CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, G. C. 190.-" This James, therefore, whom the ancients, on account of his preeminent virtue, surnamed the Just, they tell us, had committed to him the first, the throne of the Episcopate of the Church in Jerusalem. And Clement, in the sixth Book of his Institutions, represents thus; He says, 'that Peter and James and John, after the Ascension of the Saviour, though they had been especially honoured by the Lord, did not contend for honour, but chose James the Just, as Bishop of Jerusalem.'"-T. ii. (Migne) p. 746, (Ex Euseb. H. E. ii. 1.)

"For they who meddle with impious words, and are the first to instil them into others, and do not use well, but perversely, the divine words, they neither themselves enter into the kingdom of heaven, nor suffer those whom they have deceived to attain to the truth. But neither have they themselves the key of the entrance, but a kind of false key, and, according to a usual expression, a counterfeit key, an aνTIKλeîda* and, not having loosed the veil by means of this-as we enter by means of the tradition of the Lord-but by having cut open the door, and broken down the wall of the Church clandestinely, transgressing the truth, they become the hierophants of the souls of the impious. For that they made their human assemblages later than the Catholic Church, there need not many words to show. For the doctrine which was taught at the Lord's advent, having begun under Augustus, was completed in the middle of the reign of Tiberius; and the teaching of the apostles, even to the sacred ministry of Paul, ended under Nero. But, at a later period, about the time of the Emperor Adrian, they who excogitated the heresies arose, and con

Clavem aversam. Potter.

tinued until the time of Antoninus the Elder; as Basilides, although he assigns Glaucias as his teacher, who, as they boast, was Peter's interpreter; just as they say that Valentinus had been the hearer of Theodas, who had been familiarly acquainted with Paul. Marcion, who was contemporary with the above, was an old man amongst the young; after whom Simon, who for a short period heard Peter preach. These things being so, it is manifest, that, out of the primordial and most true Church, these after-born, adulterate heresies have been formed by innovation; as also those that, later still, have come after them. From what has been said, it is, I think, plain that one is the true Church, that which is really ancient, into which are enrolled the just, according to God's purpose."-Strom. vii. 17, p. 899, Ed. Potter.*

TERTULLIAN, L. C. 195.-"For if thou thinkest heaven is still closed, remember that the Lord left here the keys thereof to Peter, and, through him, to the Church."-Scorpiace n. 10, p. 496, Ed. Rigalt.

"For Praxeas was the first who introduced this kind of perverse doctrine (the Patripassian) from Asia to Rome....And this man prevailed on the Bishop of Rome, who was on the point of acknow

* "He (Clement of Alexandria) in the work called Hypotyposes, says that the Gospel of Mark was occasioned in the following manner: When Peter had proclaimed the word publicly at Rome, and declared the Gospel of the Spirit, many that were present requested Mark, as having followed him from afar, and as remembering what he had said, to reduce his sayings to writing; and that having composed the Gospel, he gave it to those who requested it of him. Which when Peter understood, he neither directly hindered nor encouraged it.'"-Euseb. H. E. vi. 14.

ledging* the prophecies of Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla, and by that acknowledgment bringing in peace to the Churches of Asia and Phygia, by false assertions against the prophets themselves and their Churches, and pleading the authority of his predecessors, to recal the letters of peace already sent out, and to cease from his purpose of receiving the spiritual gifts (charismata)."-Adv. Praxeam. n. 1, p. 501. Ib.

"I also hear that an edict has been sent forth; and a peremptory one indeed, to wit, the Pontifex Maximus, that is, the Bishop of Bishops proclaims, 'I remit, to those who have done penitence, the crimes both of adultery and fornication.' "-De Pudicit, 1, p. 555. Ib.†

N. 21. "Now, what the apostles preached, that is, what Christ revealed unto them, I will here also rule must be proved in no other way than by those same Churches which the apostles themselves founded, themselves by preaching to them, as well viva voce, as men say, as by epistles afterwards. If these things be so, it is in like degree manifest that all doctrine, which agrees with the Apostolic Churches, the wombs and originals of the faith, must be accounted true, as without doubt contain

* Jam agnoscentem.

+ Ceillier remarks, (ii. 474), that it can hardly be that any other than the Bishop of Rome is here alluded to, inasmuch as, still addressing the same bishop, he uses the words, bonus pastor, benedictus Papa, a phrase benedictus applied by Tertullian to Pope Eleutherus (Præscrip. n. 30); also because in this same piece the Bishop is called Apostolice (n. 21, p. 574). He also adds, with Fleury, (H. E. ii. 94), that, even granting that Tertullian is here speaking ironically, the ridicule would have been without force, if the Pope had not been regarded by Catholics as the head of the Church, or the Bishop of bishops.

ing that which the Churches have received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God; but that every doctrine must be judged at once to be false, which savoureth things contrary to the truth of the Churches, and of the apostles, and of Christ, and of God.* N. 32. But if any (heresies) have dared to place themselves in the midst of the apostolic age, that they may therefore seem to have been handed down from the apostles, because they existed under the apostles, we may say; Let them then set forth the originals of their Churches, let them unrol the line of their bishops, so coming down by successions from the beginning, that their first bishop had for his author and predecessor some one of the apostles, or of apostolic men, so he were one that continued steadfast with the apostles. For in this manner do the Apostolic Churches transmit their origin, as the Church of the Smyrneans recounts that Polycarp was placed there by John; as that of the Romans does that Clement was in like manner ordained by Peter; just as also the rest show those whom, being appointed by the apostles to the episcopate, they have as transmitters of the

*Applying this rule, he says, Ib. n. 30, "Where was Marcion, the ship-owner of Pontus, the zealous disciple of Stoicism? Where was Valentinus, the follower of Platonism? For it is agreed that they lived, not so long ago, in the reign, speaking generally, of Antoninus, and that they first believed in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, in the Church of Rome, under the episcopate of blessed Eleutherus, until, by reason of their ever restless curiosity, which the brethren also avoided, being once and again expelled, (Marcion indeed with the two hundred sesterces which he brought into the Church) and being at last condemned to the banishment of a perpetual separation, they disseminated the poisons of their doctrines."

+ Census suos deferunt, may mean produce their registers.

apostolic seed. Let the heretics counterfeit something of the same sort."

N. 36. "Come now, thou that wilt exercise thy curiosity to better purpose in the business of thy salvation, run over the Apostolic Churches, in which the very chairs of the apostles, to this very day, preside over their own places, in which their own authentic writings are read, echoing the voice, and making the face of each present. Is Achaia near thee? thou hast Corinth. If thou art not far from Macedonia, thou hast Philippi, thou hast the Thessalonians. If thou canst travel into Asia, thou hast Ephesus. But if thou art near to Italy, thou hast Rome, whence we also have an authority near at hand. That Church how happy! into which the apostles poured out all their doctrine with their blood; where Peter had a like passion with the Lord; where Paul is crowned with an end like the Baptist's; where the Apostle John was plunged into boiling oil and suffered nothing, and was afterwards banished to an island; let us see what she has learned, what taught, what fellowship she has had with the Churches of Africa likewise."*-De Præscrip.

On the same principle he thus defends the genuineness of St. Luke's Gospel against Marcion: "To sum up; if it is certain that that is truest which is most ancient, that most ancient which is from the beginning, that from the beginning which is from the apostles; it will in like manner also be certain, that that has been handed down by the apostles, which shall have been held sacred by the Churches of the apostles. Let us see what milk the Corin

* Cum Africanis quoque ecclesiis contesserarit, may also be translated, "what tokens of doctrine she has sent to the Churches of Africa."