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later recorded by the inspired writers of the four canonical Gospels. But this fundamental Christian faith includes necessarily also the inspired teaching contained in the canonical writings of the chosen apostles, which was later expanded logically, and developed consistently into the orthodox doctrinal declarations of the undivided Catholic Church, deduced cautiously as they were, word by word, from these same sacred Scriptures, and defined authoritatively in the accepted conciliar creeds and ecumenically binding dogmatic decrees, and also witnessed continually by the orthodox hierarchical successors of the apostles in the traditional eucharistic liturgies used by the faithful throughout the then known world. The searching analytical study of the apostolic age will reveal clearly how these four historic fundamentals of the primitive Church emerged one by one, and were slowly but consistently coordinated by the inevitable strifes and schisms of that formative missionary period into energizing divine principles for maintaining unity in the faith, sacraments, and order of the expanding Christian Church. Nor was their divinely imparted influence less evident during the succeeding post-apostolic period, when their pervasive spiritual power, both of restraining doctrinal dissension and of controlling destructive division, continued to stimulate and strengthen both the clergy and the faithful to resist resolutely all adverse attacks both from within and from without, until the separate parochial units of the primitive Christian Church, each with its presiding bishop and college of presbyters, became compact and confederated through their participation in, and support of, the successive councils of the undivided Catholic Church.
When the apostles began their appointed work of proclaiming the Gospel of the risen and ascended Christ, by baptizing all nations and teaching them to observe all his commandments (Matt. xxviii. 19), there is already evident the latent presence of these four divine fundamentals: the unwritten, traditional Gospel, the Confession of Faith, “ thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God ”’ (Matt. xvi. 16; ef. Acts viii. 37)—soon expanded into fuller and more definite creedal forms—the sacraments of the Church—baptism, the eucharist, and remission of sins, and the unorganized hierarchy contained com-
plete in the apostolate (John xx. 19-
3. Develop- 23)—this necessarily including the ment of apostolic authority of declaring and Order in the defining, from time to time, all parts Primitive of that divinely revealed faith, implied Church. in the plenary power to teach, to bind, and to loose, conferred on them by
Christ himself. Thus the apostolic Christian Church is seen to be constituted with every essential principle, element, and power needed day by day for its continuous growth and consistent divine development before even the first line of the New Testament had been written, and before the first public proclamation of the Gospel by the twelve chosen witnesses of the resurrection of the ascended Christ. But soon the various needs of the increasing number of believers required the appointment of the first deacons to assist the apostles in the care of converts (Acts vi. 3-6). Here is evidently, by divine
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direction, both the institution of the diaconate, the lowest of the three orders in the primitive hierarchy, and the addition of ordination, conferred by the proper ordaining prayers with the imposition of hands on the clergy, to the apostolic sacraments of the Christian Church. Although the service of the deacons was at first restricted to the charitable work of the expanding Church, one of them, Philip, was impelled to preach the Gospel to the people of Samaria, whereupon the apostles in Jerusalem, hearing that the people of Samaria had accepted the Gospel, sent Peter and John to lay their hands on them that they might also receive the gift of the Holy Ghost (Acts viii. 5-17), thereby adding confirmation to the primitive sacraments of the Church; while in the general epistle of James (v. 14) is recorded the apostolic rite or sacrament of unction of the sick. The recognition of the converted Paul, the divinely designated apostle to the Gentiles, who had already completed the three orders of the hierarchy by the ordination of elders or presbyters in every church (Acts xiv. 23), occurred at the first council of the Church in Jerusalem, in which the apostolic power of the keys was used in the conflict of the Judaizing missionaries with Paul, whose authoritative teaching was confirmed unto all the churches (Acts xv. 1-29) by the assembled college of the apostles. This simple but divinely inspired decree was thenceforth to transform slowly and silently the expanding Judeo-Gentile Church into that homogeneous Christian Church which was later to carry the Gospel to the farthest boundaries of the known world.
In these historic accounts in the Acts and in the pastoral epistles of Paul are seen continually the energizing effects of the apostolic use of the four fundamentals of the undivided Church, the forming Scriptures of the New Testament, the expanding Creed, the constant administration of the primitive Sacraments, and the presence everywhere of the
organized hierarchy of three distinct
4. Devel- orders, the itinerant apostles, the setopment of tled bishops or presbyters (Acts xx. Doctrine 17, 28), and the local deacons, who to 787. cared for the spiritual and temporal needs of the faithful in the several
cities. Since, however, the preaching of that di-
vinely revealed faith evoked from time to time the counter claims of sectarians seeking by their errors to attach followers to themselves, the apostolic witnesses were continually inspired to define more and more clearly the traditional teaching of Christ, until the simple creedal statement of Matt. xvi. 16 and Acts viii. 37 was already amplified in I Cor. viii. 6 and I Tim. iii. 16 (cf. also Heb. vi. 1-2). Its expansion continues by tradition from teacher to teacher in the Christian hierarchy, as is evident from the writings of the post-apostolic witnesses Ignatius (Ad Trallianos, ix.), Irenzeus (Her., I., x. 1), Tertullian (Adv. Praxean, ii.), Origen of Alexandria (De princtptis), Gregory Thaumaturgus, Lucian the Martyr, and Eusebius of Cesarea (qq.v.), until in 325 the orthodox Christian faith was formally defined in the first Nicene creed, which was later enlarged, and officially accepted, through its individual bishops as the hierarchical successors of the
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