principles on which they rest, there is another 

 important division of them according to their actual dif- 

 "s of doctrine. On this subject, for the reasons above 

 1, the reader is referred to the several articles in which 

 an account is given of the tenets and history of the prin- 

 cipal doctrinal sects. 



It only remains to give a slight sketch of the influence of 



tin -.1- different systems in the history of Christianity. At the 



rise of Christianity the popular biblical system was that 



which naturally prevailed, with a partial intermixture of the 



live system, arising out of the great deference always 



paid to the first teachers of a new religion by their dis- 



, and more especially out of the authority with which 



the a reinvested. The novelty and simplicity of 



.a impressed its truths clearly on the minds of 



!'u>t believers, who had no historical difficulties to 



'nding sects to decide between, and no 



: to speculate on the ultimate consequences of the 



doctrines they received, or on their relations to other sup- 



l truths. If a difficulty arose, their teachers were at 



-'.he it. And accordingly the language of the 



P. C., No. 1520. 



apostolic epistles invites the believers to examine the truth 

 for themselves and to receive it in its simplicity, though it 

 also gives hints of the existence of a consistent system of 

 truth, and claims on the part of the apostles to be the 

 teachers of that system. But they did not teach it ' a* o 

 system, and it is only in the later books of the New Testa- 

 ment, the writings of John and some of those of Paul, that 

 any tendency to reduce Christian truth to a system be- 

 comes apparent. The degree of freedom thus left to be- 

 lievers was abundantly used, and before the close of the 

 apostolic age different opinions had sprung up, exempli- 

 fying nearly all the principles above described. [HERETICS.] 

 To restore unity to the church, and especially to settle the 

 orthodox doctrine respecting the person of Christ, was the 

 object of the Council of Nice, in the creed of which we 

 find the first appearance of a system of positive theology. 

 [NICE, COUNCIL OF; NICENE CREED.] The immediate 

 consequence of this Council however was to exasperate 

 the very controversy which it professed to settle, and 

 which continued to rage during the following centuries. 

 [ARIANS ; NESTORIANS ; THEODORETUS.] These and other 

 controversies led to the frequent meeting of councils [(ECU- 

 MENICAL COUNCILS], and to the settlement of the canon of 

 Scripture about the end of the fourth century [CANON] ; 

 while at the same time the episcopal system became more 

 and more firmly established; and from all these causes 

 theology acquired more and more the form of a positive 

 system, the most complete development of which is pre- 

 sented by the Greek and Roman churches. [CATHOLIC 

 CHURCH; GREEK CHURCH.] 



The positive system evidently leaves little liberty to the 

 speculations of an active mind, or to the practice of scru- 

 pulous or turbulent individuals. Those of the former class 

 sought for satisfaction in the scholastic philosophy ; those 

 of the latter made repeated attacks on the ruling system, 

 which at last produced the Reformation in Germany and 

 England. The scholastic philosophy was at its height from 

 the llth century to the 14th. It was for the most part a 

 revival of the philosophy of Aristotle. The schoolmen 

 were in profession firm believers of the Catholic doctrine, 

 and generally succeeded in gaining rather praise than 

 censure from the rulers of the church. But within the 

 limits thus prescribed for them they pushed the application 

 of their philosophy to theology to the utmost extent, and 

 occupied themselves especially with the most subtle ques- 

 tions on the nature of God and angels, and on points of 

 casuistry. 



The Reformation was far from abolishing the positive, 

 system in Protestant countries. To hold their ground 

 against the power of the church of Rome, the reformed 

 churches strove to make for themselves a visible and uni- 

 ted constitution, and for this purpose they adopted symbols 

 of faith and worship, which constituted for them respect- 

 ively bodies of positive theology. The various dissenters 

 from these reformed churches, though generally leaving 

 them on the ground that their theology was not purely 

 Protestant, still preserved much that was positive in their 

 theology, either by a tacit consent or by a formal confes- 

 sion of "faith. And thus it has happened that, to the pre- 

 sent day, theology is far less a system based upon and con- 

 tinuing to challenge scientific inquiry, than the exposition 

 of a body of positive law. 



Still there have always arisen individuals and parties 

 who have claimed for themselves the utmost latitude of 

 that right of private judgment which is the basis of the 

 Protestant principle. Since the Reformation there has 

 always existed, especially in England, a large amount of 

 biblical theology, which has been chiefly of the popular 

 school, but which, since the middle of the last century, has 

 continually gained more and more of the critical element, 

 both here, and still more in Germany ; and it may be now 

 safely affirmed, that with an admixture of the mystic:U 

 theology, the adherents of which have always formed a 

 considerable minority among Christians, the prevailing 

 theological systems of the present day are the catholic and 

 the critical. 



It would be impossible within the limits of this article 

 to give a list of even the best writers on theology. The 

 following are taken at random as among the best, and as 

 directing to other sources of information. The ' Institutes' 

 of Calvin ; the works of Turretin, Maestricht, Pictet, Dod- 

 dridge, Bishop Watson, Richard Watson, Dwight, Ernesti, 

 Bertholdt, Schleiermacher, Bretschneider, Nitzsch, and 



VOL. XXIV. 2 U 



