ations.]

[Footnote 5: Luther, as is well known, had a very profound impression of
the distinction between Biblical Christianity and the theology of the
Fathers, who followed the theories of Origen. See, for example, Werke,
Vol. LXII. p. 49, quoting Proles: "When the word of God comes to the
Fathers, me thinks it is as if milk were filtered through a coal sack,
where the milk must become black and spoiled."]

[Footnote 6: They were not the first to determine this circle of
interests. So far as we can demonstrate traces of independent religious
knowledge among the so-called Apostolic Fathers of the post-apostolic
age, they are in thorough harmony with the theories of the Apologists,
which are merely expressed with precision and divested of Old Testament
language.]

[Footnote 7: It was only after the apostolic tradition, fixed in the
form of a comprehensive collection, seemed to guarantee the
admissibility of every form of Christianity that reverenced that
collection, that the hellenising of Christianity within the Church began
in serious fashion. The fixing of tradition had had a twofold result. On
the one hand, it opened the way more than ever before for a free and
unhesitating introduction of foreign ideas into Christianity, and, on
the other hand, so far as it really also included the documents and
convictions of primitive Christianity, it preserved this religion to the
future and led to a return to it, either from scientific or religious
considerations. That we know anything at all of original Christianity is
entirely due to the fixing of the tradition, as found at the basis of
Catholicism. On the supposition--which is indeed an academic
consideration--that this fixing had not taken place because of the
non-appearance of the Gnosticism which occasioned it, and on the further
supposition that the original enthusiasm had continued, we would in all
probability know next to nothing of original Christianity today. How
much we would have known may be seen from the Shepherd of Hermas.]

[Footnote 8: So far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the idea of
dogmas, as individual theorems characteristic of Christianity, and
capable of being scholastically proved, originated with the Apologists.
Even as early as Justin we find tendencies to amalgamate historical
material and natural theology.]

[Footnote 9: It is almost completely wanting in Tertullian. That is
explained by the fact that this remarkable man was in his inmos