Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/119

 dogmas it appears that they have all a divine origin. Consequently, no one has the right either to multiply or diminish their number, or to change and transform them in any manner whatsoever: as many as were revealed by God in the beginning, so many must there remain of them for all time, as long as Christianity shall exist.”

Revealed in the very beginning. It does not say what is meant by “revealed in the very beginning.” In the beginning of the world, or in the beginning of Christianity? In either case, when was that beginning? It says that the dogmas did not appear one after another, but all at once, in the beginning, but when that beginning was, it does not say, neither here, nor anywhere else in the whole book. It goes on:

“But, although they remain invariable in their revelation, both as to their number and their essence, the dogmas of the church have none the less to be disclosed, and are disclosed, in the church to the believers. Ever since men have begun to make these dogmas, which were handed down through revelation, their own, and to draw them into the circle of their ideas, these sacred truths began inevitably to be modified in the concepts of various entities (the same happens with any truth when it becomes the possession of man),—inevitably there had to appear, and did appear, various opinions, various misconceptions in regard to the dogmas, even various mutilations of the dogmas, or heresies, intentional and unintentional. In order to guard the believers against all that, to show them what and how they should believe on the basis of the revelation, the church has from the very beginning offered to them, by tradition from the holy apostles themselves, short models of faith, or symbols.”

The dogmas are invariable in number and essence, and were revealed in the beginning, and, at the same time, they have to be disclosed. That is incomprehensible,