In the old world there were, of course, novelties, too. But the pace of change was so slow that it did not seem to cause radical change. There was ample time to make subtle and necessary revisions of the fundamental assumptions of right and wrong without seeming to challenge the distinction between right and wrong. Looking back at it in long perspective we can see now that there was [p058] a constant evolution of the Christian faith from the Apostles to the later councils of the Church. But in relation to the life of any individual the change was so slow that men could honestly believe that the Catholicism of Hildebrand was identical with the Christianity of Paul. Men had few means of reconstructing the past, and few ways of knowing how great was the variety of belief at any one time within the frontiers of Christendom. Within their horizon, change came too slowly to seem like change, because only that seems to move which moves rather fast. For that reason the large changes which took place were not vividly realized. The small, quick changes, of which men were conscious, could therefore easily be made to seem, especially since men were not too exact and observant, as inevitable deductions from unchanging premises. Even in the great arguments over the nature of Christ, the rights of Church and Empire, the meaning of grace and transubstantiation, both sides appealed in theory to the same premises. Each side asserted that it was following the true revelation. And since ordinary men for the most part never heard the other side, except from their own priests and doctors, they had no reason for doubting that the side on which they happened to find themselves was absolutely right. They did not have to choose between competing creeds; they had merely to defend their creed, which was the true one, against the enemies of God. And so if they were disturbed by the quarrel, they were not disturbed much by doubt.