The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

which classifies, and adjusts in their due relations to each other its
doctrines, which sees each in the light of all, and. under whose guidance, to
use the vigorous words of Dr. Shedd, "the objections of the heretic or
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," this science, in its own nature,
must have growth. The man who takes up the Bible now, without
reference to what the minds of generations have done towards its
elucidation, is exactly as foolish as the man who would effect to take up
any great branch of science without regard to what has been done before.
The botanist's Rule of faith was Eve's carpet and canopy, but not until
Linnaeus was the botanist's Confession of faith set forth. Dr. Shedd has
well stated and well guarded the doctrine of development. He shows that
development is not creation, nor improvement. Botany neither creates the
plants, nor improves upon the facts connected with them; but it develops
into a more perfect knowledge of them, and out of that higher knowledge
into a more perfect science. The plants themselves furnish the Rule of the
botanist's faith, but the Systema Plantarum is its creed. The science
develops, but it develops toward the absolute truth, not away from it; and
the more perfect the doctrinal development is, the nearer has it come to the
ideal of God's mind, which has its image in His word.
Much of Dr. Shedd's mode of thinking is certainly not the outgrowth
of anything characteristic of New England. The attitude of the original
extreme Puritanism to the history of the ancient Church, was very different
from his. Puritanism, as separatism, had no history for it, and hence it
repudiated history. It has lived long enough to have a history, to recede
from its extreme positions, and to receive new elements of life; and Dr.
Shedd's book is one among many evidences that Puritanism seeks a
history, and begins to appreciate its value--the value not only of its own
history, but of the history of the whole Church. After all the diversities and
terrible internal strifes of the nominally Christian Church, there is not any
great part of it that can safely ignore absolutely any