23. To scoff at some measure of ignorance in the apostles, they urge that Peter and his companions were reproved by Paul. 46 That proves that something was lacking, they say. Thus they hope to build up their argument that a fuller knowledge could have supervened later on, such as came to Paul when he reproved his predecessors. At this point I can say to those who repudiate the Acts of the Apostles: "You have first to show who this Paul is, what he was before he became an apostle, and how he became an apostle." For they make a great deal of use of him on other occasions in matters of dispute. Now to the critical mind which demands evidence, it is not good enough that Paul should himself profess to have been changed from persecutor to apostle. Even the Lord did not bear witness of himself.

However, let them believe without the Scriptures, so that they can believe against the Scriptures. Even so, how can their point that Peter was reproved by Paul prove that Paul introduced a new form of Gospel, different from that which Peter and the rest put out before him? No, when he was converted from persecutor to preacher, he was taken to the brethren by brethren as one of the brethren, to men and by men who had "put on" faith at the apostles' hands. 47 After that, as he tells us himself, he went up to Jerusalem to meet Peter. Their common faith and preaching made this both a duty and a right. Had he preached some contrary faith, they would not have marvelled that the persecutor had turned preacher. They would not have glorified the Lord that his enemy Paul had arrived. So they gave him their right hands, the sign of fellowship and agreement, and they arranged among themselves a distribution of their spheres of work-not a division of the Gospel. 48 It was not that each should preach something different, but that each should preach to different people, Peter to the Circumcision, Paul to the Gentiles. But if Peter was reproved for dissociating himself from the Gentiles out of respect of persons after he had once eaten with them, that was surely a fault of conduct, not of preaching. It did not announce a God other than the Creator, another Christ not born of Mary, a hope other than the resurrection.

24. It is not my good fortune (or rather, my misfortune)

46 Gal. 2:1I.

47 Acts 9:17, 27. "Put on," fidem induerant, cf. Gal. 3:27, "put on Christ" in baptism.

48 Gal. 1:18-24; 2:9.

to set the apostles on one another. However, since these sons of perversity bring that reproof up in order to cast suspicion upon the earlier teaching, I will reply, as it were, for Peter. Paul himself said that he became all things to all men, to the Jews a Jew, to the Gentiles a Gentile, that he might gain all. At particular times, in particular persons and cases, they would blame actions which at other times, in other persons and cases, they would be just as ready to sanction. Peter, for instance, might well reprove Paul for himself circumcising Timothy though he forbade circumcision. It is folly to pronounce judgment on an apostle. 49 How fortunate that Peter is made equal to Paul in his martyrdom!

No doubt Paul was caught up to the third heaven and borne to paradise, and there heard certain things. But they were things which could not possibly equip him to preach a different doctrine, since by their nature they must not be communicated to any human being. 50 But if any heresy claims to be following something which did leak out and come to someone's knowledge, then either Paul is guilty of betraying the secret or else they must show that someone else was caught up into paradise after Paul, someone who was permitted to utter what Paul was not allowed to mutter.

25. But, as I said before, it is just as demented to allow that the apostles were in no respect ignorant and did not differ in their preaching, and yet to have it that they did not reveal everything to all alike but entrusted some things openly to all and some things secretly to a few. This is because Paul said to Timothy: "O Timothy, guard the deposit," and again: "Keep the good deposit"! What is this deposit? A secret one, to be reckoned part of another doctrine? Or was it part of that charge of which he says: "This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy"? Or of that commandment of which he says: "I charge thee in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and of Jesus Christ, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession, that thou guard the commandment"? What commandment and what charge? The context makes it clear that in these words there is no hinting at a hidden doctrine, but a command not to admit any but the teaching which he had heard from Paul himself, and (I think) openly "before many witnesses," as he says. It makes no difference if they will

49 It is interesting to recall the discussion of the Galatians incident in the correspondence between Jerome and Augustine.

50 II Cor. 12:2 ff.

not have these many witnesses to be the Church. Nothing that was proclaimed before many witnesses could be kept secret. Nor can they interpret as evidence of some hidden gospel Paul's desire that Timothy should entrust "these things to faithful men, fit to teach others." "These things" meant the things of which he was then writing. To refer to things hidden in their minds he would have said those, as of something absent, not these, 51

26. When he was entrusting the ministry of the Gospel to anyone a ministry not to be carried out indiscriminately or carelessly it was natural to add, in accordance with the Lord's words, that the minister should not cast pearls before swine or give that which is holy to the dogs. The Lord spoke openly without hint of any hidden mystery. 52 He had himself commanded them to preach in the light and on the house-tops whatever they had heard in the darkness and in secret. In a figure of their ministry, he had himself instructed them by a parable not to keep one pound (that is, one word of his) hidden and fruitless. He himself taught that a lamp is not usually pushed away under a bushel, but set up on a lampstand to give light to all in the house. These commands the apostles either neglected or failed to understand if, by hiding any of the light (that is, of the word of God and the mystery of Christ), they did not fulfil them. I cannot suppose they were afraid of anyone; they feared neither Jewish nor Gentile violence. The men who did not keep silence in synagogues and public places would preach all the more freely in church. No, they could not have converted Jew or Gentile unless they had systematically set out what they wanted them to believe. Much less would they have withheld something from churches already believing, to entrust it to a few other individuals separately. Even if they discussed a few matters within the family-circle, so to speak, it is incredible that they were such things as would introduce a new Rule of Faith different from and contrary to the one which they gave to all the world. They would not speak of one God in church and another at home, describe one kind of Christ openly and another secretly, announce one hope of resurrection to all, another to the few. Their own letters beseech all "to speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions" and schisms in the Church, because they preached

51 The citations are: I Tim. 6:20; II Tim. 1:14; I Tim. 1:18; 6:13f.; II Tim. 2:2. These, those = haec, illa.

52 Tecti sacramenti, and "mystery of Christ" below is sacramentum.

the same message, whether it be Paul or any of the others. Besides, they remembered: "Let your speech be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more is of evil," words which forbade them to handle the Gospel in contradictory ways. 53

27. If we cannot believe either that the apostles did not know the full scope of their message or that they did not publish to all the whole content of the Rule, we have to consider whether perhaps, while the apostles preached straightforwardly and fully, the churches through their own fault altered what the apostles offered them. You will find the heretics putting forward all these incitements to doubt. They instance churches. reproved by the apostle: "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?" and "Ye were running well; who did hinder you?" and, right at the beginning: "I marvel that ye are so quickly removed from him that called you in grace unto another gospel." Again, they quote the Epistle to the Corinthians, that they were still carnal, having to be fed with milk, not yet able to bear meat, the Corinthians who thought they knew something when they did not yet know anything as they ought to know it. 54 Since they object that the churches were reproved, let them be sure that they mended their faults. At all events let them recognize the churches for whose faith and knowledge and manner of life the Apostle rejoices and gives thanks to God. 55 And today these churches are one with the churches then reproved in the privileges of a single tradition of teaching. 28. Suppose all have erred. Suppose even the Apostle was deceived when he gave his testimony. Suppose the Holy Spirit had no regard for any church, to guide it into the truth, although it was for this purpose that Christ sent him and asked him of the Father to be the teacher of the truth. Suppose the steward of God, the vicar of Christ, neglected his office, allowing the churches for a time to understand and believe other than as he himself preached through the apostles. Even so, is it likely that so many churches would have erred into one faith?56 With so many chances you do not get a uniform result. Doctrinal error in the churches must have shown variations.

53 1 Cor. 1:10; Matt. 5:37.

54 Gal. 3:1; 5:7; 1:6; 1 Cor. 3:1f; 8:2.

55 The opening verses of Rom., Eph., Phil., Col., I and II Thess. contain praise, mostly of faith; these are all the other churches.

56 For the argument compare Irenaeus in Appendix I, A (p. 66). This kind of appeal to catholicity remains important, but time has weakened it. Even in the fourth century "the whole world groaned to find itself Arian."

4-E.L.T.

Where uniformity is found among many, it is not error but tradition. Will anyone venture to affirm that the error lay in the authors of the tradition?

29. However the error arose, it reigned, I suppose, as long as there were no heresies! Truth was waiting for a Marcionite or a Valentinian to set her free. Meanwhile, everything was done wrong—the preaching of the Gospel, the acceptance of the creed, the thousands upon thousands of baptisms, the works of faith, the miracles, the gifts of grace, the priesthoods and the ministries, all wrong, and even the martyrs wrongly crowned. Or if they were not done wrongly and ineffectually, how do you explain that the things of God were taking their course before it was known what God they belonged to? That there were Christians before Christ was discovered? Or heresy before true doctrine? The real thing always exists before the representation of it; the copy comes later. It would be quite absurd that heresy should be taken for the earlier doctrine, if for no other reason than that the earlier doctrine itself prophesied that heresies would come and would have to be watched. To the Church of this doctrine was it writtenindeed, Doctrine herself was writing to her own Church"Though an angel from heaven preach any other gospel than that which we have preached, let him be anathema.” 57

30. Where was Marcion then, the ship-owner of Pontus, the student of Stoicism? Where was Valentinus then, the disciple of Plato? It is well known that they lived not so long ago, about the reign of Antoninus, and at first accepted the doctrine of the catholic Church at Rome under Bishop Eleutherus of blessed memory, until, on account of the ever-restless speculation with which they were infecting the brethren also, they were expelled once and again (Marcion indeed together with the £2,000 which he had given to the Church) and, when they were finally banished into permanent excommunication, scattered the poisonous seeds of their peculiar doctrines abroad. Later, when Marcion professed penitence, the terms laid down for his reconciliation were that he should restore to the Church all whom he had instructed in the way of perdition. He accepted the condition, but was first overtaken by death. 58 For "there

57 Gal. 1:8.

58 On Marcion see E. C. Blackman, Marcion and his Teaching (London, 1948), and on Valentinus, F. Sagnard, La Gnose Valentinienne (Paris, 1947). Tertullian refuted Marcion seriously and at length, but his tract against Valentinus is more of a caricature. The dates here are muddled.