Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/567

Rh with them in condemning Socinians, Baptists, Independents, Quakers, and the like. But God forbid, that we should ally ourselves with the offspring of heresy and schism, in our contest with any branches of the Holy Church, which maintain the foundation, whatever may be their incidental corruptions!]

If it be asked, whether in saying that the Christian doctrine is immutable, I maintain that Divine doctrine can make no advance in the Church, let me answer at once that I maintain just the reverse. Who indeed is so niggardly towards mankind, so abandoned by God, as to try to forbid it? However, it must be such an advance as is truly an increase of the faith, not a change. That is, it is the property of an increase, that each particular part has its own development; but of a change, that some part or other becomes what it was not before. Doubtless, then, there should be in successive ages an increase, a great and effective improvement, in the understanding, the knowledge, the wisdom of all Christians, and of each of them, of the individuals and of the whole Church, but only in the same form, that is, in the same doctrine, the same meaning, the same expression.

The soul should observe the same rule which obtains in the case of the body, which, in the course of years, unfolds itself into its perfect proportions, yet remains the same as before. Great as is the diiference between the flower of boyhood and the maturity of old age, yet the very same individual who was a boy becomes aged, the change in state and habit of that one and the same being in no respect affecting the identity of his nature and his person. Children at the breast have small limbs, youths have large, yet the very same ones. Their number is the same, even though they might before be in part undeveloped. This, then, evidently is the legitimate and right rule of growth, the natural and beautiful order of advancing, if years bring out into shape those elements which Creative Wisdom had already implanted. If, however, a change were made in course of time into some type