When the inferential process enters upon a ground where
there is not this good understanding or when it slides out of its own, simply
inferential functions into conjectural ones and attempts discovery, it loses
this command; and the appeal to simple logic to force unaccepted premisses, or
subtle conjectures will not answer. On this latter sort of ground, one man’s
logic will differ from another man’s logic; and one will draw one inference and
another; and one will draw more and another less in the same direction of
inference. In this way the logical controversy proceeded on the great doctrines
of Christianity in the first centuries: different sects developed them in their
own way; and each sect appealed triumphantly to the logical irresitibleness of
its development. The Arian, the Nestorian, the Apolliniarian, the Eutychian,
the Monothelite developments, each began with a great truth and each professed
to demand one, and only one, treatment for it. All successively had one
watchword, and that was, Be logical. Be logical, said the Arian: Jesus Christ
is the son of God; a son cannot be coeval with his father. Be logical, said the
Nestorian: Jesus Christ was man and was God; he was therefore two persons. Be
logical, said the Apollinarian: Jesus Christ was not two persons; he was not,
therefore, perfect God and perfect man too. Be logical, said the Eutychian:
Jesus Christ was only one person; he could therefore only have one nature. Be
logical, said the Monothelite: Jesus Christ was only one person; he could
therefore only have one will. Be logical, said the Macedonian: The Holy Ghost
is the Spirit of the Father, and therefore cannot be a person distinct from the
Father. Be logical, said the Sabellian: God is one, and therefore cannot be
three. BE logical, said the Manichean: evil is not derived from God, and
therefore must be an original substance independent of Him. Be logical, aid the
Gnostic: an infinite Deity cannot really assume a finite body. Be logical, said
the Novatian: there is only one baptism for the remission of sins; there is
therefore no remission for sin after baptism. Be logical, to come to later
times, said the Calvinist: God predestines, and therefore man has not free
will. BE logical, said the Anabaptist: the Gospel bids us to communicate our
goods, and therefore does not sanction property in them. Be logical, says the
Quaker: the Gospel enjoins meekness, and therefore forbids war. Be logical,
says every sect and school: you admit our premisses; you do not admit our
conclusions. You are inconsistent. You go a certain way, and then arbitrarily
stop. You admit a truth, but do not push it to its legitimate consequences. You
are superficial; you want depth. Thus on every kind of question in religion has
human logic from the first imposed imperially its own conclusions; and
encountered equally imperial counter ones. The truth is, that human reason is
liable to error; and to make logical infallible we must have an infallible
logician. . . .The whole dogmatic creed of the Church has been formed in direct
contradiction to such apparent lines of consecutiveness. (J. B. Mozley, The
Theory of Development: A Criticism of Dr. Newman’s Essay on the Development of
Christian Doctrine [1847], 42-43)
