By the test of Innovation I mean an historical examination to discover whether orthodox doctrine--not points doubtful or still controversial within the Catholic body, but defined truth--as propounded by the Catholic Church upon any given matter, at any given moment, had the character of an innovation, contrasting in essence with the development of the past; or whether on the contrary it was the denial of such doctrine, the counter-affirmation provoking such definition, which bore this character of innovation and novelty. If the first view be the true one, then the Catholic Church, false or true, has at least been in all its life one personality consistent with its own essence, and the successive definitions have all been in the line of tradition. But if the opposing view be established, then indeed corruption and error and therefore the absence of her Infallible Authority have been proved. As to what I have called the test of Critical Date, I mean (what should be surely an obvious truth) that if the story has been a process of warping and corruption, there should be some discoverable stage at which this deflection began, and if the fixing of this stage be not only doubtful, but disputed in a hundred forms and set at widely separated epochs, differing by centuries, then the objection is ill-founded. I would not be so pedantic and at the same time so logically weak as to demand of my opponent the fixing of a particular instant in which he discovers error originating. All such things, whether true developments or corruptions, take place in time; none springs up apparent in a single moment. All grow. But I do say that if a plain historical phenomenon of corruption has taken place in this or that--for example, the doctrine of the Eucharist--its inception must be observable within at least a certain range of years, a generation at the most. Such is the test of Critical Date. I will now examine the matter by both these tests: Innovation and Critical Date. (1) As to the first test, it is historically true--and once again, a very strange thing--that in every single case it is the protest against orthodoxy which has had the character of an innovation, and never the orthodox affirmation which has appeared as a novelty. I will explain in a moment how an attempt might be made by our opponents to get over even this difficulty; but at any rate, as far as plain History is concerned, that remarkable fact which I have just stated is true.