This already touches on the second objection which was raised above, that dogma, in the given sense of the word, was too narrowly conceived, and could not in this conception be applied throughout the whole history of the Church. This objection would only be justified, if our task were to carry the history of the development of dogma through the whole history of the Church. But the question is just whether we are right in proposing such a task. The Greek Church has no history of dogma after the seven great Councils, and it is incomparably more important to recognise this fact than to register the theologoumena which were later on introduced by individual Bishops and scholars in the East, who were partly influenced by the West. Roman Catholicism in its dogmas, though, as noted above, these at present do not very clearly characterise it, is to-day essentially--that is, so far as it is religion--what it was 1500 years ago, viz., Christianity as understood by the ancient world. The changes which dogma has experienced in the course of its development in western Catholicism are certainly deep and radical: they have, in point of fact, as has been indicated in the text above, modified the position of the Church towards Christianity as dogma. But as the Catholic Church herself maintains that she adheres to Christianity in the old dogmatic sense, this claim of hers cannot be contested. She has embraced new things and changed her relations to the old, but still preserved the old. But she has further developed new dogmas according to the scheme of the old. The decrees of Trent and of the Vatican are formally analogous to the old dogmas. Here, then, a history of dogma may really be carried forward to the present day without thereby shewing that the definition of dogma given above is too narrow to embrace the new doctrines. Finally, as to Protestantism, it has been briefly explained above why the changes in Protestant systems of doctrine are not to be taken up into the history of dogma. Strictly speaking, dogma, as dogma, has had no development in Protestantism, inasmuch as a secret note of interrogation has been here associated with it from the very beginning. But the old dogma has continued to be a power in it, because of its tendency to look back and to seek for authorities in the past, and partly in the original unmodified form. The dogmas of the fourth and fifth centuries have more influence to-day in wide circles of Protestant Churches than all the doctrines which are concentrated around justification by faith. Deviations from the latter are borne comparatively easy, while as a rule, deviations from the former are followed by notice to quit the Christian communion, that is, by excommunication. The historian of to-day would have no difficulty in answering the question whether the power of Protestantism as a Church lies at present in the elements which it has in common with the old dogmatic Christianity, or in that by which it is distinguished from it.