An Essay on the Development of Christian DoctrineNewman, John Henry
Religion
An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
Newman, John Henry
Catholic Church -- Doctrines; Dogma, Development of
5. When society and its various classes and interests are the
subject-matter of the ideas which are in operation, the development may
be called _political_; as we see it in the growth of States or the
changes of a Constitution. Barbarians descend into southern regions from
cupidity, and their warrant is the sword: this is no intellectual
process, nor is it the mode of development exhibited in civilized
communities. Where civilization exists, reason, in some shape or other,
is the incentive or the pretence of development. When an empire
enlarges, it is on the call of its allies, or for the balance of power,
or from the necessity of a demonstration of strength, or from a fear for
its frontiers. It lies uneasily in its territory, it is ill-shaped, it
has unreal boundary-lines, deficient communication between its principal
points, or defenceless or turbulent neighbours. Thus, of old time,
Eubœa was necessary for Athens, and Cythera for Sparta; and Augustus
left his advice, as a legacy, to confine the Empire between the
Atlantic, the Rhine and Danube, the Euphrates, and the Arabian and
African deserts. In this day, we hear of the Rhine being the natural
boundary of France, and the Indus of our Eastern empire; and we predict
that, in the event of a war, Prussia will change her outlines in the map
of Europe. The development is material; but an idea gives unity and
force to its movement.
And so to take a case of national politics, a late writer remarks of the
Parliament of 1628-29, in its contest with Charles, that, so far from
encroaching on the just powers of a limited monarch, it never hinted at
the securities which were necessary for its measures. However, "twelve
years more of repeated aggressions," he adds, "taught the Long
Parliament what a few sagacious men might perhaps have already
suspected; that they must recover more of their ancient constitution,
from oblivion; that they must sustain its partial weakness by new
securities; that, in order to render the existence of monarchy
compatible with that of freedom, they must not only strip it of all it
had usurped, but of something that was its own."[43:1] Whatever be the
worth of this author's theory, his facts or representations are an
illustration of a political development.
Again, at the present day, that Ireland should have a population of one
creed, and a Church of another, is felt to be a political arrangement so
unsatisfactory, that all parties seem to agree that either the
population will develope in power or the Establishment in influence.
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