has said enough to decide many of the questions which are agitated just now on the history of dogma. It is to the Gnostics that we owe our acquaintance with the doctrine of S. Ignatius. In opposition to that heresy, he spoke out on the Trinity and the Incarnation; on the Church and the Sacraments. Gnosticism was then in its infancy. By the latter half of the second century it had reached its full development. Celebrated teachers had helped to carry it over the Roman world. It counted numerous adherents, as far east as Edessa, as far west as Gaul. It had its champions in the imperial city on the one hand it called forth enthusiasm and ability in its defence; on the other it roused the whole energy of the Catholic Church. It did its utmost to overthrow the foundations of Christian belief. In ever-varying forms it perverted or denied every article of the Church's creed, and thus it forced the Catholic doctors to lay down the formal principles of faith, and to make expositions of doctrine systematic to a degree unknown before. For this reason it marks an epoch which is among the greatest in the whole history of the Church. The age of the Apostles had passed away. The age of Apostolic men who had done much and written little, passed away too. Then came a brief space in which Christian literature tried its strength in explaining the claims of Christianity to Jews and heathen. At last, towards the close of the second century, we reach the age of the Fathers in the proper sense of the word, the age of S. Irenæus, of Clement of Alexandria, of Tertullian. It was their special work not merely to exhort Christians to piety, or to urge the claims of Christianity in a general way, but to tell the world what the Christian doctrine was. They were engaged with domestic foes, and they set themselves to establish the criterion between true and false Christianity, to distinguish, in other words, between Catholicism and heresy. What we have said, explains the fact that with the Fathers in conflict with Gnosticism, we reach more sure and certain ground for the history of dogma. We must add that those Fathers are the first among Christian writers, or the first with one exception, who have left us works of any considerable extent. Besides, when their work began, it was possible, as it had scarcely been before, to set forth the character and the principles of the Christian Church in all their clearness. They themselves could remember a time when the Church was as yet not wholly separate from the observances of the Synagogue. For long, converts from Judaism were still suffered to preserve their nationality, and the toleration of Jewish rites was a matter of expediency. But when, under Hadrian, Jerusalem ceased to be a Jewish city, and gave place to Elia Capitolina, the Judaizing

party in the Church received a blow from which it never recovered. S. Justin is the last Christian writer who looks upon the partial observance of the Jewish law as a thing permissible to Christians.* The Church was freed from this element of weakness, and the war with Gnosticism was one of principle, into which considerations of expediency could not enter. Moreover, the principles at issue had to be put in the most complete form. Against a heresy organized and widely spread, which did not manifest itself as a mere revolt against the bishop in this or that diocese, something more was needed than admonitions like those of S. Ignatius to obey the bishop. It was necessary to insist on the place which the bishop held in the universal Church, to urge the authority, not of the particular bishop, but of the Catholic hierarchy; of the bishops collectively as the rulers of the Church, as the successors of the Apostles, as the infallible guardians of the truth. Again, the generation which had seen and conversed with the Apostles had disappeared: they could be appealed to no longer, for the facts of Christ's life, or the teaching of His Apostles, and therefore there was more need to assert the Divine authority of the New Testament records. Lastly, when the grounds of faith, i. e. Scripture and tradition, with the body of bishops as the authoritative interpreter of the one and of the other, had been securely fixed, the matter of faith had to be stated at length and set against the Gnostic errors.

We should expect as a consequence of all this to find modern writers on the history of dogma more at one with regard to the age of anti-Gnostic Fathers, than in treating of the preceding periods. The fragmentary statements of the Apostolic Fathers leave wider room for theory, and the license of theorizing is increased by the questions of authenticity, which have been so fiercely agitated about the writings of the Apostles, and their first disciples. And as a matter of fact there is comparative harmony among men of competent learning, as to the state and character of the Christian Church towards the end of the second century. During the last twenty or thirty years, Protestant writers of different schools have described the epoch with which we are concerned, as the "Rise of the Catholic Church." They would not, of course, admit an entire agreement between the Catholic Church in the last years of the second century, and the Catholic Church of to-day. Still they

*Dial. c. Tryph., 47. Maranus, in his edition of Justin, præf. ii. 8, considers that Origen regarded the Jewish law from the same point of view as Justin, but the passages which Maranus quotes do not seem to be conclusive.

use the word "Catholic" of set purpose, and with a definite meaning. They intend by it to point out that in the strife with Gnosticism, the Church grew into shape, and became, what in its essential features, it has continued ever since. It came forth as the Catholic Church, separated by its essential unity from the heretical sects. It secured this unity by means of an organized hierarchy, before which the individual reason had to bow. It claimed to be the depository of tradition, and to possess Scripture of the New Testament equal in authority to those of the Old. It proclaimed the efficacy of Sacraments as the channels of grace. It regarded Christ as the author of a new law, and taught salvation, not by mere faith and confidence in Him, but by faith and works.

It is easy to see the importance of this turning-point in the history of the Church. Historians of the most sceptical tendencies are one with us at least as to those striking features in the Church of the second century which we have just named. But the question remains, Did the Church then actually become catholic, did she form herself into corporate unity and erect new principles of faith in the exigencies of her strife with Gnosticism, or did the Church simply state, and apply, and develop to their legitimate consequences principles present with her from the first? To answer this question we must know accurately and in detail the period in question, and compare it with the fragmentary notices still left to us of the preceding age. The history of the Church at the end of the second century has a special interest from another point of view; for it teems with evidence which has proved the discomfiture of the older and more orthodox Protestantism. Nothing is more certain than this, that the keen investigation which has been brought to bear of late years in Germany on the early history of Christianity has been enough in itself to sweep away the very semblance of a rational basis for the religion of "the Bible and the Bible only." The time is past when Protestants can turn for support to S. Irenæus and Tertullian. The time is past in which they could represent the age of these Fathers as one of incipient corruption, and appeal to an earlier age when Scripture was everything and tradition or the authority of the Church nothing. The very reverse of this is true. In the first century and a half the difficulty is to find clear recognition of New Testament scriptures at all, to obtain not perhaps evidence for the authenticity of our four Gospels, but a clear line of demarcation between the authority of the Gospel narrative and that of traditions about our Lord handed down from mouth to mouth or consigned to uncanonical books. The same Fathers who witness to the authority of the New Testa

ment, nay the same Fathers who are our chief witnesses for the authenticity of most books in the New Testament, witness to the authority of an hierarchical church as well. It is one part of the tradition which they profess to have received from the Apostles, that S. John wrote the Fourth Gospel, and another that the Church is governed by bishops, and that these bishops are guided by the Holy Ghost. If Protestants are determined to represent these Fathers not as witnesses to the faith which came down to them, but as creators of a new theology, as men who poisoned Christianity by the infusion of a legal and Judaizing spirit, then the foremost innovation will be this, that they limited the free spirit of Christianity by imposing a number of sacred books, and making them a standard of Christian doctrine.

So much by way of preface on the period of which we are to treat. A few words will suffice to explain the reasons which make S. Irenæus the most fitting representative of the Catholic Church in that age, and add weight to his evidence. He is the first in date of the three great Fathers who have bequeathed to us writings against the Gnostics. We cannot fix the precise year in which he composed his five books for the "Refutation and overthrow of Gnosticism falsely so-called," but we know for certain that the greater part of the work was completed not earlier than 184 and not later than 192.* But this slight priority of date is the least of his titles to speak with authority. Inaugurating as he does a new era in theology, still he, and he alone, among the Fathers of his day is "rightly included in what may be called the Apostolic family." He was the disciple of S. Polycarp, who was in turn the disciple of S. John. He protested that in his attack upon heresy he did no more than contend for the tradition of the Apostles which S. Polycarp had taught him; and in language most affecting in its simplicity and pathos, he reminds a former friend of the teaching which both of them had heard from the aged saint. "I saw you," he says to this friend, Florinus, "I saw you in Lower Asia with Polycarp while I was still a boy, and you were distinguishing yourself in the imperial court, and trying to win Polycarp's good opinion. I remember those times better than the things of to-day (since the instruction we get

*The third book was finished after 184, for Theodotion's version of the Old Testament, published in that year, is mentioned c. xxi. 1, and not after 190; for Eleutherus, who died in 190, is named, c. iii. 3, as the actual bishop of Rome. For the date of Theodotion see Massuet, diss. ii. § 47. Jaffé, Regesta Pontif., places the pontificate of Eleutherus between 177 and 190 (?).

+ Newman, Tracts Theological and Ecclesiastical, p. 200.

in youth grows with the soul, and becomes one with it), so that I could tell the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and talk, his goings out and comings in, the character of his life, the look he wore, the discourses he made to the people, how he used to relate his converse with John and with the rest who had seen the Lord, and to repeat their sayings. I remember, too, how it was his wont to repeat the things he had heard from these men about the Lord, and His works of wonder, and his teaching; for he had received those things from men who had seen with their own eyes the life of the Word, and all he told us was in harmony with the Scriptures. Then, by God's mercy, I listened to his words with all the zeal I could, noting them down, not on paper, but on my heart, and ever, by God's grace, keep them in their purity and meditate upon them."*

Moreover, while S. Irenæus was bound so closely to the Apostolic age, he sums up, in his single person, the tradition of the Church at his own day. He speaks for the East and for the West, for he had spent his youth in Asia Minor, he was for many years bishop of Lyons, twice at least he came into close relations with Rome, and made a visit to the church of that city just before he entered on his pontificate. He took part in the three chief controversies of his age,-on Gnosticisin, on the Montanist prophecies, and on the celebration of the Paschal feast. We might be sure, from the character of his writings, if we had nothing else to guide us, that he displayed the practical and moderate temper which fits a man to preserve and to defend, instead of exaggerating and compromising, the tradition which he has inherited; and, independently of this, Eusebius notes that love of peace which made his name a true description of his character. Indeed, even the negative qualities of his mind add, from our point of view, to the value of his writings. He had not the fiery originality of Tertullian, the varied learning and the speculative bias which are associated with Clement of Alexandria. He did not strike out new paths or bring philosophy into the service of Christianity. It was his mission to state the doctrine of the Church in its purity and in its fulness, and this he continued to do till in the year 202+ his labours were crowned with martyrdom. Of his writings one alone remains entire, viz., his five books against the Gnostics. Even that exists, for the most part only, in a

Iren. ad Florin., apud Euseb., v. 20.

+ Euseb. v., 3 et 4, v. 24. Hieron. in cap. 64 Esa. See Massuet, Diss. ii. §30, seq.; Ziegler, p. 30. We do not enter on the controversies as to the dates and facts of the life, except when they have some bearing on doctrine.