Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/72

64 and the more varied are the objects which we embrace within our range of vision, the less likely are we to place our trust in what Bacon well calls "the idols of the cave," in which our own individual lot is cast; the more likely we are to trust in Him who is the Lord of the whole earth, and of the fulness thereof.

It will be vain to argue, on abstract grounds, for the absolute and indefeasible necessity of some practice or ceremony, of which we have learned from history that there is no instance for one, two, three, or four hundred years, in the most honoured ages of the Church. It will be vain to denounce as subversive of Christianity, doctrines which we have known from biography to have been held by the very saints, martyrs, and reformers whom else we are constantly applauding. Opinions and views which, in a familiar and modified form, waken in us no shock of surprise, or even command our warm admiration, will often for the first time be truly apprehended when we see them in the ritual or the creed of some rival, or remote, or barbarous Church, which is but the caricature and exaggeration of that which we ourselves hold. Practices which we insist on retaining or repudiating, as if they involved the very essence of the Catholic faith or of the Reformation, will appear less precious or less dangerous, as the case may be, in the eyes of the respective disputants, if history shews us clearly that we thereby make ourselves, on the one hand, more