have no wish to speak harshly
of the man. Had we any disposition to do so, there is more than enough
in the personal explanation, prefixed to the closing volume of his work,
effectually to disarm us. We have too much sympathy with the trials of a
vigorous but eccentric mind, struggling in untoward circumstances, and
against an adverse tide, to maintain a position of honorable
independence, to say a word that could wound the feelings or injure the
prospects of a man of science. But it is not unkind to add that his life
might have been a more prosperous one had he devoted himself to the
pursuits of Science, without assailing the truths of Religion; and that
his fame would have been at once more extensive and more enduring had it
been left to repose on his Classification or Hierarchy of the Sciences,
without being associated with the more doubtful merits of his
fundamental law of Man's Development.

SECTION IV.

THEORY OF _ECCLESIASTICAL_ DEVELOPMENT.--J. H. NEWMAN.

This particular phase of the general theory bears less directly on the
subject of our present inquiry than either of the _three_ which have
already passed under review, and yet it has recently been applied in
such a way as may entitle it to a passing notice.

For while the theory of Ecclesiastical Development has a _direct_
relation only to the question in regard to the Rule of Faith, it has
also an _indirect_ or _collateral_ relation to the truths of Natural as
well as of Revealed Religion; and this relation demands for it,
especially in the existing state of theological speculation, the earnest
attention of all who are concerned for the maintenance even of the
simplest and most elementary articles of Divine truth.

The most elaborate and systematic exposition of this theory is exhibited
in the "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, by JOHN HENRY
NEWMAN;" an Essay primarily directed to the discussion of the points of
difference between the Popish and the Protestant Churches, but which
will be found to have an important bearing, also, on some doctrines
which are common to both, and especially on the fundamental articles of
Natural Religion itself.

It is thus stated by Mr. Newman:[91] "That the increase and expansion of
the Christian Creed and Ritual, and the variations which have attended
the process in the case of individual writers and churches, are the
necessary attendants on any philosophy or polity which takes possession
of the intelle