assumption, quite
apart from the innovations which were legitimised by tracing them to the
Apostles, meant the separation of doctrine and conduct, the preference
of the former to the latter, and the transformation of a fellowship of
faith, hope, and discipline into a communion "eiusdem sacramenti," that
is, into a union which, like the philosophical schools, rested on a
doctrinal law, and which was subject to a legal code of divine
institution.[2]

The movement which resulted in the Catholic Church owes its right to a
place in the history of Christianity to the victory over Gnosticism and
to the preservation of an important part of early Christian tradition.
If Gnosticism in all its phases was the violent attempt to drag
Christianity down to the level of the Greek world, and to rob it of its
dearest possession, belief in the Almighty God of creation and
redemption, then Catholicism, inasmuch as it secured this belief for the
Greeks, preserved the Old Testament, and supplemented it with early
Christian writings, thereby saving--as far as documents, at least, were
concerned--and proclaiming the authority of an important part of
primitive Christianity, must in one respect be acknowledged as a
conservative force born from the vigour of Christianity. If we put aside
abstract considerations and merely look at the facts of the given
situation, we cannot but admire a creation which first broke up the
various outside forces assailing Christianity, and in which the highest
blessings of this faith have always continued to be accessible. If the
founder of the Christian religion had deemed belief in the Gospel and a
life in accordance with it to be compatible with membership of the
Synagogue and observance of the Jewish law, there could at least be no
impossibility of adhering to the Gospel within the Catholic Church.

Still, that is only one side of the case. The older Catholicism never
clearly put the question, "What is Christian?" Instead of answering that
question it rather laid down rules, the recognition of which was to be
the guarantee of Christianism. This solution of the problem seems to be
on the one hand too narrow and on the other too broad. Too narrow,
because it bound Christianity to rules under which it necessarily
languished; too broad, because it did not in any way exclude the
introduction of new and foreign conceptions. In throwing a protective
covering round the Gospel, Catholicism also obscured it. It preserved