f Christ's earthly
kingdom; but the nation itself, which, according to this theory, had
represented all mankind from Moses to Christ, just as if all men had
been Jews, now entirely disappears.[648]

This conception, in spite of its want of stringency, made an immense
impression, and has continued to prevail down to the present time. It
has, however, been modified by a combination with the Augustinian
doctrine of sin and grace. It was soon reckoned as Paul's conception, to
which in fact it has a distant relationship. Tertullian had already
adopted it in its essential features, amplified it in some points, and,
in accordance with his Montanist ideas, enriched it by adding a fourth
stage (ab initio--Moses--Christ--Paraclete). But this addition was not
accepted by the Church.[649]

3. _Results to ecclesiastical Christianity._

As we have shown, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus had no strictly
systematised theology; they formulated theological propositions because
their opponents were theologians. Hence the result of their labours, so
far as this was accepted by the Western Church of the third century,
does not appear in the adoption of a systematic philosophical dogmatic,
but in theological fragments, namely, the rule of faith fixed and
interpreted in an antignostic sense[650]. As yet the rule of faith and
theology nowhere came into collision in the Western Churches of the
third century, because Irenaeus and his younger contemporaries did not
themselves notice any such discrepancies, but rather imagined all their
teachings to be expositions of the faith itself, and did not trouble
their heads about inconsistencies. If we wish to form a notion as to
what ideas had become universally prevalent in the Church in the middle
of the third century let us compare Cyprian's work "Testimonia", written
for a layman, with Novatian's work "De Trinitate".

In the "Testimonia" the doctrine of the two Testaments, as developed by
Irenaeus, forms the framework in which the individual dogmas are set. The
doctrine of God, which should have been placed at the beginning, has
been left out in this little book probably because the person addressed
required no instruction on the point. Some of the dogmas already belong
to philosophical theology in the strict sense of the word; in others we
have merely a precise assertion of the truth of certain facts. All
propositions are, however, supported by passages from the two Testaments
and thereby