It is not to my present purpose to state the results of these speculations. The two points to which I wish to draw your attention in reference to this tendency to philosophize, are these: (1) The distinction between what was either an original and ground belief or a historical fact of which a trustworthy tradition had come down, and speculations in regard to such primary beliefs and historical facts, tended to disappear in the strong philosophical current of the time. It did not disappear without a struggle. Tertullian, among others, gives indications of it. The doctrine of the Divine Word had begun in his time to make its way into the Creed: it was known as the “dispensation” (_œconomia_). “The simpler-minded men,” he remarks, “not to say ignorant and uneducated, who always constitute the majority of believers—since the rule of faith itself transfers us from the belief in polytheism to the belief in one only true God—not understanding that though God be one, yet His oneness is to be understood as involving a dispensation, are frightened at this idea of dispensation.”[697] But the ancient conservatism was crushed. It came to be considered as important to have the right belief in the speculation as it confessedly was to have it in the fact. (2) The result of the fading away of this distinction, and of the consequent growth in importance of the speculative element, was a tendency to check individual speculations, and to fuse all speculation in the average speculations of the majority. The battle of the second century had been a battle between those who asserted that there was a single and final tradition of truth, and those who claimed that the Holy Spirit spoke to them as truly as He had spoken to men in the days of the apostles. The victorious opinion had been that the revelation was final, and that what was contained in the records of the apostles was the sufficient sum of Christian teaching: hence the stress laid upon _apostolic_ doctrine.