which had been handed down by tradition as representing the verbal teaching of the Apostles. We may suppose that this work, after existing for a time in a traditional form, was embodied in writing, and used to form part of the earliest Christian books, and consequently portions of it appeared in "The Shepherd of Hermas" and the Epistle attributed to Barnabas.
At a period a little later, the compiler of the "Apostolic Constitutions" included this traditional work, which had already partly appeared in writing, in his collection of precepts supposed to have been given by the Apostles themselves, so that in the seventh book of the "Apostolic Constitutions" we find the doctrine of the Duæ Viæ worked out at length, with precepts for the administration of the Sacraments and the appointment of Christian ministers. At a still later period the editor of the "Epitome of the Holy Apostles" endeavoured to complete the notion of a Didache of the Apostles by giving the names of the Apostles themselves, and referring each precept to its author. These four forms of the Apostolic teaching, or, at any rate, the first three of them, were in the hands of the anonymous writer of the treatise known as "The Didache of the Apostles," who compiled and abridged from them the work that we now possess as the Didache, giving in a condensed form what had previously existed in a number of other works, with a view to supplying a manual of conduct, based on the actual teaching of the Apostles themselves, and adding some formulæ, possibly belonging to an earlier period than his own, for the administration of the Sacraments and the appointment and maintenance of ministers and church officers.
