e in apologetic writings and disputes
with heretics.[128] On the other hand it was regarded (1) as the
directly authoritative document for the direction of the Christian
life,[129] and (2) as the final court of appeal in all the conflicts
that arose within the sphere of the rule of faith. It was freely applied
in the second stage of the Montanist struggle, but still more in the
controversies about Christology, that is, in the conflict with the
Monarchians. The apostolic writings belong solely to the Church, because
she alone has preserved the apostolic doctrine (regula). This was
declared to the heretics and therewith all controversy about Scripture,
or the sense of Scripture passages, was in principle declined. But
within the Church herself the Holy Scripture was regarded as the supreme
and completely independent tribunal against which not even an old
tradition could be appealed to; and the rule [Greek: politeuesthai kata
to euangelion] ("live according to the Gospel") held good in every
respect. Moreover, this formula, which is rarely replaced by the other
one, viz., [Greek: kata ten kainen diatheken] ("according to the New
Testament"), shows that the words of the Lord, as in the earlier period,
continued to be the chief standard of _life and conduct_.

C. _The transformation of the episcopal office in the Church into an
apostolic office. The history of the remodelling of the conception of
the Church._[130]

1. It was not sufficient to prove that the rule of faith was of
apostolic origin, i.e., that the Apostles had set up a rule of faith. It
had further to be shown that, up to the present, the Church had always
maintained it unchanged. This demonstration was all the more necessary
because the heretics also claimed an apostolic origin for their
_regulae_, and in different ways tried to adduce proof that they alone
possessed a guarantee of inheriting the Apostles' doctrine in all its
purity.[131] An historical demonstration was first attempted by the
earliest of the old Catholic Fathers. They pointed to communities of
whose apostolic origin there could be no doubt, and thought it could not
reasonably be denied that those Churches must have preserved apostolic
Christianity in a pure and incorrupt form. The proof that the Church had
always held fast by apostolic Christianity depended on the agreement in
doctrine between the other communities and these.[132] But Irenaeus as
well as Tertullian felt that a special demons