have “a shew of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body,” [444:1] as the austerities of the cloister are miserable preparatives for the enjoyments of a world of purity and love.  Christianity exhibited startling tokens of degeneracy when it attempted to nourish piety upon the spawn of the heathen superstitions.  The gospel is designed for social and for active beings; as it hallows all the relations of life, it also teaches us how to use all the good gifts of God; and whilst celibacy and protracted fasting may only generate misanthropy and melancholy, faith, walking in the ways of obedience, can purify the heart, and induce the peace that passeth all understanding.

CHAPTER V.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH.

For some time after the apostolic age, the doctrine of the Church remained unchanged.  Those who had been taught the gospel by the lips of its inspired heralds could not have been readily induced to relinquish any of its distinctive principles.  It must, indeed, be admitted that the purity of the evangelical creed was soon deteriorated by the admixture of dogmas suggested by bigotry and superstition; but, it may safely be asserted that, throughout the whole of the period now before us, its elementary articles were substantially maintained by almost all the Churches of the Empire.

Though there was still a pretty general agreement respecting the cardinal points of Christianity, it is not to be thought strange that the early writers occasionally expressed themselves in a way which would now be considered loose or inaccurate.  Errorists, by the controversies they awakened, not unfrequently created much perplexity and confusion; but, in general, the truth eventually issued from discussion with renovated credit; for, in due time, acute and able advocates came forward to prove that the articles assailed rested on an impregnable foundation.  During these debates it was found necessary to distinguish the different shades of doctrine by the establishment of a fixed terminology.  The disputants were obliged to define with precision the expressions they employed; and thus various forms of speech ceased to have an equivocal meaning.  But, in the second or third century, theology had not assumed a scientific form; and the language of orthodoxy was, as yet, unsettled.  Hence, when treating of doctrinal questions, those whose views were substantially correct sometimes gave their sanction to the use of phrases which were afterwards condemned as the symbols of heterodoxy. [446:1]