nfatuation to think that this designation
characterises them as evangelical. If indeed we here understand
"evangelical" in the vulgar sense, the term may be correct, only in this
case it means exactly the same as "Catholic." But if "evangelical"
signifies "early-Christian," then it must be said that Scripture
theology was not the primary means of preserving the ideas of primitive
Christianity; for, as the New Testament Scriptures were also regarded as
_inspired_ documents and were to be interpreted according to the
_regula_, their content was just for that reason apt to be obscured.
Both Marcion and the chiefs of the Valentinian school had also been
Scripture theologians. Irenaeus and Hippolytus merely followed them. Now
it is true that they very decidedly argued against the arbitrary method
of interpreting the Scriptures adopted by Valentinus, and compared it to
the process of forming the mosaic picture of a king into the mosaic
picture of a fox, and the poems of Homer into any others one might
choose;[507] but they just as decidedly protested against the rejection
by Apelles and Marcion of the allegorical method of interpretation,[508]
and therefore were not able to set up a canon really capable of
distinguishing their own interpretation from that of the Gnostics.[509]
The Scripture theology of the old Catholic Fathers has a twofold aspect.
The religion of the Scripture is no longer the original form; it is the
mediated, scientific one to be constructed by a learned process; it is,
on its part, the strongest symptom of the secularisation that has begun.
In a word, it is the religion of the school, first the Gnostic then the
ecclesiastical. But it may, on the other hand, be a wholesome reaction
against enthusiastic excess and moralistic frigidity; and the correct
sense of the letter will from the first obtain imperceptible recognition
in opposition to the "spirit" arbitrarily read into it, and at length
banish this "spirit" completely. Irenaeus certainly tried to mark off the
Church use of the Scriptures as distinguished from the Gnostic practice.
He rejects the accommodation theory of which some Gnostics availed
themselves;[510] he emphasises more strongly than these the absolute
sufficiency of the Scriptures by repudiating all esoteric
doctrines;[511] he rejects all distinction between different kinds of
inspiration in the sacred books;[512] he lays down the maxim that the
obscure passages are to be interpreted from th