The most extreme case--and to-day the most common one--the case of the man who says he takes the four canonical Gospels, and these alone; that he rejects Pauline theology as a corruption, a man-made thing proceeding from the man Paul; that he rejects in the Gospels themselves every element which affirms or implies the miraculous powers of Jesus Christ, His claim to divinity, His Resurrection and the rest, is still a Protestant case. He affirms that the Sermon on the Mount (to which he is oddly attached) and sundry general propositions upon humility, charity and other Catholic virtues, are good: and in saying that they are good he is saying that they are true. His quarrel is not with the whole Catholic scheme, but with everything in the Catholic scheme beyond what he has chosen for himself out of the mass of Catholic teaching.[7] Now let us put down at the beginning of the debate one common element upon which all should be agreed: there _has_ been development; and in so far as development involves change, there has been in that sense, and in that alone, change. What is more, the development continues, and in so far as the word “change” may be applied to development, change continues.[8] The definitions of the Council of Trent are immensely more elaborate than the Apostles’ Creed; the Apostles’ Creed (probably dating from the earliest origins of the Church though it does, and at the latest, in its essentials, a second-century Roman form) has more exact definition in it than the Gospel; the ritual of the Mass is not identical in every place; it is not identical through time. The Liturgy at once expanded and crystallised as the generations proceeded. Even within the brief space of a few centuries it is possible to point to portions of the Roman Mass (to take but one form) which began as voluntary or optional prayers and which became incorporated in the regular structure of the Sacrifice. One might even say that certain slight additions of quite recent origin may, in the near future, follow the same course. The bishop, the priest and the deacon of the original Church formed a far simpler body than does the vast organisation of the Hierarchy to-day, and new special worships of this saint or that, new shrines, and all the rest continually arise. The argument in no way turns upon either side (for men of intelligence or information) on so obvious and elementary a truth as that such development exists. It is common ground upon which both must proceed. Where they differ is upon the point whether or no such development has introduced a fundamental change of character into the Catholic Church with the passage of the centuries. A parallel will explain what I mean. Two men observe a tree. One says, “It is an oak, in full vigour”; the other says, “No, it was of oaken origin, but there has been grafted upon it another growth and the whole is thus not only warped and transformed, but in my eyes diseased. It is not an oak.”