actual and normal testimony which must be considered as an expression of the habitual teaching of the Holy See. This arises from the fact that the Faith professed in the Roman Church is the result of the constant teaching of the Popes, accepted by the laity and taught by the clergy, especially by the College of Cardinals who take part in the general government of the Church.
V. Besides the Apostolic See and the ordinary Apostolate, God has provided auxiliary channels of Ecclesiastical Tradition in the person of the extraordinary auxiliary members described above, § 12. Their position and importance have been defined by St. Augustine (Contra Julianum, 11. i. et ii., especially ii. c. 37), and by St. Vincent of Lerins who comments on the text of St. Augustine (Commonitor., c. xxviii. sqq., and c. i. of the second Commonitorium). In the early days of the Church, when the teaching functions were almost exclusively exercised by the Bishops, the extraordinary representatives of Apostolical Tradition were usually eminent members of the episcopate. They received the name of “Fathers” because this was the title commonly given to Bishops by their subjects and by their successors. They are also called “Fathers of the Church,” because, living as they did in the infancy of the Church, when extraordinary means were needed for its preservation, they received a more abundant outpouring of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and thus their doctrine represents His teaching in an eminent degree. Besides, their special function was to fix the substance of the Apostolic Deposit so that, naturally, their writings became the basis of the further development of doctrine, and were placed side by side with Scripture as channels of Apostolic doctrine. Thus they were the Fathers, not only of the Church in their own day, but also in subsequent ages. Compared with them, the later writers are regarded as the “Sons of the Fathers,” and sometimes as “Pædagogi,” with reference to what St. Paul says (1 Cor. 4:15), “If you have ten thousand instructors (pædogogi) in Christ, yet not many fathers.” The Sons of the Fathers were not all bishops. Many of them were priests or members of Religious Orders, or masters of theological schools. They
