Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

274 THE SECOND AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.and this is his second idea, subsidiary to the first,and completing it.Irenasus by birth and education represents inall this the witness of the Asiatic churches ; asbishop of Lyons, the churches of Gaul.A few years after Irena3us, Tertullian in a professedtreatise against heresy lays down exactlythe same principles. With him, too, the main ideais the possession of all truth and grace by the oneBody which Christ formed and the Apostles established.This he thus exhibits :" We must not appeal to the Scriptures, nortry the issue on points on which the victory iseither none, or doubtful, or too little doubtful.For though the debate on the Scriptures shouldnot so turn out as to place each party on anequal footing, the order of things requires thatthat question should be first proposed which isthe only one now to be discussed, To whom doesthe Faith itself belong ? Whose are the Scriptures? From whom and through whom, whenand to whom, was that discipline by which menbecome Christians delivered? For wherever thetruth of that which is the Christian discipline atonce and faith be shown to be, there will be thetruth of the Scriptures, of their exposition, h and ofall Christian traditions. Our Lord Jesus Christ(may He suffer me so to speak for the present) ,whoever He is, of whatever God the Son, of what-, ,ever substance God and Man, of whatever reward