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| None of the Heretics Claim Succession from the Apostles. New Churches Still Apostolic, Because Their Faith is that Which the Apostles Taught and Handed Down. The Heretics Challenged to Show Any Apostolic Credentials. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XXXII.—None of the Heretics Claim Succession from the Apostles.
New Churches Still Apostolic, Because Their Faith is that Which the
Apostles Taught and Handed Down. The Heretics Challenged to Show Any
Apostolic Credentials.
But if there be any (heresies) which are bold
enough to plant themselves in the midst of the apostolic age, that they
may thereby seem to have been handed down by the apostles, because they
existed in the time of the apostles, we can say: Let them produce the
original records2181
2181 Origines, “the
originals” (Dodgson). | of their churches;
let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due
succession from the beginning in such a manner that [that first bishop
of theirs2182
2182 Ille. A touch of irony
occurs in the phrase “primus ille episcopus.” | ] bishop shall be
able to show for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles
or of apostolic men,—a man, moreover, who continued stedfast with
the apostles. For this is the manner in which the apostolic churches
transmit2183 their
registers:2184 as the church of
Smyrna, which records that Polycarp was placed therein by John; as also
the church of Rome, which makes Clement to have been ordained in like
manner by Peter.2185
2185 [Linus and Cletus must
have died or been martyred, therefore, almost as soon as appointed. Our
author had seen these registers, no doubt.] | In exactly the same
way the other churches likewise exhibit (their several worthies), whom,
as having been appointed to their episcopal places by apostles, they
regard as transmitters of the apostolic seed. Let the heretics
contrive2186 something of the
same kind. For after their blasphemy, what is there that is unlawful
for them (to attempt)? But should they even effect the contrivance,
they will not advance a step. For their very doctrine, after comparison
with that of the apostles, will declare, by its own diversity and
contrariety, that it had for its author neither an apostle nor an
apostolic man; because, as the apostles would never have taught things
which were self-contradictory, so the apostolic men would not have
inculcated teaching different from the apostles, unless they who
received their instruction from the apostles went and preached in a
contrary manner. To this test, therefore will they be submitted for
proof2187
2187 Probabuntur. Another
reading is provocabuntur, “will be challenged.” [Not
to one particular See, but to all the Apostolic churches: Quod
ubique.] | by those churches, who, although they derive
not their founder from apostles or apostolic men (as being of much
later date, for they are in fact being founded daily), yet, since they
agree in the same faith, they are accounted as not less apostolic
because they are akin in doctrine.2188
2188 Pro consanguinitate
doctrinæ. | Then let all
the heresies, when challenged to these two2189
tests by our apostolic church, offer their proof of how they deem
themselves to be apostolic. But in truth they neither are so, nor are
they able to prove themselves to be what they are not. Nor are they
admitted to peaceful relations and communion by such churches as are in
any way connected with apostles, inasmuch as they are in no sense
themselves apostolic because of their diversity as to the mysteries of
the faith.2190
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