pirit in divers ways continually effects whatever she needs; that she
is the totality of all true believers, that all the faithful have the
rank of priests; that outside the holy Church there is no salvation,
etc.; in fact these doctrines form the very essence of his teaching.
But, since she was also regarded as the visible institution for
objectively preserving and communicating the truth, and since the idea
of the Church in contradistinction to heresy was necessarily exhausted
in this as far as Irenaeus was concerned, the old theories of the matter
could not operate correctively, but in the end only served to glorify
the earthly Catholic Church.[151] The proposition that truth is only to
be found in the Church and that she and the Holy Spirit are inseparable
must be understood in Irenaeus as already referring to the Catholic
Church in contradistinction to every other calling itself
Christian.[152] As to the second point, it cannot be denied that, though
Irenaeus desires to maintain that the only essential part of the idea of
the Church is the fact of her being the depository of the truth, he was
no longer able to confine himself to this (see above). The episcopal
succession and the transmission to the bishops of the _magisterium_ of
the Apostles were not indeed of any direct importance to his idea of the
Church, but they were of consequence for the preservation of truth and
therefore indirectly for the idea of the Church also. To Irenaeus,
however, that theory was still nothing more than an artificial line; but
artificial lines are really supports and must therefore soon attain the
value of foundations.[153] Tertullian's conception of the Church was
essentially the same as that of Irenaeus; but with the former the idea
that she is the outward manifestation of the Spirit, and therefore a
communion of those who are spiritual, at all times continued to operate
more powerfully than with the latter. In the last period of his life
Tertullian emphasised this theory so vigorously that the Antignostic
idea of the Church being based on the "traditio unius sacramenti" fell
into the background. Consequently we find nothing more than traces of
the hierarchical conception of the Church in Tertullian. But towards the
end of his life he found himself face to face with a _fully developed_
theory of this kind. This he most decidedly rejected, and, in doing so,
advanced to such a conception of ecclesiastical orders, and therefore
also of