Author: Charles George Herbermann

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-12-19

Total Pages: 888

ISBN-13: 9780484130707

Excerpt from The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 6 of 15: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church The appeal TO the fathers. - Thus the use of the term Fathers has been continuous, yet it could not at first be employed in precisely the modern sense of Fathers of the Church. In early days the expression referred to writers who were then quite recent. It is still applied to those writers who are to us the an cients, but no longer in the same way to writers who are now recent. Appeals to the Fathers are a sub division Oi appeals to tradition. In the first half Of the second century begin the appeals to the sub-apos tolic age: Papias appeals to the presbyters, and through them to the Apostles. Half a century later St. Irenaeus supplements this method by an appeal to the tradition handed down in every Church by the suc cession of its bishops (adv. Haer., III, i - iii), and Ter tullian clinches this argument by the Observation that as all the Churches agree, their tradition is secure, for they could not all have strayed by chance into the same error (frassen, xxviii). The appeal is thus to Churches and their bishops, none but bishops being the authoritative exponents Of the doctrine of their Churches. As late as 341 the bishops of the Dedica tion Council at Antioch declared: We are not follow ers of Arius; for how could we, who are bishops, be disciples of a priest? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.