faith of our fathers been sown, that same must be cultivated by the industry of their children, that same flourish and ripen, that same advance and be perfected” (Commonitorium, nn. 28, 29).
III. Revelation does not follow the merely natural laws of development like any other body of thought. While it is indeed necessarily influenced by the natural environment in which it exists, this influence works under Divine Providence and the infallible guidance of the Church. Moreover, it can never come to pass that an early dogmatic definition should afterwards be revoked, or be understood in a sense at variance with the meaning originally attached to it by the Church. “The doctrine which God has revealed has not been proposed as some philosophical discovery to be perfected by the wit of man, but has been entrusted to Christ’s Spouse as a Divine deposit to be faithfully guarded and infallibly declared. Hence sacred dogmas must ever be understood in the sense once for all (semel) declared by Holy Mother Church; and never must that sense be abandoned under pretext of pro-founder knowledge (altioris intelligentiæ).” (Vat. Council, Sess. iii. chap. 4.) On the whole subject, see Newman’s great work, Development of Christian Doctrine.
SECT. 36.—THE CHIEF DOGMATIC DOCUMENTS—CREEDS AND DECREES
The most important dogmatic documents are the Creeds, or Symbols of Faith, and the decrees of the Popes and of General and Particular Councils.
I. Creeds
1. The simplest and oldest Creed, which is the foundation of all the others, is the Apostles’ Creed. There are, however, twelve different forms of it, which are given in Denzinger’s Enchiridion. See Dublin Review, Oct., 1888, July, 1889; and Le Symbole des Apôtres, by Batiffol and Vacant, in the Dict. de Théol. Catholique.
2. The Nicene Creed, published by the Council of Nicæa (A.D. 325), defines the Divinity of Christ. It originally ended with the words, “and in the Holy Ghost.” The subsequent clauses concerning the Divinity of the Holy Ghost were
