des religions du passé? Pour dire

  que le gnosticisme ou l'ébionitisme sont les formes légitimes
  de la pensée chrétienne il faut dire hardiment qu'il n'y a pas
  de pensée chrétienne, ni de caractère spécifique qui la fasse
  reconnaître.  Sous prétexte de l'élargir, on la dissout.
  Personne au temps de Platon n'eût osé couvrir de son nom une
  doctrine qui n'eut pas fait place à la théorie des idées; et
  l'on eût excité les justes moqueries de la Grèce, en voulant
  faire d'Epicure ou de Zénon un disciple de l'Académie.
  Reconnaissons donc que s'il existe une religion ou une
  doctrine qui s'appelle christianisme, elle peut avoir ses
  hérésies." [see Footnote]

   [Footnote: "The Church is a free association; there is much to
   be gained by separation from it.  Conflict with error has no
   weapons other than thought and feeling.  One uniform type of
   doctrine has not yet been elaborated; divergencies in
   secondary matters arise freely in East and West; theology is
   not wedded to invariable formulas.  If in the midst of this
   diversity a mass of beliefs common to all is apparent, is one
   not justified in seeing in it, not a formulated system, framed
   by the representatives of pedantic authority, but faith itself
   in its surest instinct and its most spontaneous manifestation?
   If the same unanimity which is revealed in essential points of
   belief is found also in rejecting certain tendencies, are we
   not justified in concluding that these tendencies were in
   flagrant opposition to the fundamental principles of
   Christianity?  And will not this presumption be transformed
   into certainty if we recognize in the doctrine universally
   rejected by the Church the characteristic features of one of
   the religions of the past?  To say that gnosticism or
   ebionitism are legitimate forms of Christian thought, one must
   boldly deny the existence of Christian thought at all, or any
   specific character by which it could be recognized.  While
   ostensibly widening its realm, one undermines it.  No one in
   the time of Plato would have ventured to give his name to a
   doctrine in which the theory of ideas had no place, and one
   would deservedly have excited the ridicule of Greece by trying
   to pass off Epicurus or Zeno as a disciple of the Academy.
   Let us recognize, then, that if a religion or a doctrine
   exists which is called Christianity, it may have its
   heresies."

The author's whole argument amounts to this: that every opinion which differs from the code of dogmas we