When we consider, for instance, the popular monarchy of the English, that is, the government of England by a king, aided indeed by other powers, but having in his own hand the main force of the executive, there may be some debate as to the moment in which these powers began to fall off, until they reach the purely symbolic or nominal situation in which they are to-day, when the king no longer governs at all but is the neutral chief of society. I myself should put it as early as the reign of Edward VI, and I should say it had become marked under the elder Cecil at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign. It is more usual to say that the great change came under Charles I, and certainly it was clinched by the civil wars. There are even perhaps some who maintain that monarchy was still in the main more powerful than any other political factor until the Dutch invasion of 1688. But at any rate it lies within these two lifetimes--1550 to 1690. No one will deny that the process had begun in the latter half of the sixteenth century; no one will deny that it was thoroughly accomplished before the end of the seventeenth. It is so with all other historical phenomena of the kind. You can put within the limits of a lifetime, and not a very long lifetime, the transformation and decline of the Roman Empire during the third century. You can see clearly that feudalism was a living social system under Henry III of England and even under Edward I, but that it was no longer the spiritual motive of society after the Black Death. You may take any process you like throughout History, and you will find this to be true; not that you can always put your finger upon a particular year or event, let alone a particular moment, but that you can say, “Within this comparatively narrow limit of time the change takes place, certainly the institution was living within its traditions and in the direction determined by its originals as late as such and such a moment; certainly after such and such a moment, not long subsequent, it is as clearly failing to keep that original direction.” But here, in the case of the Catholic Church, her opponents can say nothing of the kind. If they could, not only would scholarship be roughly agreed among our opponents as to the Critical Date, but we ourselves should at last be agreed, as we are agreed with regard to attack upon abuses, in the long run--though never with regard to the attack on doctrine. But there is no such agreement, and can be none; for the simple reason that the Catholic Church has not thus warped or veered but has remained herself. So by this second test I conclude that the historical objection is false.