scent into the kingdom of the dead. The belief that
Jesus ascended into heaven forty days after the resurrection, gradually
made way against the older conception, according to which resurrection
and ascension really coincided, and against other ideas which maintained
a longer period between the two events. That probably is the result of a
reflection which sought to distinguish the first from the later
manifestations of the exalted Christ, and it is of the utmost importance
as the beginning of a demarcation of the times. It is also very probable
that the acceptance of an actual _ascensus in coelum_, not a mere
_assumptio_, was favourable to the idea of an actual descent of Christ
_de coelo_, therefore to the pneumatic Christology and vice versa. But
there is also closely connected with the _ascensus in coelum_, the
notion of a _descensus ad inferna_, which commended itself on the ground
of Old Testament prediction. In the first century, however, it still
remained uncertain, lying on the borders of those productions of
religious fancy which were not able at once to acquire a right of
citizenship in the communities.[268]

One can plainly see that the articles contained in the _Kerygma_ were
guarded and defended in their reality ([Greek: kat' aletheian]) by the
professional teachers of the Church, against sweeping attempts at
explaining them away, or open attacks on them.[269] But they did not yet
possess the value of dogmas, for they were neither put in an
indissoluble union with the idea of salvation, nor were they stereotyped
in their extent, nor were fixed limits set to the imagination in the
concrete delineation and conception of them.[270]

Sec. 7. _The Worship, the Sacred Ordinances, and the Organisation of the
Churches._

It is necessary to examine the original forms of the worship and
constitution, because of the importance which they acquired in the
following period even for the development of doctrine.

1. In accordance with the purely spiritual idea of God, it was a fixed
principle that only a spiritual worship is well pleasing to Hun, and
that all ceremonies are abolished, [Greek: hina ho kainos nomos tou
kuriou hemon Iesou Christou me anthropopoieton echei ten
prosphoran].[271] But as the Old Testament and the Apostolic tradition
made it equally certain that the worship of God is a sacrifice, the
Christian worship of God was set forth under the aspect of the spiritual
sacrifice. In the most general sense