the great advantage
of removing every perplexity up to a certain point. The early-Catholic
Fathers adopted from Justin the distinction between the Decalogue, as
the moral law of nature, and the ceremonial law; whilst the oldest
theologians (the Gnostics) and the New Testament suggested to them the
thought of the (relative) novelty of Christianity and therefore also of
the New Testament. Like Marcion they acknowledged the literal sense of
the ceremonial law and God's covenant with the Jews; and they sought to
sum up and harmonise all these features in the thought of an economy of
salvation and of a history of salvation. This economy and history of
salvation which contained the conception of a divine _accommodation and
pedagogy_, and which accordingly distinguished between constituent parts
of different degrees of value (in the Old Testament also), is the great
result presented in the main work of Irenaeus and accepted by Tertullian.
It is to exist beside the proof from prophecy without modifying it;[634]
and thus appears as something intermediate between the Valentinian
conception that destroyed the unity of origin of the Old Testament and
the old idea which neither acknowledged various constituents in the book
nor recognised the peculiarities of Christianity. We are therefore
justified in regarding this history of salvation approved by the Church,
as well as the theological propositions of Irenaeus and Tertullian
generally, as a Gnosis "toned down" and reconciled with Monotheism. This
is shown too in the faint gleam of a historical view that still shines
forth from this "history of salvation" as a remnant of that bright light
which may be recognised in the Gnostic conception of the Old
Testament.[635] Still, it is a striking advance that Irenaeus has made
beyond Justin and especially beyond Barnabas. No doubt it is
mythological history that appears in this history of salvation and the
recapitulating story of Jesus with its saving facts that is associated
with it; and it is a view that is not even logically worked out, but
ever and anon crossed by the proof from prophecy; yet for all that it is
development and history.

The fundamental features of Irenaeus' conception are as follow: The
Mosaic law and the New Testament dispensation of grace both emanated
from one and the same God, _and were granted for the salvation of the
human race in a form appropriate to the times_.[636] The two are in part
different; but the differe