The creed of the Christian is the fruit of exposition; no part of it is elaborated by processes of abstract reasoning; no part is furnished by the inventive faculties. To ascertain the true meaning of the words and phrases used by those who "spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," is the single aim of the studies of the theologian. Interpretation is his function. But the work of interpretation, considered as an intellectual employment, differs essentially from that of the student of physical or abstract science; for it neither needs nor admits of the ardor by which those pursuits are animated. Nor has nature furnished the faculties that are employed in the labor of expounding the terms of ancient documents with any very vivid susceptibility of pleasurable excitement. The toils of the lawyer, of the philologist, and of the theologian, must therefore be sustained by a reference to some substantial motive of utility; and though there may be a few minds so peculiarly constituted as to cultivate these studies with enthusiastic ardor, from the pure impulse of native taste, the ranks of a numerous body of men can never be filled up by spontaneous laborers of this sort. Christianity, being as it is, a religion of documents and of interpretation, must utterly exclude from its precincts the adventurous spirit of innovation. Theology offers no field to men fond of intellectual enterprise: the Church has no work for them; or none until they have renounced the characteristic propensity of their mental conformation. True religion, unlike human science, was given to mankind in a finished form, and is to be learned, not improved; and though the most capacious human mind is nobly employed while concentrating all its vigor upon the acquirement of this documentary learning, it is very fruitlessly, and very perniciously occupied in attempting to give it a single touch of amendment. The form under which Christianity now presents itself as an object of study does, in a much greater degree, discourage and prevent speculation and novelty, than it did in the early ages; and in fact, if all the varieties of opinion which have appeared during the eighteen centuries of church history are numbered, a large majority of them will be found to belong to the first three centuries, and to the _eastern_ church. That is to say, to the period when doctors of theology, possessing the rule of faiths in their vernacular tongue, had no other intellectual employment than that either of inventing novelties of doctrine, or of refuting them. Other causes may, no doubt, fairly be alleged as having had influence in quickening that prodigious efflorescence of heretical doctrine which infected the whole atmosphere of Christianity, in the east, during the second and third centuries, and at a time when the western church maintained, in a good degree, the simplicity of Scriptural faith; but the cause above-mentioned ought not to be ranked among the least efficient.