These considerations are of primary importance when we try to answer the questions:  To what extent is the Roman Church fettered by her own past?  Is there any insuperable obstacle to a modification of policy which might give her a new lease of life?  We have seen how much importance is attached to the Church’s title-deeds.  Is tradition a fatal obstacle to reform?  Theoretically, the tradition which she traces back to the apostles gives her a fixed constitution.  So the Catholic Church has always maintained.  ’Regula quidem fidei una omnino est, sola immobilis et irreformabilis.’[55] The rule of faith may be better understood by a later age than an earlier, but there can be no additions, only a sort of unpacking of a treasure which was given whole and entire in the first century.  In reality, of course, there has been a steady evolution in conformity to type, the type being not the ‘little flock’ of Christ or the Church of the Apostles, but the absolute monarchy above described.  It has long been the crux of Catholic apologetics to reconcile the theoretical immobility of dogma with the actual facts.

The older method was to rewrite history.  It was convenient, for example, to forget that Pope Honorius I had been anathematised by three ecumenical councils.  The forged Decretals gave a more positive sanction to absolutist claims; and interpolations in the Greek Fathers deceived St. Thomas Aquinas into giving his powerful authority to infallibilism.  This method cannot be called obsolete, for the present Pope recently informed the faithful that ’the Hebrew patriarchs were familiar with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and found consolation in the thought of Mary in the solemn moments of their life.’[56] But such simple devices are hardly practicable in an age when history is scientifically studied.  Moreover, other considerations, besides controversial straits, have suggested a new theory of tradition.  A Caesar who, like the kings of the Medes and Persians, is bound by the laws of his predecessors, is not absolute.  Acceptance of the theory of development in dogma would relieve the Pope from the weight of the dead hand.

The new apologetic is generally said to have been inaugurated by Cardinal Newman.  His work ‘The Development of Christian Doctrine,’ is no doubt an epoch-making book, though the idea of tradition as the product of the living spirit of a religious society, preserving its moral identity while expressing itself, from time to time, in new forms, was already familiar to readers of Schleiermacher.  Newman gives us several ‘tests’ of true development.  These are—­preservation of type; continuity of principles; power of assimilation; logical sequence; anticipation of results; tendency to conserve the old; chronic vigour.  These tests, he considered, differentiate the Roman Church from all other Christian bodies, and prove its superiority.  The Church has its own genius, which yes and works in it.  This is