Augustine or Bossuet might indeed have spoken of an increasing purpose, but the "purpose" of their speculations was subsidiary to a future life.

The purpose of the German idealists could be fulfilled in earthly conditions and required no theory of personal immortality.
This atmosphere of thought affected even intelligent reactionaries who wrote in the interest of orthodox Christianity and the Catholic Church.
Progressive development is admitted in the lectures on the Philosophy of History of Friedrich von Schlegel.

[Footnote: Translated into English in 2 vols., 1835.] He denounced Condorcet, and opposed to perfectibility the corruptible nature of man.

But he asserted that the philosophy of history is to be found in "the principles of social progress." [Footnote: Op.cit.ii, p.

194, sqq.] These principles are three: the hidden ways of Providence emancipating the human race; the freewill of man; and the power which God permits to the agents of evil,--principles which Bossuet could endorse, but the novelty is that here they are arrayed as forces of Progress.