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| Attempt to Invalidate This Rule of Faith Rebutted. The Apostles Safe Transmitters of the Truth. Sufficiently Taught at First, and Faithful in the Transmission.
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Chapter
XXII.—Attempt to Invalidate This Rule of Faith Rebutted. The
Apostles Safe Transmitters of the Truth. Sufficiently Taught at First,
and Faithful in the Transmission.
But inasmuch as the proof is so near at
hand,2069
that if it were at once produced there would
be nothing left to be dealt with, let us give way for a while to the
opposite side, if they think that they can find some means of
invalidating this rule, just as if no proof were forthcoming from us.
They usually tell us that the apostles did not know all things: (but
herein) they are impelled by the same madness, whereby they turn round
to the very opposite point,2070
| 2070 Susam rursus
convertun. | and declare that
the apostles certainly knew all things, but did not deliver all things
to all persons,—in either case exposing Christ to blame for
having sent forth apostles who had either too much ignorance, or too
little simplicity. What man, then, of sound mind can possibly suppose
that they were ignorant of anything, whom the Lord ordained to be
masters (or teachers),2071
keeping them, as He
did, inseparable (from Himself) in their attendance, in their
discipleship, in their society, to whom, “when they were alone,
He used to expound” all things2072
which were
obscure, telling them that “to them it was given to know those
mysteries,”2073
which it was not
permitted the people to understand? Was anything withheld from the
knowledge of Peter, who is called “the rock on which the church
should be built,”2074
who also obtained
“the keys of the kingdom of heaven,”2075
with the power of “loosing and binding
in heaven and on earth?”2076
Was anything,
again, concealed from John, the Lord’s most beloved disciple, who
used to lean on His breast2077
to whom alone the
Lord pointed Judas out as the traitor,2078
whom He commended to Mary as a son in His own stead?2079
Of what could He have meant those to be
ignorant, to whom He even exhibited His own glory with Moses and Elias,
and the Father’s voice moreover, from heaven?2080
Not as if He thus disapproved2081
of all the rest, but because “by three
witnesses must every word be established.”2082
After the same fashion,2083
too, (I suppose,) were they ignorant to
whom, after His resurrection also, He vouchsafed, as they were
journeying together, “to expound all the
Scriptures.”2084
No doubt2085
He had once said, “I have yet many
things to say unto you, but ye cannot hear them now;” but even
then He added, “When He, the Spirit of truth, shall come, He will
lead you into all truth.”2086
He (thus)
shows that there was nothing of which they were ignorant, to whom He
had promised the future attainment of all truth by help of the Spirit
of truth. And assuredly He fulfilled His promise, since it is
proved in the Acts of the Apostles that the Holy Ghost did come down.
Now they who reject that Scripture2087
| 2087 See
Tertullian’s Anti-Marcion, iv. 5, and v. 2 (Trans.
pp. 187 and 377). | can neither
belong to the Holy Spirit, seeing that they cannot acknowledge that the
Holy Ghost has been sent as yet to the disciples, nor can they presume
to claim to be a church themselves2088
| 2088 Nec ecclesiam se
dicant defendere. | who positively
have no means of proving when, and with what swaddling-clothes2089
| 2089 Incunabulis, infant
nursing. | this body was established. Of so much
importance is it to them not to have any proofs for the things which
they maintain, lest along with them there be introduced damaging
exposures2090
of those things
which they mendaciously devise.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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