Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS. SECTION XI-IN THE BUD. CHRISTIAN Dogmatics, like every science, has a history of its own, and a knowledge of this history is absolutely necessary for a thorough study of this science. It is plain from the nature of the case, that the systematic investigation of the truth which belongs to salvation has never completely ceased since the birth of the Church of our Lord. Not a little has been already done, specially for the Apologetics of Christianity, and for the development of single and most important dogmas, by the ancient Church. But for Dogmatics as a whole, taken as an independent science, the first seven centuries of our era scarcely deserve a better name than that of a period of preparation. The earliest period of its history, if we denote it by a single word, has been a period of slow and gradual budding. 1. The history of the science, whilst it makes us acquainted with its past, and explains its present state, also directs our way for the future, by pointing out to us on the one side its most distinguished leaders, and on the other its threatening dangers. This history occupies a place in our introduction, not merely for completeness' sake, but because a knowledge of it, at any rate to a certain degree, is indispensable. 2. From the nature of the truth of salvation, its revelation has in every century given rise to speculation and investigation. For these it offers boundless material and a powerful stimulus; for rational faith cannot remain indifferent to that " which the angels desire to look into."' Foryears before the " fides quarit intdleclum " was uttered, it had been silently practised. Discursive thinking cannot possibly satisfy the mind; the spirit seeks unity in its ideas, even in the highest domain of
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