en his epistles
were read in church as a collection styled simply "the Apostle."

As the primary medium of the Gentile Gospel (Gal. i. 16, cf. i. 8, ii.
2) Paul had no peers as an "apostle of the Gentiles" (Rom. xi. 13, cf.
XV. 15-20, and see 1 Cor. xv. 8, "last of all to me"), unless it were
Barnabas who shares with him the title "apostle" in Acts xiv. 4,
14--possibly with reference to the special "work" on which they had
recently been "sent forth by the Spirit" (xiii. 2, 4). Yet such as
shared the spiritual gift (_charisma_) of missionary power in sufficient
degree, were in fact apostles of Christ in the Spirit (1 Cor. xii. 28,
II). Such a secondary type of apostolate--answering to "apostolic
missionaries" of later times (cf. the use of [Greek: hierapostolos] in
this sense by the Orthodox Eastern Church to-day)--would help to account
for the apostolic claims of the missionaries censured in Rev. ii. 2, as
also for the "apostles" of the second generation implied in the Didache.

In the _sub-apostolic age_, however, the class of "missionaries"
enjoying a _charisma_ such as was conceived to convey apostolic
commission through the Spirit, soon became distinguished from "apostles"
(cf. Hennas, _Sim._ ix. 15.4, "the apostles and teachers of the message
of the Son of God," so 25.2; in 17.1 the apostles are reckoned as
twelve), as the title became more and more confined by usage to the
original apostles, particularly the Twelve as a body (e.g. _Ascension of
Isaiah_ and the _Preaching of Peter_), or to them and Paul (e.g. in
Clement and Ignatius), and as reverence for these latter grew in
connexion with their story in the Gospels and in Acts.[2] Thus Eusebius
describes as "evangelists" (cf. Philip the Evangelist in Acts xxi. 8,
also Eph. iv. 11, 2 Tim. iv. 5) those who "occupied the first rank in
the succession to the Apostles" in missionary work (_Hist. Eccl._ iii.
37, cf. v. 10). Yet the wider sense of "apostle" did not at once die out
even in the third and fourth generations. It lingered on as applied to
the Seventy[3]--by Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement and Origen--and even to
Clement of Rome, by Clem. Alex. (? as a "fellow-worker" of Paul, Phil.
iv. 3); while the adjective "apostolic" was applied to men like Polycarp
(in his contemporary _Acts of Martyrdom_) and the Phrygian, Alexander,
martyred at Lyons in A.D. 177 (Eus. v. 1), who was "not without share of
apostolic _charisma_."

The _authority_ attaching to apostles was