It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and, at length, strikes out in one definite direction.

In time it enters upon strange territory; points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and fall about it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations, and old principles reappear under new forms; it changes with them, in order to remain the same.

In a higher world it is otherwise; but here below _to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often_."[92] In answer to the objection, "that inspired documents, such as the Holy Scriptures, at once determine the doctrines which we should believe," it is replied, "that they were intended to create an idea, and that idea is not in the sacred text, but in the mind of the reader; and the question is, whether that idea is communicated to him, in its completeness and minute accuracy, on its first apprehension, or expands in his heart and intellect, and comes to perfection in the course of time.

Nor could it be maintained without extravagance that the letter of the New Testament, or of any assignable number of books, comprises a delineation of all possible forms which a Divine message will assume when submitted to a multitude of minds."[93] What relation, it may be asked, can this theory respecting the development of revealed or Christian truth bear to the question of the being and perfections of God?
We answer, that it is founded on a general philosophical principle which may affect the truths of natural as well as those of revealed Religion; and that it is applied in such a way as to show that, as it has already led to the worship of angels and saints, so it may hereafter issue in the deification of Nature, which is Pantheism, or in the separate worship of its component parts, which is Polytheism; and, in either case, the personality and supremacy of the one only, the living and the true God, would be effectually superseded, if not explicitly denied.
But, is there any real danger of such a disastrous consummation?
We answer, that the mere coexistence of the theory of Ecclesiastical Development with the infidel speculations on the doctrine of Human Progress is of itself an ominous symptom; and, further, that the mutual interchange of complimentary acknowledgments between the Infidel and Popish parties is another, especially when both are found to coincide in some of the main grounds of their opposition to Scripture as the supreme rule of faith, and when the homage which the advocates of Development render to the theory of progress is responded to by glowing eulogiums from the infidel camp on the genius of Catholicism as the masterpiece of human policy.

But there are other grounds of apprehension, arising more directly out of the very nature of the theory of Development itself.
That theory has been described by Dr.Brownson--himself a convert to Catholicism--as the product of "a _school_ formed, at first, outside of the Church, but now brought within her communion," and compared, in regard to its dangerousness, with the speculations of Hermes and Lamennais.[94] And a still more competent judge--Professor Sedgwick, of Cambridge[95]--has characterized it as "a monstrous compound of Popery and Pantheism," according to which "the Catholic faith is not a religion revealed to us in the Sacred Books we call canonical, and in the works of the Fathers which are supposed to contain the oral traditions of the Apostles and their followers; but a new Pantheistic element is to be fastened on the faith of men,--a principle of Development which may overshadow both the _verbum Dei scriptum_ and the _verbum Dei non scriptum_ of the Romish Church, and change both the form and substance of primitive Christianity." It is only justice to Mr.Newman to say that he appears to have been aware of this possible objection to his theory, and that he makes an attempt to obviate it.