t the twelve Apostles were in
every respect the middle term between Jesus and the present Churches
(see above, p. 158). This conception is earlier than the great Gnostic
crisis, for the Gnostics also shared it. But no special qualities of the
officials, but only of the Church itself, were derived from it, and it
was believed that the independence and sovereignty of the Churches were
in no way endangered by it, because an institution by Apostles was
considered equivalent to an institution by the Holy Spirit, whom they
possessed, and whom they followed. The independence of the Churches
rested precisely on the fact that they had the Spirit in their midst.
The conception here briefly sketched, was completely transformed in the
following period by the addition of another idea--that of Apostolic
succession,[297] and then became, together with the idea of the specific
priesthood of the leader of the Church, the most important means of
exalting the office above the community.[298]

_Supplementary._

This review of the common faith and the beginnings of knowledge, worship
and organisation, in the earliest Gentile Christianity, will have shewn
that the essential premises for the development of Catholicism were
already in existence before the middle of the second century, and before
the burning conflict with Gnosticism. We may see this, whether we look
at the peculiar form of the _Kerygma_, or at the expression of the idea
of tradition, or at the theology with its moral and philosophic
attitude. We may therefore conclude that the struggle with Gnosticism
hastened the development, but did not give it a new direction. For the
Greek spirit, the element which was most operative in Gnosticism, was
already concealed in the earliest Gentile Christianity itself: it was
the atmosphere which one breathed; but the elements peculiar to
Gnosticism were for the most part rejected.[299] We may even go back a
step further (see above, pp. 41, 76). The great Apostle to the Gentiles
himself, in his epistle to the Romans, and in those to the Corinthians,
transplanted the Gospel into Greek modes of thought. He attempted to
expound it with Greek ideas, and not only called the Greeks to the Old
Testament and the Gospel, but also introduced the Gospel as a leaven
into the religious and philosophic world of Greek ideas. Moreover, in
his pneumatico-cosmic Christology he gave the Greeks an impulse towards
a theologoumenon, at whose service they could pla