OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. BY WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D.D. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. EDINBURGH: T. AND T. CLARK, 38, GEORGE STREET. PREFACE. THE History of Christian Doctrine here given to the public is the result of several years of investigation, while the author held the professorship of Ecclesiastical History in the Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts. As this is the first attempt of the kind in English literature, to write an account of the gradual construction of all the doctrines of the Christian religion, he had no models before him, and was compelled to originate his own method. Upon a survey of the vast field, it appeared to be the most simple and perspicuous plan to investigate each of the principal subjects by itself, starting from the first beginnings of scientific reflection upon it, and going down to the latest and most complete forms of statement. This method, though not without some disadvantages, recommends itself by reason of the opportunity it affords for continuous investigation, each part flowing out of the preceding and preparing for what follows, and the whole making a single and strong impression. Such a method is in harmony with the nature of history itself. The reader follows a single stream from its rise in its head-waters through all its windings, until it discharges itself, immenso ore, into the sea. The history of Christian doctrine thus conceived and composed is one of the strongest of all defences of the Christian faith. It is a common remark, that a powerful statement is a powerful argument. This is true of the dogmas of Christianity. But there is no statement of revealed truth more clear, connected, and convincing, than that which it obtains in the gradual and sequacious constructions of the Church, from century to century. Let any one trace the course of thinking by the theological mind, upon the doctrine of the Trinity, e. g., and perceive how link follows link by necessary consequence; how the objections of the heretic or the latitudinarian only elicit a more exhaustive, and at the same time more guarded, statement, which carries the Church still nearer to the substance of revelation, and the heart of the mystery; how, in short, the trinitarian dogma, like the Christian life itself as described by the apostle, "being fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, maketh increase unto the edifying of itself" into a grand architectural structure,―let this process from beginning to end pass before a thinking and logical mind, and it will be difficult for it to resist the conviction that here is science, here is self-consistent and absolute truth. It cannot be that the earnest reflection of all the Christian centuries should thus have spent itself upon a fiction and figment. The symbol in which this thinking embodied itself must be the exponent of a reality. Such is the impression made, and such is the unavoidable inference. Christianity is, ultimately, its own best defence. The argument of a holy and beautiful life, it is universally conceded, is unanswerable; and so is the argument of a profound and homogeneous system. At a time when the divine origin and authority of the Christian religion are disputed and combatted with more than ordinary violence, it is seasonable to introduce the opponent to the Christian dogmas themselves, in the very act and process of their scientific construction. If he is capable of con |