the origin of Dogmas (of
Dogma), and then secondly, to describe their development (their
variations).

2. We cannot draw any hard and fast line between the time of the origin
and that of the development of dogma; they rather shade off into one
another. But we shall have to look for the final point of division at
the time when an article of faith logically formulated and
scientifically expressed, was first raised to the _articulus
constitutivus ecclesiae_, and as such was universally enforced by the
Church. Now that first happened when the doctrine of Christ, as the
pre-existent and personal Logos of God, had obtained acceptance
everywhere in the confederated Churches as the revealed and fundamental
doctrine of faith, that is, about the end of the third century or the
beginning of the fourth. We must therefore, in our account, take this as
the final point of division.[1] As to the development of dogma, it seems
to have closed in the Eastern Church with the seventh Oecumenical
Council (787). After that time no further dogmas were set up in the East
as revealed truths. As to the Western Catholic, that is, the Romish
Church, a new dogma was promulgated as late as the year 1870, which
claims to be, and in point of form really is, equal in dignity to the
old dogmas. Here, therefore, the History of Dogma must extend to the
present time. Finally, as regards the Protestant Churches, they are a
subject of special difficulty in the sphere of the history of dogma; for
at the present moment there is no agreement within these Churches as to
whether, and in what sense, dogmas (as the word was used in the ancient
Church) are valid. But even if we leave the present out of account and
fix our attention on the Protestant Churches of the 16th century, the
decision is difficult. For, on the one hand, the Protestant faith, the
Lutheran as well as the Reformed (and that of Luther no less), presents
itself as a doctrine of faith which, resting on the Catholic canon of
scripture, is, in point of form, quite analogous to the Catholic
doctrine of faith, has a series of dogmas in common with it, and only
differs in a few. On the other hand, Protestantism has taken its stand
in principle on the Gospel exclusively, and declared its readiness at
all times to test all doctrines afresh by a true understanding of the
Gospel. The Reformers, however, in addition to this, began to unfold a
conception of Christianity which might be described, in contrast w