place whatever, we ought to hold suspected either as heretics and of an evil opinion, or as schismatics and proud, and as men pleasing themselves; or, again, as hypocrites doing this for gain’s sake and vain-glory.… Where, therefore, the gifts of God are placed, there we ought to learn the truth, [from those] with whom is that succession of the Church which is from the Apostles; and that which is sound and irreprovable in conversation and unadulterated and incorruptible in discourse, abides. For they both guard that faith of ours in one God, Who made all things, and increase our love towards the Son of God, Who made such dispositions on our account, and they expound to us the Scriptures without danger, neither uttering blasphemy against God, nor dishonouring the patriarchs nor contemning the prophets” (lib. iv. 26).
2. Origen, in the preface to his work De Principiis, states the principle of the Apostolate in the Church in the following pregnant terms: “There being many who fancy that they think the things of Christ, and some of them think differently from those who have gone before, let there be preserved the ecclesiastical teaching which, transmitted by the order of succession from the Apostles, remains even to the present day in the churches: that alone is to be believed to be truth which in nothing differs from the ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition.” And commenting on Matt. xxiv. 23, he says, “As often as they [heretics] bring forward canonical Scriptures in which every Christian agrees and believes, they seem to say, ‘Behold in the houses is the word of truth.’ But we are not to credit them; nor to go out from the first and the ecclesiastical tradition; nor to believe otherwise than according as the churches of God have by succession transmitted to us.… The truth is like the lightning which goeth out from the east and appeareth even into the west; such is the truth of the Church of God; for from it alone the sound hath gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.”
3. Tertullian treats of this subject in his well-known work De Prcæcriptionibus. “[Heretics] put forward the Scriptures and by this their boldness they forthwith
