erilous concession to modern ideas. There is an obvious danger that,
as the result of this doctrine, the dogmas of the Church may seem to
have only a relative and provisional truth; for, if each pronouncement
were absolutely true, there would be no real development, and the
appearance of it in history would become inexplicable.

This new and, in appearance, more liberal attitude towards modern ideas
of progress has raised the hopes of many in the Roman Church whose
minds and consciences are troubled by the ever-widening chasm which
separates traditional dogma from secular knowledge. While dogma was
stationary--_immobilis et irreformabilis_--there seemed to be no
prospect except that the progress of human knowledge would leave
theology further and further behind, till the rupture between
Catholicism and civilisation became absolute. The idea that the Church
would ever modify her teaching to bring it into harmony with modern
science seemed utterly chimerical. But if the static theory of
revelation is abandoned, and a dynamic theory substituted for it; if the
divine part of Christianity resides, not in the theoretical formulations
of revealed fact, but in the living and energising spirit of the Church;
why should not dogmatic theology become elastic, changing periodically
in correspondence with the development of human knowledge, and no longer
stand in irreconcilable contradiction with the ascertained laws of
nature?

Thus the dethronement of tradition by the Pope contributed to make the
Modernist movement possible. The Modernists have even claimed Newman as
on their side. This appeal cannot be sustained. 'The Development of
Christian Doctrine' is mainly a polemic against the high Anglican
position, and an answer to attacks upon Roman Catholicism from this
side. Anglicanism at that time had committed itself to a thoroughly
stationary view of revelation. Its 'appeal to antiquity'--a period
which, in accordance with a convenient theory, it limited to the
councils of the 'undivided Church'--was intended to prove the
catholicity and orthodoxy of the English Church, as the faithful
guardian of apostolic tradition, and to condemn the medieval and modern
accretions sanctioned by the Church of Rome. The earlier theory of
tradition left the Roman Church open to damaging criticism on this side;
no ingenuity could prove that all her doctrines were 'primitive.' Even
in those early days of historical criticism, it must have been plain