And, if it be said in reply that the difficulty of admitting these developments of doctrine lies, not merely in the absence of early testimony for them, but in the actual existence of distinct testimony against them,--or, as Chillingworth says, in "Popes against Popes, Councils against Councils,"--I answer, of course this will be said; but let the fact of this objection be carefully examined, and its value reduced to its true measure, before it is used in argument. I grant that there are "Bishops against Bishops in Church history, Fathers against Fathers, Fathers against themselves," for such differences in individual writers are consistent with, or rather are involved in the very idea of doctrinal development, and consequently are no real objection to it; the one essential question is whether the recognized organ of teaching, the Church herself, acting through Pope or Council as the oracle of heaven, has ever contradicted her own enunciations. If so, the hypothesis which I am advocating is at once shattered; but, till I have positive and distinct evidence of the fact, I am slow to give credence to the existence of so great an improbability. FOOTNOTES: [104:1] Anal. ii. 7. [107:1] [On Miracles, Essay ii. 111.] [109:1] Anal. ii. 7. [109:2] On Prophecy, i. p. 28. [110:1] Aphor. 5, vol. iv. p. xi. ed. 1815. [113:1] Nov. Org. i. 2, § 26, vol. iv. p. 29. [113:2] Nov. Org. § 70, p. 44. [113:3] Hist. of Rome, vol. i. p. 345, ed. 1828. [115:1] Lardner's Heath. Test. p. 22. [115:2] Paley's Evid. p. i. prop. 1, 7. [116:1] Milman, Christ. vol. ii. p. 352. [118:1] Evidences, iii. 5. CHAPTER IV. INSTANCES IN ILLUSTRATION. It follows now to inquire how much evidence is actually producible for those large portions of the present Creed of Christendom, which have not a recognized place in the primordial idea and the historical outline of the Religion, yet which come to us with certain antecedent considerations strong enough in reason to raise the effectiveness of that evidence to a point disproportionate, as I have allowed, to its intrinsic value. In urging these considerations here, of course I exclude for the time the force of the Church's claim of infallibility in her acts, for which so much can be said, but I do not exclude the logical cogency of those acts, considered as testimonies to the faith of the times before them. My argument then is this:--that, from the first age of Christianity, its teaching looked towards those ecclesiastical dogmas, afterwards recognized and defined, with (as time went on) more or less determinate advance in the direction of them; till at length that advance became so pronounced, as to justify their definition and to bring it about, and to place them in the position of rightful interpretations and keys of the remains and the records in history of the teaching which had so terminated. 2.