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John Henry Newman, Development of Christian Doctrine
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Development of Christian Doctrine
Chapter 1. On the Development of Ideas
Section 1. On the Process of Development in Ideas
Section 2. On the Kinds of Development in Ideas
Chapter 2. On the Antecedent Argument in behalf of Developments in Christian Doctrine
Section 1. Developments of Doctrine to be Expected
Section 2. An Infallible Developing Authority to be Expected
Section 3. The Existing Developments of Doctrine the Probable Fulfilment of that Expectation
Chapter 3. On the Historical Argument in behalf of the Existing Developments
Section 2. State of the Evidence
Chapter 4. Instances in Illustration
Section 1. Instances Cursorily Noticed
Section 2. Our Lord's Incarnation and the Dignity of His Blessed Mother and of All Saints
Section 3. The Papal Supremacy
Chapter 5. Genuine Developments Contrasted with Corruptions
Section 1. First Note of a Genuine Development—Preservation of Type
Section 2. Second Note—Continuity of Principles
Section 3. Third Note—Power of Assimilation
Section 4. Fourth Note—Logical Sequence
Section 5. Fifth Note—Anticipation of Its Future
Section 6. Sixth Note—Conservative Action upon Its Past
Section 7. Seventh Note—Chronic Vigour
Chapter 6. Application of the First Note of a True Development—Preservation of Type
Section 1. The Church of the First Centuries
Section 2. The Church of the Fourth Century
Section 3. The Church of the Fifth and Sixth Centuries
Chapter 7. Application of the Second Note of a True Development
Chapter 8. Application of the Third Note of a True Development—Assimilative Power
Chapter 9. Application of the Fourth Note of a True Development Logical Sequence
Chapter 10. Application of the Fifth Note of a True Development Anticipation of Its Future
Chapter 11. Application of the Sixth Note of a True Development Conservative Action on Its Past
Section 2. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin
Chapter 12. Application of the Seventh Note of a True Development Chronic Vigour Note Conclusion
Section 1. Various Instances
Section 2. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Notes
IT is the general pretext of heretics that they are but serving and protecting Christianity by their innovations; and it is their charge against what by this time we may surely call the Catholic Church, that her successive definitions of doctrine have but overlaid and obscured it. That is, they assume, what we have no wish to deny, that a true development is that which is conservative of its original, and a corruption is that which tends to its destruction. This has already been set down as a Sixth Test, discriminative of a development from a corruption, and must now be applied to the Catholic doctrines; though this Essay has so far exceeded its proposed limits, that both reader and writer may well be weary, and may content themselves with a brief consideration of the portions of the subject which remain.
It has been observed already that a strict correspondence between the various members of a development, and those of the doctrine from which it is derived, is more than we have any right to expect. The bodily structure of a grown man is not merely that of a magnified boy; he differs from what he was in his make and proportions; still manhood is the perfection of boyhood, adding something of its own, yet keeping what it finds. "Ut nihil novum," says Vincentius, "proferatur in senibus, quod non in pueris jam antea latitaverit." This character of addition, that is, of a change which is in one sense real and perceptible, yet without loss or reversal of what was before, but, on the contrary, protective and confirmative of it, in many respects and in a special way belongs to Christianity.