eus nor Tertullian a discussion
of the relation of the Scriptures to the rule of faith. From the way in
which they appeal to both we can deduce a series of important problems,
which, however, the Fathers themselves did not formulate and
consequently did not answer.[519]

_The doctrine of God_ was fixed by the old Catholic Fathers for the
Christendom of succeeding centuries, and in fact both the methodic
directions for forming the idea of God and their results remained
unchanged. With respect to the former they occupy a middle position
between the renunciation of all knowledge--for God is not abyss and
silence--and the attempt to fathom the depths of the Godhead.[520]
Tertullian, influenced by the Stoics, strongly emphasised the
possibility of attaining a knowledge of God. Irenaeus, following out an
idea which seems to anticipate the mysticism of later theologians, made
love a preliminary condition of knowledge and plainly acknowledged it as
the principle of knowledge.[521] God can be known from revelation,[522]
because he has really revealed himself, that is, both by the creation
and the word of revelation. Irenaeus also taught that a sufficient
knowledge of God, as the creator and guide, can be obtained from the
creation, and indeed this knowledge always continues, so that all men
are without excuse.[523] In this case the prophets, the Lord himself,
the Apostles, and the Church teach no more and nothing else than what
must be already plain to the natural consciousness. Irenaeus certainly
did not succeed in reconciling this proposition with his former
assertion that the knowledge of God springs from love resting on
revelation. Irenaeus also starts, as Apologist and Antignostic, with the
God who is the First Cause. Every God who is not that is a phantom;[524]
and every sublime religious state of mind which does not include the
feeling of dependence upon God as the Creator is a deception. It is the
extremest blasphemy to degrade God the Creator, and it is the most
frightful machination of the devil that has produced the _blasphemia
creatoris_.[525] Like the Apologists, the early Catholic Fathers confess
that the doctrine of God the Creator is the first and most important of
the main articles of Christian faith;[526] the belief in his oneness as
well as his absoluteness is the main point.[527] God is all light, all
understanding, all Logos, all active spirit;[528] everything
anthropopathic and anthropomorphic is to be conc