f Commodus, as Eusebius, H. E. V. 21. 27,
has remarked, did the great Church preserve an extensive literature.]

[Footnote 150: It is therefore important to note the locality in which a
document originates, and the more so the earlier the document is. In the
earliest period, in which the history of the Church was more uniform,
and the influence from without relatively less, the differences are
still in the background. Yet the spirit of Rome already announces itself
in the Epistle of Clement, that of Alexandria in the Epistle of
Barnabas, that of the East in the Epistles of Ignatius.]

[Footnote 151: The history of the genesis of the four Canonical Gospels,
or the comparison of them, is instructive on this point. Then we must
bear in mind the old Apocryphal Gospels, and the way in which the
so-called Apostolic Fathers and Justin attest the Evangelic history, and
in part reproduce it independently, the Gospels of Peter, of the
Egyptians, and of Marcion; the Diatesseron of Tatian; the Gnostic
Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, etc. The greatest gap in our knowledge
consists in the fact, that we know so little about the course of things
from about the year 61 to the beginning of the reign of Trajan. The
consolidating and remodelling process must, for the most part, have
taken place in this period. We possess probably not a few writings which
belong to that period; but how are we to prove this, how are they to be
arranged? Here lies the cause of most of the differences, combinations
and uncertainties; many scholars, therefore, actually leave these 40
years out of account, and seek to place everything in the first three
decennia of the second century.]

CHAPTER II.

THE ELEMENT COMMON TO ALL CHRISTIANS AND THE BREACH WITH JUDAISM

On account of the great differences among those who, in the first
century, reckoned themselves in the Church of God, and called themselves
by the name of Christ,[152] it seems at first sight scarcely possible to
set up marks which would hold good for all, or even for nearly all, the
groups. Yet the great majority had one thing in common, as is proved,
among other things, by the gradual expulsion of Gnosticism. The
conviction that they knew the supreme God, the consciousness of being
responsible to him (Heaven and Hell), reliance on Jesus Christ, the hope
of an eternal life, the vigorous elevation above the world--these are
the elements that formed the fundamental mood. The author of the A