Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"

"Human understanding increases as the years pass and one age succeeds another...yet in faith--the area in which threat of error is most dangerous--there is no progress...This is the sure result of the fact that one is never allowed to investigate what should be believed among one's own people, or to escape punishment for raising doubts about what is said by everyone...People profess themselves to believe what they admit they cannot understand, as if faith consisted in uttering words rather than in mental understanding."

Peter Abelard, c. AD 1130