With the reception of a book into the Canon of Scripture was joined a belief in its inspiration, which rested on what was a part of oral tradition, that is, that the Apostles as well in their oral as in their written teaching had enjoyed the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is evident that such a tradition reposes, in the last instance, upon the authority of the Church.(247)
If by means of the gnostic attacks the Canon of the New Testament, as we now possess it, was not absolutely completed, it had at least advanced a very great way towards that completion, which we have finally attested as of long standing in a Council held at Carthage in 397.(248)
3. Another result of the gnostic attack was the setting forth the tradition of the Faith, seated and maintained in the apostolic churches, as the rule for interpreting Scripture. The Gnostics in two ways impeached this rule, by claiming a private tradition of their own, and by interpreting such scripture as they chose to acknowledge after their own pleasure. Irenæus, Tertullian, and Clement found an adequate answer to both errors by showing that the Faith which the Apostles had set forth in their writings could not contradict the Faith which they had established in the Church. These were two sources of the same doctrine; but it is by the permanent connection and interpenetration of the two that the truth is maintained; and that which holds both together, that which utters and propagates the truth which they jointly contain, is the Teaching office, the mouth of the Church. Hence the force of the appeal in Irenæus to the succession of the episcopate, and to the divine gift of truth which the Apostles had handed down therein with their teaching office. Hence Tertullian's exclusion of heretics from the right to possess scriptures which belong only to the Church. Hence Clement's description of the only true Gnostic, as "one who has grown old in the study of the Scriptures, while he preserves the apostolic and ecclesiastical standard of doctrine."(249) For neither in founding churches, nor in teaching orally, nor in writing, did the Apostles exhaust or resign the authority committed to them.(250) The authority itself, which was the source of all this their action, after all that they had founded, taught, or written, continued complete and entire in them, and was transmitted on to their successors, for the maintenance of the work assigned to it. It is this perpetual living power which Irenæus so strongly testifies,(251) to which he attaches the gift of the Spirit, not scripture, nor tradition, but that which carries both scripture and tradition through the ages, which is "as the breath of life to the body, which is always from the Spirit of God, wherein is placed the communication of Christ, which is always young, and makes young the vessel in which it is."(252) The writings which the Holy Ghost has inspired, and the tradition of the Faith which He has established, would be subject, the one to misinterpretation, the other to alteration and corruption, without that particular presence of His, in which consists the divine gift of truth, the teaching office, "the making disciples all nations."