through an alternation of advances and retreats, or at the expense of many false and abnormal movements.

The course of doctrinal development, whether it has been normal or abnormal, is replete with interest and instruction. The investigator who is ready to scrutinize it with due care and energy will derive at least two great advantages. In the first place, he will find illustrations of the natural tendencies, theoretical and practical, of different doctrinal positions. In the second place, he will gain a needful preparation for a proper understanding and appreciation of the different doctrinal systems of the present. A thing is completely known only as its antecedents are known. To understand well the theological world of the present, one must go back and consult the process of its formation.

The history of Christian doctrine, as a branch or discipline receiving distinct and general recognition, is of quite recent date. Most of the works upon the subject, in which an historical rather than a polemical spirit is dominant, have appeared within the present century.

The place which the history of doctrine occupies is easily defined. The importance and extent of its subject matter make it worthy of a special treatment apart from general church history. At the same time the dogmatic writer has repeated occasion to refer to the facts of doctrinal history. To do this without being cumbrous, he must take ascertained results, instead of indulging in lengthy investigations. His work presupposes a treatise in which exact historical criticism has already been accomplished. The history of doctrine, therefore, holds an intermediate place between general church history and systematic theology. It supplements the former and prepares for the latter.

In conducting this branch, it is an obvious rule that the chief attention should be bestowed upon the main current of doctrinal thought in each successive era. The subordinate and less characteristic developments must receive only

a subordinate place. Mere curiosities of individual opinion or speculation, if noticed at all, must be touched very lightly. Space is to be given to a consideration of philosophy, of heresies, and of the secular power, in proportion to the breadth and permanence of the influence which they have exerted upon the cardinal movements of the theological world.

Several cautions need to be kept in mind by the investigator. As Gieseler remarks, care must be taken not to credit an age with more definite ideas than those really entertained, Dogmas have sometimes had their startingpoint in the indeterminate. Now, to take advantage of this primeval mist, and to say that it covers the complete dogma of after times, is a great sin against the truth. It is an unwarranted leap, for example, to conclude that the doctrine of transubstantiation was entertained in the early centuries, simply because we find here the idea that a special sanctity, or perchance even an ineffable presence, pertains to the elements of the eucharistic service. Again, it is to be remembered that identity of phraseology is far from being a sure proof of identity of doctrinal belief in different ages. The rhetoric of one era may become the dogmatic teaching of another.

Historians are not fully agreed as to the proper division into periods. As it seems to us, the first period ought to extend to the reign of Constantine. Whatever transitions there may have been previously, that which the Church experienced under the first Christian Emperor was far more marked. We meet here, not merely a new order of external circumstances, but a new order of theologians and of theological discussions. The exact year that shall be fixed upon as the limit of the period is a matter of subordinate concern. In general church history there are good reasons for fixing upon the year 313, when the Milan edict of toleration was issued, since this marks the relative close of the heathen persecutions, and supplies an opportunity to take a

connected view of the whole administration of Constantine as a patron of Christianity; but in the history of doctrine the person of the Emperor claims less consideration, and the dividing line may well be drawn at the beginning of the Arian controversy, about the year 320. This division will enable us to locate Lactantius in the first period, where in truth he belongs, since his writings contain nothing which specially reminds us of the Arian era. The second period is appropriately made to include the whole chain of related controversies which agitated the Christian Empire at large. Having this scope, it could not end before the year 680, and there are reasons for extending it on to about the year 726. This date brings us to John of Damascus, the great dogmatic authority of the medieval Greek Church. It brings us also to the iconoclastic controversy which alienated the Papacy from the Eastern Empire, stimulated its endeavors to build up an independent Western Empire, and so helped toward the unrestricted development of the Latin type of Christianity. The limit of the third period is of course the opening of the Reformation. A precise historical turning-point, which may serve as a limit of a fourth period, is not easily found. There are quite substantial reasons, however, for drawing a dividing line about the year 1720. This brings us to the neighborhood of Moravianism under Zinzendorf, and of Methodism under the Wesleys. It is also a date which is favorably related to a consideration of the great rationalistic movement of modern times. To be sure, it does not place us at the very beginning of English Deism, for Lord Herbert, Shaftesbury, and Toland came upon the stage before 1720; but it does place us before the deistical writers of England whose works were most influential upon the Continent; before the principal work of Collins, his "Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion," published in 1724; before Woolston, whose "Discourses on the Miracles" appeared in 1727-29; before Tindal, whose "Christianity as Old as

Creation" was published in 1730, and translated into German in 1741; before Morgan also, and Chubb, and Bolingbroke. As respects France, this date brings us to the eve of scepticism as led by Voltaire. In Germany it marks the rise of the Leibnitz-Wolffian philosophy, which served actually, if not designedly, among the factors contributing to the initiation and spread of German rationalism. A fifth period is properly extended to the present. We have then these five periods:

I. From the close of the Apostolic Age to 320.

II. From 320 to 726.

III. From 726 to 1517.

IV. From 1517 to 1720.

V. From 1720 to the present.

Each of these periods has its distinguishing characteristic, though this is not to be asserted in any case in a too exclusive sense. In the first period it was necessary to defend Christianity as a whole against heathenism, and also against heresies so radical as to assail the very essence of the Christian faith. It may therefore be called the Age of Apology. The second, as the period of sharp controversy over individual points of the Christian system, may be termed the Age of Polemics. The third, or the mediæval period, was characterized by the endeavor to systematize and to defend the existing faith of the Church, and is known as the Age of Scholasticism. In the fourth period Protestantism was called upon to define and to vindicate its position against Romanism; on the other hand, Romanism was stimulated to make an elaborate and authoritative restatement of its faith; Protestantism, moreover, became divided into a number of communions, each ardently bent upon vindicating its own special tenets; controversies and creeds abounded; the period is fitly termed, especially as regards Protestantism, the Age of Confessions. In the fifth period the doctrinal movement has

been exceedingly complex, and it is difficult to give a brief statement of its leading characteristics. Perhaps we describe as amply as is possible in a single sentence, when we say that the period has been distinguished by an assertion of the claims of reason against those of revelation, or of the natural against those of the supernatural, together with attempts to reconcile the opposing claims. It appears preeminently as the Age of Strife and of Attempted Reconciliation.