equally through their means and according to their usage—I mean the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Matthew, but that which Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter’s, whose interpreter Mark was. For even the Digest of Luke men usually ascribe to Paul. And it may well seem that the works which disciples publish belong to their masters. § 29. The Apostles’ Creed By the middle of the second century there were current in the Church brief confessions of faith which had already been in use from a time in the remoter past as summaries of the apostolic faith. They were naturally attributed to the Apostles themselves, although they seem to have varied in many details. They were used principally in baptism, and were long kept secret from the catechumen until just before that rite was administered. They are preserved only in paraphrase, and can be reconstructed only by a careful comparison of many texts. Additional source material: See Hahn, _Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der allen Kirche_, third ed., Breslau, 1897; _cf._ Mirbt, n. 16, 16 _a_. (_a_) Irenæus, _Adv. Haer._, 1, 10. (MSG, 7:549 _f._) For Irenæus, _v. supra_, § 3, _a_. The Church, though dispersed through the whole world to the ends of the earth, has received from the Apostles and their disciples the faith: In one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven and the earth and the seas, and all that in them is; And in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was incarnate for our salvation; And in the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets preached the dispensations and the advents, and the birth from the Virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily assumption into the heavens of the beloved Christ Jesus our Lord, and His appearing from the heavens in the glory of the Father, in order to sum up all things under one head [_cf._ Ephes. 1:10], and to raise up all flesh of all mankind, that to Christ Jesus, our Lord and God and Saviour and King, every knee of those that are in heaven and on earth and under the earth should bow [_cf._ Phil. 2:11], according to the good pleasure of the Father invisible, and that every tongue should confess Him, and that He may execute righteous judgment on all; sending into eternal fire the spiritual powers of wickedness and the angels who transgressed and apostatized, and the godless and unrighteous and lawless and blasphemous among men, but granting life and immortality and eternal glory to the righteous and holy, who have both kept the commandments and continued in His love, some from the beginning, some from their conversion. (_b_) Irenæus, _Adv. Hær._, III, 4. (MSG, 7:855.) The following form of the creed more closely resembles the traditional Apostles’ Creed. With it compare the paraphrase in Irenæus. _op. cit._, IV, 33:7.