Christianity, in its substantial
contents, has always been the same. The form of its apprehension however, on
the part of the Church, has varied with the onward progress of its history. At
the start, it was the fresh life of childhood, without reflection. The first
germs of a Christian theology, its great leading doctrines separately taken, surrounding
errors. From the fourth century, the entire intellectual strength of the
Church appears devoted to the object of settling and establishing particular
doctrines; still however only in their separate form. The Scholastic period
of the middle ages, took up what was thus fixed in the way of faith, and
laboured to reduce all to a general system. Throughout this whole progress of
theological development, however, the distinctive constitution of Christianity
itself, as compared with other forms of religion, can hardly be said to have
come into view. Even the Reformers of the sixteenth century, thoroughly
imbued as they were with its living spirit, were too fully occupied with the
work of setting it free from church oppression, to bestow much reflection on
this point. (John Williamson Nevin, The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of
the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist [Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1846], 13-14)
