already applied by Irenaeus (III. praef.) to the successors of the Apostles.] [Footnote 135: For details on this point see my edition of the Didache, Proleg., p. 140. As the _regula fidei_ has its preparatory stages in the baptismal confession, and the New Testament in the collection of writings read in the Churches, so the theory that the bishops receive and guarantee the apostolic heritage of truth has its preparatory stage in the old idea that God has bestowed on the Church Apostles, prophets, and teachers, who always communicate his word in its full purity. The functions of these persons devolved by historical development upon the bishop; but at the same time it became more and more a settled conviction that no one in this latter period could be compared with the Apostles. The only true Christianity, however, was that which was apostolic and which could prove itself to be so. The natural result of the problem which thus arose was the theory of an objective transference of the _charisma veritatis_ from the Apostles to the bishops. This notion preserved the unique personal importance of the Apostles, guaranteed the apostolicity, that is, the truth of the Church's faith, and formed a dogmatic justification for the authority already attained by the bishops. The old idea that God bestows his Spirit on the Church, which is therefore the holy Church, was ever more and more transformed into the new notion that the bishops receive this Spirit, and that it appears in their official authority. The theory of a succession of prophets, which can be proved to have existed in Asia Minor, never got beyond a rudimentary form and speedily disappeared.] [Footnote 136: This theory must have been current in the Roman Church before the time when Irenaeus wrote; for the list of Roman bishops, which we find in Irenaeus and which he obtained from Rome, must itself be considered as a result of that dogmatic theory. The first half of the list must have been concocted, as there were no monarchical bishops in the strict sense in the first century (see my treatise: "Die aeltesten christlichen Datirungen und die Anfaenge einer bischoflichen Chronographie in Rom." in the report of the proceedings of the Royal Prussian Academy of Science, 1892, p. 617 ff). We do not know whether such lists were drawn up so early in the other churches of apostolic origin (Jerusalem?). Not till the beginning of the 3rd century have we proofs of that being done, whereas the Roman community, as early as Soter's time, had a list of bishops giving the duration of each episcopate. Nor is there any evidence before the 3rd century of an attempt to invent such a list for Churches possessing no claim to have been founded by Apostles.] [Footnote 137: We do not yet find this assertion in Tertullian's treatise "de praescr."]