Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

272 THE SECOND AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.dead mass, or lump of ore, requiring only safe custody,but a living Spirit dwelling in the Church,the source within her of unity, truth, and grace,using her teaching office, which is set up in herepiscopate, for the drawing out and propagationof the deposit from the double fountain of Traditionand Scripture, for these her teachers assuch have a divine gift of truth.33 It is thus thathe expands without altering the doctrine of his*teacher Polycarp's fellow - disciple, "Where JesusChrist is, there is the Catholic Church."34 Andfrom it he proceeds to what follows necessarily onsuch a conception, that this Church must have avisible point of unity. As then he appeals to thechurches founded by Apostles as the principalcentres of living tradition, so before yet one ofthese churches had fallen into possession ^ * of heretics,35before yet there was any disagreement betweenthem, he singles out one for its superiorprincipate, on account of which it was necessaryfor every church to agree with it, which hegrounds on its descent from S. Peter and S. Paul,giving every link in the chain of succession duringthe hundred and ten years which had elapsedbetween their martyrdom and his own episcopate.He sees an especial prerogative lodged in.33 " Qui cum episcopatus successione charisma veritatis certum se-cundum placitum Patris acceperunt." iv. 26, 2; and 5, " ubi igiturcharismata Domini posita sunt, ibi discere oportet veritatem, apud quosest ea quse est ab apostolis ecclesise successio."34 S. Ignatius, quoted above, p. 206. K Schwane, p. 6G1.