I take it that in the times in which we live the Protestant objection, even in its vaguest form, is the less formidable. I shall take it first. I shall conclude with what is, in my own judgment, far the most formidable attack at this moment, and likely to become still more formidable in the near future, the Pagan or purely Sceptical attack: the argument from History that _all_ religion is man-made, that the Catholic Church must be included in the category of man-made things, and that therefore the Catholic Church has no claim to Divine Authority. (a) _The Protestant argument from History._ Throughout the story of the Catholic Church, i.e. during all the last nineteen hundred years,[5] there have continued recurrent protests against this or that doctrine: recurrent affirmations that some other doctrine, contrary to the authoritative definition, is true, and that the authoritative definition is itself false. From these denials and affirmations have proceeded what are called, in Catholic terminology, the various heresies. But towards the end of the Middle Ages these protests gathered together in a new form, which was essentially an appeal to History, and to their general character was applied the term “Protestant.” We need not quarrel over the term or its derivation. It has been, by universal agreement, applied during the last four hundred years. The Protestant challenge to the Catholic Faith is essentially a challenge based upon History. It proposes to show by historical evidence that whereas there was some original body of true revelation, this has been distorted, corrupted and overlaid, and that the Catholic Church with its perpetual accretions of doctrine, ritual and office is more and more divergent from, or even contrary to, the divine original thus presupposed. The Protestant argument still exists even when it is put in its most vague and tenuous modern form. Even those who say, as do so many to-day (believing themselves to be pure sceptics), “I accept the mission of Jesus Christ as salutary to mankind and as containing eternal verities, which it is essential that man for his good should know; but I reject all supernatural statements in connection with this mission,” are still essentially Protestants.[6] They presuppose some original nucleus, however restricted on content and in time, which they postulate as good and true.