Had we, for instance, in the early documents of the Church, a solemn, definite Apostolic statement that Our Lord would come back to earth in glory before the destruction of Jerusalem: had we any trace or echo of a protest raised by some who, disappointed in the delay of their hopes, laid their disappointment to the Apostles: had we any echo of voices in the Apostolic or sub-Apostolic period saying, “Since He has not come again we are deceived by the Church”--then the particular case I have mentioned (and it is only one out of a great number) would be arguable. But we have none such. Had we a solemn pronouncement registered, as of the Faith, that the dead lay unliving and out of communion with us or with life as a whole from the moment of their passing to the Resurrection of the Flesh, then the statement that this was a contradiction with later defined doctrine on the Particular Judgment and with our prayers for the dead, would be arguable. But there has been no such pronouncement. In other words, change, in the sense of change of vague mood, has no more historical weight in this department than the admitted divergence between individuals or sections upon matters undefined. Before authority has spoken, authority has not committed itself. When authority has spoken, contradiction must be established between itself and itself: or there is no historical argument against the claim of authority. You may say that there is no such argument only because authority is careful not to contradict itself. Well and good; but it remains true that the contradiction has not taken place, and that therefore the historical argument based upon it fails. When or if it shall apparently take place, there will be time to meet such an argument in its apparent strength. But so far--and the period, remember, is one far longer than that attached to any other defined human institution--the argument does not apply. Now, though it is not logically connected with the strict process of reason I am here developing, may I not ask the reader rhetorically once more whether that is not in his eyes a very singular phenomenon?