esent Apostles' Creed, is one of the earliest examples. Over
against the claims of the Gnostics that they had apostolic authority,
either oral or written, for their preaching, were set these two
standards, by which alone the apostolic character of any doctrine was to
be tested (cf. Irenaeus, _Adv. Haer._ i. 10, iii. 3, 4; and Tertullian,
_De Prescriptione Haer. passim_). But these standards proved inadequate
to the emergency, for it was possible, especially by the use of the
allegorical method, to interpret them in more than one way, and their
apostolic origin and authority were not everywhere admitted. In view of
this difficulty, it was claimed that the apostles had appointed the
bishops as their successors, and that the latter were in possession of
special divine grace enabling them to transmit and to interpret without
error the teaching of the apostles committed to them. This is the famous
theory known as "apostolic succession." The idea of the apostolic
appointment of church officers is as old as Clement of Rome (see 1
Clement 44), but the use of the theory to guarantee the apostolic
character of episcopal teaching was due to the exigencies of the Gnostic
conflict. Irenaeus (_Adv. Haer._ iii. 3 ff., iv. 26, iv. 33, v. 20),
Tertullian (_De prescriptione_, 32), and Hippolytus (_Philosophumena_,
bk. i., preface) are our earliest witnesses to it, and Cyprian sets it
forth clearly in his epistles (e.g. Ep. 33, 43, 59, 66, 69). The Church
was thus in possession not only of authoritative apostolic doctrine, but
also of a permanent apostolic office, to which alone belonged the right
to determine what that doctrine is. The combination of this idea with
that of clerical sacerdotalism completed the Catholic theory of the
Church and the clergy. Saving grace is recognized as apostolic grace,
and the bishops as successors of the apostles become its sole
transmitters. Bishops are therefore necessary to the very being of the
Church, which without them is without the saving grace for the giving of
which the Church exists (cf. Cyprian, _Ep._ 33, "ecclesia super
episcopos constituitur"; 66, "ecclesia in episcopo"; also _Ep._ 59, and
_De unitate eccles._ 17).

These bishops were originally not diocesan but congregational, that is,
each church, however small, had its own bishop. This is the organization
testified to by Ignatius, and Cyprian's insistence upon the bishop as
necessary to the very existence of the Church seems to imply the s