shed from the laity became true
priests, and the latter were made wholly dependent upon the former for
sacramental grace, without which there is ordinarily no salvation (see
ORDER, HOLY).

5. _Christian Doctrine._--Two tendencies appeared in the thought of the
primitive Church, the one to regard Christianity as a law given by God
for the government of men's lives, with the promise of a blessed
immortality as a reward for its observance; the other to view it as a
means by which the corrupt and mortal nature of man is transformed, so
that he becomes a spiritual and holy being. The latter tendency appeared
first in Paul, afterwards in the Gospel and First Epistle of John, in
Ignatius of Antioch and in the Gnostics. The former found expression in
most of our New Testament writings, in all of the apostolic fathers
except Ignatius, and in the Apologists of the 2nd century. The two
tendencies were not always mutually exclusive, but the one or the other
was predominant in every case. Towards the end of the 2nd century they
were combined by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons. To him salvation bears a
double aspect, involving both release from the control of the devil and
the transformation of man's nature by the indwelling of the Divine. Only
he is saved who on the one hand is forgiven at baptism and so released
from the power of Satan, and then goes on to live in obedience to the
divine law; and on the other hand receives in baptism the germ of a new
spiritual nature and is progressively transformed by feeding upon the
body and blood of the divine Christ in the eucharist. This double
conception of salvation and of the means thereto was handed down to the
Church of subsequent generations and became fundamental in its thought.
Christianity is at once a revealed law which a man must keep, and by
keeping which he earns salvation, and a supernatural power whereby his
nature is transformed and the divine quality of immortality imparted to
it. From both points of view Christianity is a supernatural system
without which salvation is impossible, and in the Christian Church it is
preserved and mediated to the world.

The twofold conception referred to had its influence also upon thought
about Christ. The effect of the legal view of Christianity was to make
Christ an agent of God in the revelation of the divine will and truth,
and so a subordinate being between God and the world, the Logos of
current Greek thought. The effect of the mystical conc