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The Essay 28:25An Essay on the Development of Christian DoctrineThese are specimens of the raw material, as it may be called, which, whether as found in individual Fathers within the pale of the Church, or in heretics external to it, she had the power, by means of the continuity and firmness of her principles, to convert to her own uses. She alone has succeeded in thus rejecting evil without sacrificing the good, and in holding together in one things which in all other schools are incompatible. Gnostic or Platonic words are found in the inspired theology of St. John; to the Platonists Unitarian writers trace the doctrine of our Lord's divinity; Gibbon the idea of the Incarnation to the Gnostics. The Gnostics too seem first to have systematically thrown the intellect upon matters of faith; and the very term "Gnostic" has been taken by Clement to express his perfect Christian. And, though ascetics existed from the beginning, the notion of a religion higher than the Christianity of the many, was first prominently brought forward by the Gnostics, Montanists, Novatians, and Manichees. And while the prophets of the Montanists prefigure the Church's Doctors, and their professed inspiration her infallibility, and their revelations her developments, and the heresiarch himself is the unsightly anticipation of St. Francis, in Novatian again we discern the aspiration of nature after such creations of grace as St. Benedict or St. Bruno. And so the effort of Sabellius to complete the enunciation of the mystery of the Ever-blessed Trinity failed: it became a heresy; grace would not be constrained; the course of thought could not be forced;--at length it was realized in the true Unitarianism of St. Augustine.April 19:9The Roman MartyrologyAt Rome, the holy Pope, Leo IX, [from the year 1049 till 1054,] illustrious for his grace and the fame of his miracles. [He is the same as St. Bruno, 40th Bishop of Toul.]May 17:8The Roman MartyrologyAt Wurzburg, [in the year 1045,] the holy Confessor Bruno, Bishop [of that see.]July 18:11The Roman MartyrologyAt Segni, the holy Confessor Bruno, Bishop [of that see, in the year 1125.]October 15:6The Roman MartyrologyIn Prussia, (at the beginning of the eleventh century,) the holy martyr Bruno, Bishop of the Ruthenians, who was preaching the gospel in those parts when he was taken by wicked men, who cut off, first his hands and feet, and then his head.October 6:2The Roman MartyrologyIn Calabria, (in the year 1101,) the holy Confessor Bruno, Founder of the Order of Monks of the Charterhouse.