century,[186] expressing belief in the Father, Son and Spirit, embracing
also the most important facts in the history of Jesus, and mentioning
the Holy Church, as well as the two great blessings of Christianity, the
forgiveness of sin, and the resurrection of the dead ([Greek: aphesis
hamartion, sarkos anastasis][187]). But, however the proclamation might
be handed down, in a form somehow fixed, or in a free form, the
disciples of Jesus, the (twelve) Apostles, were regarded as the
authorities who mediated and guaranteed it. To them was traced back in
the same way everything that was narrated of the history of Jesus, and
everything that was inculcated from his sayings.[188] Consequently, it
may be said, that beside the Old Testament, the chief court of appeal in
the communities was formed by an aggregate of words and deeds of the
Lord;--for the history and the suffering of Jesus are his deed: [Greek:
ho Iesous hupemeinen pathein, k.t.l.]--fixed in certain fundamental
features, though constantly enriched, and traced back to apostolic
testimony.[189]

The authority which the Apostles in this way enjoyed, did not, in any
great measure, rest on the remembrance of direct services which the
twelve had rendered to the Gentile Churches: for, as the want of
reliable concrete traditions proves, no such services had been rendered,
at least not by the _twelve_. On the contrary, there was a theory
operative here regarding the special authority which the twelve enjoyed
in the Church at Jerusalem, a theory which was spread by the early
missionaries, including Paul, and sprang from the _a priori_
consideration that the tradition about Christ, just because it grew up
so quickly,[190] must have been entrusted to eye-witnesses who were
commissioned to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world, and who
fulfilled that commission. The _a priori_ character of this assumption
is shewn by the fact that--with the exception of reminiscences of an
activity of Peter and John among the [Greek: ethne], not sufficiently
clear to us[191]--the twelve, as a rule, are regarded as a _college_, to
which the mission and the tradition are traced back.[192] That such a
theory, based on a dogmatic construction of history, could have at all
arisen, proves that either the Gentile Churches never had a living
relation to the twelve, or that they had very soon lost it in the rapid
disappearance of Jewish Christianity, while they had been referred to
the twelve from th