An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
John Henry Newman
Number of quotes: 14
Book ID: 324 Page: 19/20
Section: 2A2
Here the question rises in me, “Who told you about that gift?” I answered, “I have learned it from the Fathers: I believe the Real Presence because they bear witness to it. St. Ignatius calls it ‘the medicine of immorality:’ St. Irenaeus says that ‘our flesh becomes incorrupt, and partakes of life, and has the hope of the resurrection,’ as ‘being nourished from the Lord’s Body and Blood;’ that the Eucharist ‘is made up of two things, an earthly and a heavenly:’ perhaps Origen and perhaps Magnes, after him, say that It is not a type of our Lord’s Body, but His Body: and St, Cyprian uses language as awful as can be spoken of those who profane it. I cast my lot with them, I believe as they.”
Quote ID: 7763
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 324 Page: 56
Section: 1A
In the physical world whatever has life is characterized by growth…….
Two things cannot become one, except there be a power of assimilation in one or the other.
….
Thus, a power of development is proof of a life, not only in its essay, but in its success; for a mere formula either does not expand or is shattered in expanding. A living idea becomes many, yet remains one.
Quote ID: 7764
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 324 Page: 65
Section: 1A
A true development, then, may be described as one which is conservative of the course of development which went before it, which is that development and something besides: it is an addition which illustrates, not obscures, corroborates, not corrects, the body of thought from which it proceeds; and this is its characteristic as contrasted with a corruption.
Quote ID: 7765
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 324 Page: 115
Section: 1A
The question is this, whether there was not from the first a certain element at work, or in existence, which, for some reason or other, did not at once show itself upon the surface of ecclesiastical affairs, and of which events in the fourth century are the development….
Quote ID: 7766
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 324 Page: 183
Section: 3C1
Thus, not to mention the Arianism of the Eastern Empire in the fourth century, the whole of the West was possessed by the same heresy in the fifth….
Quote ID: 7767
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 324 Page: 184
Section: 3D2
No heresy has started with greater violence or more sudden success than the Arian….
Quote ID: 7768
Time Periods: 345
Book ID: 324 Page: 184
Section: 3D2
But such is the fact, however it was brought about, that the success in arms and the conversion to Arianism, of Ostrogoths, Alani, Suevi, Vandals, and Burgundians stand as concurrent events in the history of the times; and by the end of the fifth century the heresy had been established by the Visigoths in France and Spain, in Portugal by the Suvei, in Africa by the Vandals, and by the Ostrogoths in Italy. For a while, the title of Catholic as applied to the Church seemed a misnomer; for not only was she buried beneath these populations of heresy, but that heresy was one, and maintained the same distinctive tenet, whether at Carthage, Seville, Toulouse, or Ravenna.
Quote ID: 7769
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 324 Page: 185
Section: 3D2
It must be added that, whatever was their cruelty or tyranny, both Goths and Vandals were a moral people, and put to shame the Catholics whom they dispossessed. “What can the prerogative of a religious name profit us,”says Salvian, “that we call ourselves Catholic, boast of being the faithful, taunt Goths and Vandals with the reproach of an heretical appellation, while we live in heretical wickedness?” The barbarians were chaste, temperate, just, and devout….
Quote ID: 7770
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 324 Page: 186
Section: 1A
The Arians seem never to have claimed the Catholic name. It is more remarkable that the Catholics during this period were denoted by the additional title of “Romans.” Of this there are many proofs in the histories of St. Gregory of Tours, Victor of Vite, and the Spanish Councils. Thus St. Gregory speaks of Theodegisid, a king of Portugal, expressing his incredulity at a miracle, by saying, “It is the temper of the Romans, (for,” interposes the author, “they call men of our religion Romans,) and not the power of God.”
Quote ID: 7771
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 324 Page: 187
Section: 1A
In this sense, the Emperor Theodosius, in his letter to Acacius of Berrhoea, contrasts it with Nestorianism, which was within the Empire as well as Catholicism; during the controversy raised by that heresy, he exhorts him and others to show themselves “approved priests of he Roman religion.”
Quote ID: 7772
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 324 Page: 230
Section: 1A
Such was the conflict of Christianity with the old established Paganism, which was almost dead before Christianity appeared….
Quote ID: 7773
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 324 Page: 238
Section: 1A
the rulers of the Church from early times were prepared, should the occasion arise, to adopt, or imitate, or sanction the existing rites and customs of the populace, as well as the philosophy of the educated class.
Quote ID: 7774
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 324 Page: 239/240
Section: 2A5,3C
In the course of the fourth century two movements or developments spread over the face of Christendom, with a rapidity characteristic of the Church; the one ascetic, the other ritual or ceremonial. We are told in various ways by Eusebius, that Constantine, in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred into it the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their own.….
The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holy days and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison, are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church.
The eighth book of Theodoret’s work Adversus Gentiles, which is, “On the Martyrs,” treats so largely on the subject, that we must content ourselves with but a specimen of the illustrations which it affords, to the principle acted on by St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. “Time, which makes all things decay,” he says, speaking of the Martyrs, “has preserved their glory incorruptible. For as the noble souls of those conquerors traverse the heavens, and take part in the spiritual choirs, so their bodies are not consigned to separate tombs, but cities and towns have distributed them; and they call them saviours of souls and bodies, and physicians, and honour them as the protectors and guards of cities, and, using their intervention with the Lord of all, through them they obtain divine gifts.
….
But though all men made a jest of them, yet at least the Greeks could not decently complain, to whom belonged libations and expiations, and heroes and demi-gods and deified men. To Hercules, though a man, and compelled to serve Eurystheus, they built temples, and constructed altars, and offered sacrifices in honour, and allotted feasts; and that, not Spartans only and Athenians, but the whole of Greece and the greater part of Europe.”
….
I have given extracts from Theodoret for the developments of the fourth and fifth centuries….
Quote ID: 7775
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 324 Page: 243
Section: 2E6
In like manner the Sign of the Cross was one of the earliest means of grace; then holy seasons, and holy places, and pilgrimage to them; holy water; prescribed prayers, or other observances; garments, as the scapular, or coronation robes; the rosary; the crucifix.….
in accordance with the Divine Promise, true developments, and not corruptions of the Revelation.
….
Hence they who assert that the modern Roman system is the corruption of primitive theology are forced to discover some difference of principle between the one and the other….
Quote ID: 7776
Time Periods: 34
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