teries connected
with her. According to this notion we must subject ourselves to the
Church and must have ourselves filled with holy consecrations as we are
filled with food. But the following chapters will show that this
superstition and mystery magic were counterbalanced by a most lively
conception of the freedom and responsibility of the individual. Fettered
by the bonds of authority and superstition in the sphere of religion,
free and self-dependent in the province of morality, this Christianity
is characterised by passive submission in the first respect and by
complete activity in the second. It may be that exegetical theology can
never advance beyond an alternation between these two aspects of the
case, and a recognition of their equal claim to consideration; for the
religious phenomenon in which they are combined defies any explanation.
But religion is in danger of being destroyed when the insufficiency of
the understanding is elevated into a convenient principle of theory and
life, and when the real mystery of the faith, viz., how one becomes a
new man, must accordingly give place to the injunction that we must
obediently accept the religious as a consecration, and add to this the
zealous endeavour after ascetic virtue. Such, however, has been the
character of Catholicism since the third century, and even after
Augustine's time it has still remained the same in its practice.

_EXCURSUS TO CHAPTERS II. AND III._

CATHOLIC AND ROMAN.[299]

In investigating the development of Christianity up till about the year
270 the following facts must be specially kept in mind: In the regions
subject to Rome, apart from the Judaeo-Christian districts and passing
disturbances, Christianity had yet an undivided history in vital
questions;[300] the independence of individual congregations and of the
provincial groups of Churches was very great; and every advance in the
development of the communities at the same time denoted a forward step
in their adaptation to the existing conditions of the Empire. The first
two facts we have mentioned have their limitations. The further apart
the different Churches lay, the more various were the conditions under
which they arose and flourished; the looser the relations between the
towns in which they had their home the looser also was the connection
between them. Still, it is evident that towards the end of the third
century the development in the Church had well-nigh attained the same
poi