tradition a fixed complex of fundamental propositions,
so also he failed to recognise the importance of its publicity and
catholicity, and rather placed an esoteric alongside of an exoteric
tradition. Although, like Irenaeus and Tertullian, his attitude is
throughout determined by opposition to the Gnostics and Marcion, he
supposes it possible to refute them by giving to the Holy Scriptures a
scientific exposition which must not oppose the [Greek: kanon tes
ekklesias], that is, the Christian common sense, but receives from it
only certain guiding rules. But this attitude of Clement would be simply
inconceivable if the Alexandrian Church of his time had already employed
the fixed standard applied in those of Rome, Carthage and Lyons.[61]
Such a standard did not exist; but Clement made no distinction in the
yet unsystematised tradition, even between faith and discipline, because
as a theologian he was not able to identify himself with any single
article of it without hesitation, and because he ascribed to the true
Gnostic the ability to fix and guarantee the truth of Christian
doctrine.

Origen, although he also attempted to refute the heretics chiefly by a
scientific exegesis of the Holy Scriptures, exhibits an attitude which
is already more akin to that of Irenaeus and Tertullian than to that of
Clement. In the preface to his great work, "De principiis," he prefixed
the Church doctrine as a detailed apostolic rule of faith, and in other
instances also he appealed to the apostolic teaching.[62] It may be
assumed that in the time of Caracalla and Heliogabalus the Alexandrian
Christians had also begun to adopt the principles acted upon in Rome and
other communities.[63] The Syrian Churches, or at least a part of them,
followed still later.[64] There can be no doubt that, from the last
decades of the third century onward, one and the same confession,
identical not in its wording, but in its main features, prevailed in the
great confederation of Churches extending from Spain to the Euphrates
and from Egypt to beyond the Alps.[65] It was the basis of the
confederation, and therefore also a passport, mark of recognition, etc.,
for the orthodox Christians. The interpretation of this confession was
fixed in certain ground features, that is, in an Antignostic sense. But
a definite theological interpretation was also more and more enforced.
By the end of the third century there can no longer have been any
considerable number of ou