They think they have sufficiently explained this distinction by the doctrine of human freedom and its consequences. Accordingly their whole mode of argument against the Gnostics and Marcion is, in point of content, of an abstract, philosophico-rational kind.[505] As a rule they do not here carry on their controversy with the aid of reasons taken from the deeper views of religion. As soon as the rational argument fails, however, there is really an entire end to the refutation from inner grounds, at least in the case of Tertullian; and the contest is shifted into the sphere of the rule of faith and the Holy Scriptures. Hence, for example, they have not succeeded in making much impression on the heretical Christology from dogmatic considerations, though in this respect Irenaeus was still very much more successful than Tertullian.[506] Besides, in adv. Marc. II. 27, the latter betrayed what interest he took in the preexistent Christ as distinguished from God the Father. It is not expedient to separate the arguments advanced by the Fathers against the Gnostics from their own positive teachings, for these are throughout dependent on their peculiar attitude within the sphere of Scripture and tradition. Irenaeus and Hippolytus have been rightly named Scripture theologians; but it is a strange infatuation to think that this designation characterises them as evangelical. If indeed we here understand "evangelical" in the vulgar sense, the term may be correct, only in this case it means exactly the same as "Catholic." But if "evangelical" signifies "early-Christian," then it must be said that Scripture theology was not the primary means of preserving the ideas of primitive Christianity; for, as the New Testament Scriptures were also regarded as _inspired_ documents and were to be interpreted according to the _regula_, their content was just for that reason apt to be obscured. Both Marcion and the chiefs of the Valentinian school had also been Scripture theologians. Irenaeus and Hippolytus merely followed them. Now it is true that they very decidedly argued against the arbitrary method of interpreting the Scriptures adopted by Valentinus, and compared it to the process of forming the mosaic picture of a king into the mosaic picture of a fox, and the poems of Homer into any others one might choose;[507] but they just as decidedly protested against the rejection by Apelles and Marcion of the allegorical method of interpretation,[508] and therefore were not able to set up a canon really capable of distinguishing their own interpretation from that of the Gnostics.[509] The Scripture theology of the old Catholic Fathers has a twofold aspect. The religion of the Scripture is no longer the original form; it is the mediated, scientific one to be constructed by a learned process; it is, on its part, the strongest symptom of the secularisation that has begun. In a word, it is the religion of the school, first the Gnostic then the ecclesiastical.