Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/775

Rh CHURCH HISTORY 761 followers after his own disappearance from the world. In any case church history is relieved of a large amount of work with which it is sometimes burdened, but which does not properly fall to its share. What church history has to do within the limits thus indicated will perhaps be best understood by considering its province as a department of scientific theology, and its relations to the theological disciplines with which it stands most closely connected, those, namely, of dogmatics and the history of doctrine. Strictly speaking, the history of doctrine is part of the history of the church. To exhaust its task, a history of the church must embrace at least five departments of inquiry and narrative, one con nected with the external relations of the church to the world at large and its political institutions, the remaining four treating of developments and relations internal to the church itself. (1) The PROGRESS of the church must be described, either positively, in respect of its advance, or negatively, with reference to its retrogression, at any given period. To exist at all, it must exist under one or other of these conditions ; it must be either attaining or missing, approaching or receding from, its rightful influence on the social condition and political organization of man kind. (2) Its CONSTITUTION must be described. The church exists as such, in virtue of its constitution. It is not the church until it is to some extent organized, and the growth and forms of this organization must be recorded. (3) The DOCTRINE of the church at the various points of its development must be set forth. Doctrine is the full and finished expression of conviction, and sines the church owes its existence to certain convictions, some religious, some moral, the history of doctrine occupies the very central position of the church s history. (-4) WORSHIP, under one form, or another, is an essential development of church life, as well as one of the modes in which it announces its existence, and calls for historical recognition. (5) LIFE, as exhibited in the number and character of the members of the church, completes the division of the matter of its history. Doctrine and wor ship are directed to certain practical ends, either of making proselytes to the church, or of perfecting the character of those who already belong to it, and any such results must be collected and presented both in their numerical and their moral aspects. But while the history of the church, in the strict and com prehensive sense, must treat fully these various classes of activity, there is a narrower, if also a somewhat looser sense in which it may be taken, for ends of practical convenience. We may distinguish between the organization and its life, between the church and Christianity. On this view, doctrine, worship, and life fall to be treated collectively by the history of the Christian religion or in separate histories, while the history of the church becomes a narrative of the successes or defeats experienced in the world by the Christian community and the varying forms of its constitu tional framework, with only such allusions to the internal and religious side of its life as are necessary to explain its constitutional changes and external fortunes. By this division it becomes possible to treat both the inner and the outer sides of the subject, each for itself, and therefore more fully and vividly. In this way, since doctrine lies at the foundation of worship and life, and even constitu tion, the history of doctrine becomes the key to the whole history of the church, and the indispensable preliminary to a scientific comprehension of it. The life and action of the church in the world are simply the expression of the ideas by which it is governed ; and it is the business of the historian of doctrine to record the vicissitudes and develop ments of these, whether he writes in the interests of mere knowledge and with absolute impartiality, or, as is more common, though less scientific, with a bias in favour of a certain class of ideas, all divergences from which he chronicles as errors. The difference between church history read in the light of the history of doctrine and apart from it is like the difference which the phenomena of health and disease present to minds that possess or that want an acquaintance with the principles of physiology. Church history, including or co-ordinate with history of doctrine, stands in an important relation to dogmatics. Dogmatics (which also contributes the formal as well as, in part, the material element in Christian ethics) is charged with the scientific statement and proof of whatever is held to be the true doctrine. In the sphere of statement the history of the church is necessary, both as introduction and commentary. Doctrine is a growth, an evolution of part after part, under the influence of special circumstances at special times. The full meaning of doctrine can therefore often be understood only in the light of its antithesis, and its relative importance as essential or accidental ascertained only from the practical crisis which demanded its declara tion, aids for which recourse must be had to the history of the church and its doctrine. As regards, therefore, the scientific articulation, proportioning, and interpretation of doctrine, church history stands in the position of an essen tial preliminary to dogmatics. As regards actual church life, and any new expression of it in worship, constitution, or propagandist effort, that assumes to be based on scientific principle, the history of the church is indispensable, not only for the extended view of present circumstances that may be requisite, but also to enable the church fully to know and judge its own mind. The existing church consciousness is the product of all the past, and cannot be fully understood and criticized except in the light of its history. 2. The SOURCES of church history are either Monu mental or Documentary. Monumental sources yield such intimatious of past transactions as are to be found on avowed monuments, memorial tablets, gravestones, churches, and other public edifices or private dwellings, or upon articles of antiquity, seals, crucifixes, furniture, vestments, pictures, coins, weapons, &amp;lt;fec. Documentary sources, as their name implies, include all manuscript or printed in formation, whether originals, copies, or oral traditions com mitted to record. In point of comparative value, the documentary sources are, of course, the more important, being, from the nature of the case, so immeasurably richer in information. At the same time, within their own range, monumental sources are often more valuable than docu mentary. Forgery has less chance of success in monu ments than in documents ; and certain classes of facts are frequently commemorated on them which writers do not think of recording. Dates and names and the like have been fixed by inscriptions on coins, &amp;lt;fcc., where documents have proved defective or wrong. Documentary sources may be divided from the point of view of their destination into (1) Public and (2) Private, and from that of their authorship into (3) Direct and (4) Indirect. Under the head of public documents we have all deliverances of an official character, such as decrees of councils, Papal bulb, civil legislation affecting the church, rules of life for monastic institutions, liturgies, confessions of faith, and even sermons, theological treatises, &c. Pri vate documents, again, consist of personal memoirs and journals, letters, secret correspondence, and papers not originally intended for the public eye. Then by direct documentary sources are meant those in which we have the actual word of a writer or actor in any event testifying to the nature of the opinion or transaction about which information is desired. Indirect documentary sources are those in which we obtain information about the opinions of V. 96