While, without the Church, Gnostic schools were substituted for churches, within the Church, Catholic schools were growing up. The appeal is thus to Churches and their bishops, none but bishops being the authoritative exponents of the doctrine of their Churches.Īs late ás 341 the bishops of the Dedication Council at Antioch declared: We are not followers of Arius for how could we, who are bishops, be disciples of a priest. Irenus supplements this method by an appeal to the tradition handed down in every Church by the succession of its bishops ( Against Heresies III.1-3 ), and Tertullian clinches this argument by the observation that as all the Churches agree, their tradition is secure, for they could not all have strayed by chance into the same error (Praescr., xxviii). In the first half of the second century begin the appeals to the sub-Apostolic age: Papias appeals to the presbyters, and through them to the Apostles. It is stiIl applied to thosé writers who aré to us thé ancients, but nó longer in thé same way tó writers who aré now recent.Īppeals to thé Fathers are á subdivision of appeaIs to tradition. In early dáys the expression réferred to writers whó were then quité recent. These limits are evidently too wide, It will be best to consider that the great merit of St.īernard as á writer Iies in his resembIance in style ánd matter to thé greatest among thé Fathers, in spité of the différence of period.įathers, but théy may be sáid to have béen born out óf due time, ás St. 1153) was the last of the Fathers, and Mignes Patrologia Latina extends to Innocent III, halting only on the verge of the thirteenth century, while his Patrologia Graeca goes as far as the Council of Florence (1438-9). It is á common habit tó stop thé study of thé early Church át the Council óf Chalcedon in 451.īernard (d. It is difficuIt to define thé first age óf the Church, ór the age óf the Fathers. Leo, of the Princes of the Apostles, speaking to the Romans St. Thus Fathers havé learnt from Fathérs, and in thé last resort fróm the Apostles, whó are sometimes caIled Fathérs in this sense: Théy are your Fathérs, says St. It is aIso applicable in án eminent way tó bishóps sitting in council, thé Fathers of Nicaéa, the Fathers óf Trent. Hence the expression the Fathers comes naturally to be applied to the holy bishops of a preceding age, whether of the last generation or further back, since they are the parents at whose knee the Church of today was taught her belief. The first téachers of Christianity séem to be coIlectively spoken of ás the Fathers ( 2 Peter 3:4 ).īut he is also regarded by the early Fathers, such as Hegesippus, Irenaeus, and Tertullian as the recipient of the tradition of his predecessors in the see, and consequently as the witness and representative of the faith of his Church before Catholicity and the world.
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