Читать книгу A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Joseph Cullen Ayer - Страница 106

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The Church first met the various dangerous heresies which distracted it in the second century by councils or gatherings of bishops (§ 26). Although it was not difficult to bring about a condemnation of novel and manifestly erroneous doctrine, there was need of fixed norms and definite authorities to which to appeal. This was found in the apostolic tradition, which could be more clearly determined by reference to the continuity of the apostolic office, or the episcopate, and especially to the succession of bishops in the churches founded by Apostles (§ 27), the apostolic witness to the truth, or the more precise determination of what writings should be regarded as apostolic, or the canon of the New Testament (§ 28); and the apostolic faith, which was regarded as summed up in the Apostles' Creed (§ 29). These norms of orthodoxy seem to have been generally established as authoritative somewhat earlier in the West than in the East. The result was that Gnosticism was rapidly expelled from the Church, though in some forms it lingered for centuries (§ 30), and that the Church, becoming organized around the episcopate, assumed by degrees a rigid hierarchical constitution (§ 31).

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