ghtenment
which is bestowed on all the willing and the virtuous. In later times,
indeed, the analogy was far more complete, in so far as the Church
reserved the full possession of dogma to a circle of consecrated and
initiated individuals. Dogmatic Christianity is therefore a definite
stage in the history of the development of Christianity. It corresponds
to the antique mode of thought, but has nevertheless continued to a very
great extent in the following epochs, though subject to great
transformations. Dogmatic Christianity stands between Christianity as
the religion of the Gospel, presupposing a personal experience and
dealing with disposition and conduct, and Christianity as a religion of
cultus, sacraments, ceremonial and obedience, in short of superstition,
and it can be united with either the one or the other. In itself and in
spite of all its mysteries it is always intellectual Christianity, and
therefore there is always the danger here that as knowledge it may
supplant religious faith, or connect it with a doctrine of religion,
instead of with God and a living experience.

If then the discipline of the history of dogma is to be what its name
purports, its object is the very dogma which is so formed, and its
fundamental problem will be to discover how it has arisen. In the
history of the canon our method of procedure has for long been to ask
first of all, how the canon originated, and then to examine the changes
through which it has passed. We must proceed in the same way with the
history of dogma, of which the history of the canon is simply a part.
Two objections will be raised against this. In the first place, it will
be said that from the very first the Christian religion has included a
definite religious faith as well as a definite ethic, and that therefore
Christian dogma is as original as Christianity itself, so that there can
be no question about a genesis, but only as to a development or
alteration of dogma within the Church. Again it will be said, in the
second place, that dogma as defined above, has validity only for a
definite epoch in the history of the Church, and that it is therefore
quite impossible to write a comprehensive history of dogma in the sense
we have indicated.

As to the first objection, there can of course be no doubt that the
Christian religion is founded on a message, the contents of which are a
definite belief in God and in Jesus Christ whom he has sent, and that
the promise of s