e Lehre der
aeltesten Kirche vom Opfer, 1851. Hoefling, Das Sacrament d. Taufe, 1848.
Kahnis, Die Lehre vom Abendmahl, 1851. Th. Harnack, Der Christliche
Gemeindegottedienst im Apost. u. Altkath. Zeitalter, 1854. Hatch,
Organisation of the Early Church, 1883. My Prolegomena to the Didache
(Texte u. Unters. II. Bd. H. 1, 2). Diestel, Gesch. des A.T. in der
Christi. Kirche, 1869. Sohm, Kirchenrecht, 1892, Monographs on the
Apostolic Fathers: on 1 Clem.: Lipsius, Lightfoot (most accurate
commentary), Wrede; on 2 Clem.: A. Harnack (Ztschr. f. K. Gesch. 1887);
on Barnabas: J. Mueller; on Hermas: Zahn, Hueckstaedt, Link; on Papias:
Weiffenbach, Leimbach, Zahn, Lightfoot; on Ignatius and Polycarp:
Lightfoot (accurate commentary) and Zahn; on the Gospel and Apocalypse
of Peter: A. Harnack: on the Kerygma of Peter: von Dobschuetz; on Acts of
Thecla: Schlau.

[Footnote 162: The statements made in this chapter need special
forbearance, especially as the selection from the rich and motley
material--cf. only the so-called Apostolic Fathers--the emphasising of
this, the throwing into the background of that element, cannot here be
vindicated. It is not possible, in the compass of a brief account, to
give expression to that elasticity and those oscillations of ideas and
thoughts which were peculiar to the Christians of the earliest period.
There was indeed, as will be shewn, a complex of tradition in many
respects fixed, but this complex was still under the dominance of an
enthusiastic fancy, so that what at one moment seemed fixed, in the next
had disappeared. Finally, attention must be given to the fact that when
we speak of the beginnings of knowledge, the members of the Christian
community in their totality are no longer in question, but only
individuals who of course were the leaders of the others. If we had no
other writings from the times of the Apostolic Fathers than the first
Epistle of Clement and the Epistle of Polycarp, it would be
comparatively easy to sketch a clear history of the development
connecting Paulinism with the old-Catholic Theology as represented by
Irenaeus, and so to justify the traditional ideas. But besides these two
Epistles which are the classic monuments of the mediating tradition, we
have a great number of documents which shew us how manifold and
complicated the development was. They also teach us how careful we
should be in the interpretation of the post-Apostolic documents that
immediately followe