the results are only potentially in the germs from which they spring (Mark 5:28–32). In organic development there is no alteration or corruption, no mere addition or accretion; there is vitality, absorption, assimilation, growth, identity. Take, for example, the doctrines mentioned above. Scripture teaches plainly that there is only one God; yet it speaks of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and it speaks of Jesus Christ in such terms that He must be both God and Man. It was not until after some centuries that these truths were elaborated into the definitions which we are bound to believe. Who can doubt that during these centuries the primitive teaching absorbed into itself the appropriate Greek elements, and that the process was analogous to the growth of an organism? (Supra, p. xx.) This view of the organic development of the Church’s teaching is a conclusive answer to those who ask us to produce from ancient authorities the exact counterpart of what we now believe and practise. They might just as well look for the branches and leaves of an oak in the acorn from which it sprang.
“Shall we then have no advancement of religion in the Church of Christ? Let us have it indeed, and the greatest.… But yet in such sort that it be truly an advancement of faith, not a change (sed ita tamen ut vere profectus sit ille fidei, non permutatio), seeing that it is the nature of an advancement, that in itself each thing (severally) grow greater, but of a change that something be turned from one thing into another.… Let the soul’s religion imitate the law of the body, which, as years go on, develops indeed and opens out its due proportions, and yet remains identically what it was.… Small are a baby’s limbs, a youth’s are larger, yet they are the same.… So also the doctrine of the Christian religion must follow those laws of advancement; namely, that with years it be consolidated, with time it be expanded, with age it be exalted, yet remain uncorrupt and untouched, and be full and perfect in all the proportions of each of its parts, and with all its members, as it were, and proper senses; that it admit no change besides, sustain no loss of its propriety, no variety of its definition. Wherefore, whatsoever in this Church, God’s husbandry, has by the
