A Source Book for Ancient Church History. Joseph Cullen Ayer

himself as follows: “I, Aurelius Cyrenius, a witness, pray for your health.” And another after this manner: “Ælius Publius Julius, bishop of Debeltum, a colony of Thrace. As God liveth in the heavens, the blessed Sotas in Anchialus desired to cast the demon out of Priscilla, but the hypocrites would not permit him.” And the autograph signatures of many other bishops who agreed with them are contained in the same letter.

      § 27. The Apostolic Tradition and the Episcopate

      The Gnostics claimed apostolic authority for their teaching and appealed to successions of teachers who had handed down their teachings. This procedure forced the Church to lay stress upon the obvious fact that its doctrine was derived from the Apostles, a matter on which it never had had any doubt, but was vouched for, not by obscure teachers, but by the churches which had been founded by the Apostles themselves in large cities and by the bishops whom the Apostles had instituted in those churches. Those churches, furthermore, agreed among themselves, but the Gnostic teachers differed widely. By this appeal the bishop came to represent the apostolic order (for an earlier conception v. supra, § 14, b, c), and to take an increasingly important place in the church (v. infra, § 31).

       Additional source material: For Gnostic references to successions of teachers, see Tertullian, De Præscr., 25; Clement of Alexandria, Strom., VII, 17; Hippolytus, Refut., VII, 20. (= VII, 8. ANF.)

      [pg 112]

      (a) Irenæus, Adv. Hær., III, 3: 1–4. (MSG, 7:848.) Cf. Mirbt, n. 30.

       The first appearance of the appeal to apostolic tradition as preserved in apostolic sees is the following passage from Irenæus, written about 175. The reference to the church of Rome, beginning, “For with this Church, on account of its more powerful leadership,” has been a famous point of discussion. While it is obscure in detail, the application of its general purport to the argument of Irenæus is clear. Since for this passage we have not the original Greek of Irenæus, but only the Latin translation, there seems to be no way of clearing up the obscurities and apparently contradictory statements. The text may be found in Gwatkin, op. cit., and in part in Kirch, op. cit., §§ 110–113.

      Ch. 1. The tradition, therefore, of the Apostles, manifested throughout the world, is a thing which all who wish to see the facts can clearly perceive in every church; and we are able to count up those who were appointed bishops by the Apostles, and to show their successors to our own time, who neither taught nor knew anything resembling these men's ravings. For if the Apostles had known hidden mysteries which they used to teach the perfect, apart from and without the knowledge of the rest, they would have delivered them especially to those to whom they were also committing the churches themselves. For they desired them to be very perfect and blameless in all things, and were also leaving them as their successors, delivering over to them their own proper place of teaching; for if these should act rightly great advantage would result, but if they fell away the most disastrous calamity would occur.

      Ch. 2. But since it would be very long in such a volume as this to count up the successions [i.e., series of bishops] in all the churches, we confound all those who in any way, whether through self-pleasing or vainglory, or through blindness and evil opinion, gather together otherwise than they ought, by pointing out the tradition derived from the Apostles of the greatest, most ancient, and universally known Church, founded and established by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, and also the faith declared to [pg 113] men which through the succession of bishops comes down to our times. For with this Church, on account of its more powerful leadership [potiorem principalitatem], every church, that is, the faithful, who are from everywhere, must needs agree; since in it that tradition which is from the Apostles has always been preserved by those who are from everywhere.

      Ch. 3. The blessed Apostles having founded and established the Church, intrusted the office of the episcopate to Linus.52 Paul speaks of this Linus in his Epistles to Timothy. Anacletus succeeded him, and after Anacletus, in the third place from the Apostles, Clement received the episcopate. He had seen and conversed with the blessed Apostles, and their preaching was still sounding in his ears and their tradition was still before his eyes. Nor was he alone in this, for many who had been taught by the Apostles yet survived. In the times of Clement, a serious dissension having arisen among the brethren in Corinth, the Church of Rome sent a suitable letter to the Corinthians, reconciling them in peace, renewing their faith, and proclaiming the doctrine lately received from the Apostles. …

      Evaristus succeeded Clement, and Alexander Evaristus. Then Sixtus, the sixth from the Apostles, was appointed. After him Telesephorus, who suffered martyrdom gloriously, and then Hyginus; after him Pius, and after Pius Anicetus; Soter succeeded Anicetus, and now, in the twelfth place from the Apostles, Eleutherus [174–189] holds the office of bishop. In the same order and succession the tradition and the preaching of the truth which is from the Apostles have continued unto us.

      Ch. 4. But Polycarp, too, was not only instructed by the Apostles, and acquainted with many that had seen Christ, but was also appointed by Apostles in Asia bishop of the church in Smyrna, whom we, too, saw in our early youth (for he lived a long time, and died, when a very old man, a glorious and most illustrious martyr's death); he always [pg 114] taught the things which he had learned from the Apostles, which the Church also hands down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic churches testify, as do also those who, down to the present time, have succeeded Polycarp, who was a much more trustworthy and certain witness of the truth than Valentinus and Marcion and the rest of the evil-minded. It was he who was also in Rome in the time of Anicetus and caused many to turn away from the above-mentioned heretics to the Church of God, proclaiming that he had received from the Apostles this one and only truth which has been transmitted by the Church. And there are those who heard from him that John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe in Ephesus, when he saw Cerinthus within, ran out of the bath-house without bathing, crying: “Let us flee, lest even the bath-house fall, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.” And Polycarp himself, when Marcion once met him and said, “Knowest thou us?” replied, “I know the first-born of Satan.” Such caution did the Apostles and their disciples exercise that they might not even converse with any of those who perverted the truth; as Paul, also, said: “A man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition, reject; knowing that he that is such subverteth and sinneth, being condemned by himself.” There is also a very powerful Epistle of Polycarp written to the Philippians, from which those who wish to, and who are concerned for their own salvation, may learn the character of his faith and the preaching of the truth.

      (b) Tertullian, De Prœscriptione, 20, 21. (MSL, 2:38.)

       Tertullian worked out in legal fashion the argument of Irenæus from the testimony of the bishops in apostolic churches. He may have obtained the argument from Irenæus, as he was evidently acquainted with his works. From Tertullian's use of the argument it became a permanent element in the thought of the West.

      Ch. 20. The Apostles founded in the several cities churches from which the other churches have henceforth borrowed the shoot of faith and seeds of teaching and do daily borrow [pg 115] that they may become churches; and it is from this fact that they also will be counted as apostolic, being the offspring of apostolic churches. Every kind of thing must be judged by reference to its origin. Therefore so many and so great churches are all one, being from that first Church which is from the Apostles. Thus they are all primitive and all apostolic, since they altogether are approved by their unity, and they have the communion of peace, the title of brotherhood, and the interchange of hospitality, and they are governed by no other rule than the single tradition of the same mystery.

      Ch. 21. Here, then, we enter our demurrer, that if the Lord Jesus Christ sent Apostles to preach, others than those whom Christ appointed ought not to be received as preachers. For no man knoweth the Father save the Son and he to whom the Son has revealed Him [cf. Luke 10:22]; nor does it appear that the Son has revealed Him unto any others than the Apostles, whom He sent forth to preach what, of course, He had revealed to them. Now, what they should preach, that is, what Christ revealed to them, can, as I must likewise here enter as a demurrer, properly be proved in no other way than by those very churches which