outh with many of the
"elders" in Asia. Of these he knew for certain that they in part did not
approve of the Gnostic doctrines and in part would not have done so. The
confidence with which he represented his antignostic interpretation of
the creed as that of the Church of the Apostles was no doubt owing to
this sure historical recollection. See his epistle to Florinus in
Euseb., H. E. V. 20 and his numerous references to the "elders" in his
great work. (A collection of these may be found in Patr. App. Opp. I. 3,
p. 105 sq.)]

[Footnote 38: Caspari's investigations leave no room for doubt as to the
relation of the rule of faith to the baptismal confession. The baptismal
confession was not a deposit resulting from fluctuating anti-heretical
rules of faith; but the latter were the explanations of the baptismal
confession. The full authority of the confession itself was transferred
to every elucidation that appeared necessary, in so far as the needful
explanation was regarded as given with authority. Each momentary formula
employed to defend the Church against heresy has therefore the full
value of the creed. This explains the fact that, beginning with Irenaeus'
time, we meet with differently formulated rules of faith, partly in the
same writer, and yet each is declared to be _the_ rule of faith. Zahn is
virtually right when he says, in his essay quoted above, that the rule
of faith is the baptismal confession. But, so far as I can judge, he has
not discerned the dilemma in which the Old Catholic Fathers were placed,
and which they were not able to conceal. This dilemma arose from the
fact that the Church needed an apostolic creed, expressed in fixed
formulae and at the same time definitely interpreted in an anti-heretical
sense; whereas she only possessed, and this not in all churches, a
baptismal confession, contained in fixed formulae but not interpreted,
along with an ecclesiastical tradition which was not formulated,
although it no doubt excluded the most offensive Gnostic doctrines. It
was not yet possible for the Old Catholic Fathers to frame and formulate
that doctrinal confession, and they did not attempt it. The only course
therefore was to assert that an elastic collection of doctrines which
were ever being formulated anew, was a fixed standard in so far as it
was based on a fixed creed. But this dilemma--we do not know how it was
viewed by opponents--proved an advantage in the end, for it enabled
churchmen to m