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because an heresiarch of the day had entered it. St. Ignatius, his contemporary, compares false teachers to raging dogs; and St. Polycarp, his disciple, exercised the same severity upon Marcion which St. John had shown towards Cerinthus.

St. Irenæus exemplifies the same doctrine after St. Polycarp: "I saw thee," he says to the heretic Florinus, "when I was yet a boy, in lower Asia, with Polycarp, when thou wast living splendidly in the Imperial Court, and trying to recommend thyself to him. I remember indeed what then happened better than more recent occurrences, for the lessons of boyhood grow with the mind and become one with it. Thus I can name the place where blessed Polycarp sat and conversed, and his goings out and comings in, and the fashion of his life, and the appearance of his person, and his discourses to the people, and his familiarity with John, which he used to tell of, and with the rest who had seen the Lord, and how he used to repeat their words, and what it was that he had learned about the Lord from them. . . . . And in the sight of God, I can protest, that, if that blessed and apostolical Elder had heard aught of this doctrine, he had cried out and stopped his ears, saying after his wont, O Good God, for what times hast thou reserved me that I should endure this?' and he had fled the place where he was sitting or standing when he heard it." It seems to have been the duty of every individual Christian from the first to witness in his place against all opinions which were contrary to what he had received in his baptismal catechizing, and to shun the society of those who maintained them. "So religious," says Irenæus after giving his account of St. Polycarp, "were the Apostles and their disciples, in not even conversing with those who counterfeited the truth."1

Such a principle, however, would but have broken up the Church the sooner, resolving it into the in

1 Euseb. Hist. iv. 14, v. 20.

dividuals of which it was composed, unless the Truth, to which they were to bear witness, had been a something definite, and formal, and independent of themselves. Christians were bound to defend and to transmit the faith which they had received, and they received it from the rulers of the Church; and, on the other hand, it was the duty of those rulers to watch over and define this traditionary faith. It is unnecessary to go over ground which has been traversed so often of late years. St. Irenæus brings the subject before us in his description of St. Polycarp, part of which has already been quoted; and to it we may limit ourselves. "Polycarp," he says when writing against the Gnostics, "whom we have seen in our first youth, ever taught those lessons which he learned from the Apostles, which the Church also transmits, which alone are true. All the Churches of Asia bear witness to them; and the successors of Polycarp down to this day, who is a much more trustworthy and sure witness of truth than Valentinus, Marcion, or their perverse companions. The same was in Rome in the time of Anicetus, and converted many of the aforenamed heretics to the Church of God, preaching that he had received from the Apostles this one and only truth, which had been transmitted by the Church."1

1 Contr. Hær. iii. 3, § 4. This whole passage, by the way, supplies an answer to a statement which has sometimes been made that in the Fathers "Evangelical" Tradition and "Apostolical" Tradition properly stand, not for what is now meant by Tradition, but for the Gospels and Epistles respectively. On the contrary, St. Irenæus, who is here plainly speaking of Tradition commonly so called, expresses it thus, "Traditio quæ est ab Apostolis;" "Neque Scripturis neque Traditioni consentire;" "Traditio Apostolorum;” τὸ κήρυγμα τῶν ἀποστόλων καὶ τὴν παράδοσιν· ἣν ἀπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων παράδοσιν εἰλήφει “ Apostolicam Ecclesia Traditionem;" "Veterem Apostolorum Traditionem." Again, Theodoret says that the word Θεοτόκος was used, κατὰ τὴν ἀποστολικὴν παράδοσιν. Hær. iv. 12. And St. Basil contrasts τὰ ἐκ τῆς ἐγγράφου διδασκαλίας, and τὰ ἐκ τῆς τῶν ἀποστόλων παραδόσεως. de. Sp. S. § 66. Presently he speaks of οὔτε τῆς θεοπνεύστου γραφῆς, οὔτε τῶν ἀποστολικῶν παραδόσεων. § 77. Origen speaks of a dogma, οὔτε

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Nor was this the doctrine and practice of one school only, which might be ignorant of philosophy; the cultivated minds of the Alexandrian Fathers, who are said to owe so much to Pagan science, certainly showed no gratitude or reverence towards their alleged instructress, but maintained the supremacy of Catholic Tradition. Clement' speaks of heretical teachers as perverting Scripture, and essaying the gate of heaven with a false key, not raising the veil, as he and his, by means of tradition from Christ, but digging through the Church's wall, and becoming mystagogues of misbelief; "for," he continues, "few words are enough to prove that they have formed their human assemblies later than παραδιδόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων, οὔτε ἐμφαινόμενόν που τῶν ypapav. Tom. in Matth. xiii. 1. Vid. also t. 4, p. 696, and de Princ. præf. 2, and Euseb. Hist. v. 23. So in St. Athanasius (de Synod. 21, fin.) we read of "the Apostolical Tradition and teaching which is acknowledged by all." And soon after of a believing conformably, τῇ εὐαγγελικῇ καὶ ἀποστολικῇ παραδόσει.” 28, init. where rapádoois means doctrine, not books, for the Greek would run ry EVAYY' KaÌ Tη ÚTOσт were the Gospels and Epistles intended. (Thus St. Leo, "secundum evangelicam apostolicamque doctrinam," Ep.124, 1.) And he makes ἡ εὐαγγελικὴ παράδοσις, and ἡ ἐκκλησιαστικὴ παρ' synonymous. Cf. contr. Apoll. i. 22, with ad Adelph. 2, init. In like manner, Neander speaks of two kinds of so called Apostolical Traditions, doctrinal and ecclesiastical, Eccl. Hist. t. 2, p. 333, transl. And Le Moyne considers the Apostolical Tradition of St. Hippolytus to be what St. Irenæus means by it, doctrine, as distinct from Scripture. Var. Sacr. p. 1062. Vid. also Pearson, Vindic. Ignat. i. 4, circ. fin. In like manner, St. Augustine contrasts Apostolical Tradition, and writings. De Bapt. contr. Don. ii. 7, v. 23. And calls Infant Baptism an Apostolical Tradition. De Peccat. Mer. i, 26. And St. Cyprian speaks of, not only wine, but the mixed Cup in the Holy Eucharist, as an "Evangelical truth and tradition of the Lord." Epist. 63. Sometimes the phrase, on the other hand, is almost synonymous with Scripture, E. g. "The Apostolical Tradition teaches, blessed Peter saying, &c. and Paul writing, &c." Athan. ad Adelph. 6. Suicer refers to Greg. Nys. de Virg. xi. Cyril in Is. lxvi. 5, Balsamon, ad Can. vi. Nic. 2, Cyprian, Ep. 74, &c. A recent controversalist has also adduced these same passages and one or two others, in illustration of a sentence in Athan. cont. Apoll. i. 22, which the writer of these pages had understood of tradition; his tone is not such as claims a more distinct notice here.

1.ed. Potter, p. 897.

the Catholic Church," and "from that previously existing and most true Church it is very clear that these later heresies, and others which have been since, are counterfeit and novel inventions. "1 "When the Marcionites, Valentinians, and the like," says Origen, "appeal to apocryphal works, they are saying, 'Christ is in the desert;' when to canonical Scripture, 'Lo, He is in the chambers;' but we must not depart from that first and ecclesiastical tradition, nor believe otherwise than as the Churches of God by succession have transmitted to us." And it is recorded of him in his youth, that he never could be brought to attend the prayers of a heretic who was in the house of his patroness, from abomination of his doctrine, observing," adds Eusebius, "the rule of the Church." Eusebius too himself, unsatisfactory as is his own theology, cannot break from this fundamental rule; he ever speaks of the Gnostic teachers, the chief heretics of his period, (at least before the rise of Arianism,) in terms most expressive of abhorrence and disgust.

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The African, Syrian, and Asian schools are additional witnesses; Tertullian at Carthage was strenuous for the dogmatic principle even after he had given up the traditional. The Fathers of Asia Minor, who excommunicated Noëtus, rehearse the Creed, and add, "We declare as we have learned;" the Fathers of Antioch, who depose Paul of Samosata set down in writing the Creed from Scripture, "which," they say, "we received from the beginning, and have, by tradition and in custody, in the Catholic and Holy Church, until this day, by succession, as preached by the blessed Apostles, who were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word."2

1 ed. Potter, p. 899.

2 Clem. Strom. vii. 17. Origen in Matth. Comm. Ser. 46. Euseb. Hist. vi. 2, fin. Epiph. Hær. 57, p. 480. Routh, t. 2, p. 465.

And it is as plain, or even plainer, that what the Christians of the first ages anathematized, included deductions from the Articles of Faith, that is, developments, as well as those Articles of Faith themselves. For, since the reason they commonly gave for using the anathema was that the doctrine in question was strange and startling, it follows that the truth, which was its contradictory, had also been unknown to them hitherto; which is also shown by their temporary perplexity, and their difficulty of meeting heresy, in particular cases. "Who ever heard the like hitherto ?" says St. Athanasius of Apollinarianism; "who was the teacher of it, who the hearer? 'From Sion shall

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go forth the Law of God, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem;' but from whence hath this gone forth? What hell hath burst out with it?" Fathers at Nicæa stopped their ears; St. Irenæus, as above quoted, says that St. Polycarp, had he heard the Gnostic blasphemies, would have stopped his cars, and deplored the times for which he was reserved. They anathematized the doctrine, not because it was old, but because it was new: the anathema would have altogether slept, if it could not have been extended to propositions not anathematized in the beginning; for the very characteristic of heresy is this novelty and originality of manifestation.

2. That there is a truth then; that there is one truth; that religious error is in itself of an immoral nature; that its maintainers, unless involuntarily such, are guilty in maintaining it; that it is to be dreaded; that the search for truth is not the gratification of curiosity; that its attainment has nothing of the excitement of a discovery; that the mind is below truth, not above it, and is bound, not to descant upon it, but to venerate it; that truth and falsehood are set before us for the trial

1 Ad Epict. 2.

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