In content the book consists mainly of laws for church organization and the conduct of worship, but these are interspersed freely with comment and explanation. The source of the laws themselves is not doubtful: they represent the normal practices at Rome in Hippolytus’s younger days, and he is quite sincere in believing that they are truly apostolic and therefore unalterable. And that they actually are rules of real antiquity is shown by the corroboration they receive from other early Christian writers, among whom Tertullian in particular describes usages extraordinarily like those expounded by his Roman contemporary. The Apostolic Tradition, consequently, is more than a source for Roman customs at the beginning of the third century; it may with equal safety be invoked for the practice of thirty or even fifty years earlier. In the words of Harnack:[54] “Here is the richest source that we in any form possess for our knowledge of the polity of the Roman church in the oldest time, and this Roman polity may, in many regards, be accepted as the polity held everywhere”. The same, naturally, cannot always be said of the material in Hippolytus’s comments. Here too, unquestionably, much is inherited; it is for one of his explanations that he appeals to the presbyters in 36. 12. But it is occasionally evident—chapter 9 is an instance—that the ceremonies he faithfully describes do not fully accord with his interpretations, and that he himself does not invariably understand his material. Some of the wording of his prayers, moreover, is unmistakably his own, but in his day (10. 4-6) each Christian leader still felt free to frame prayers as he would. Hippolytus designed his work for “the churches” (1. 3), a phrase most naturally understood of Christendom at large. His own church of Rome appears to have appreciated his work the least, for the majority of Roman Christians gave their allegiance to his rivals and accepted their legislation; it was the reforms of Callistus and not the conservatism of Hippolytus that directed subsequent Roman polity. Probably, too, despite his canonization, his memory was always slightly suspect; the Roman church certainly managed to forget very quickly who he really was. By the middle of the third century, moreover, his church finally abandoned Greek as its official language and became wholly Latinized, so that his writings were no longer accessible. And what was true of Rome was true of the West in general. In the East, however, especially in Egypt and Syria, Hippolytus’s work was accepted as possessing high authority. It was of course not treated as infallible, for later legal writers do not hesitate to amend or omit laws disagreeing with local usage. Yet the title Hippolytus chose for his work was taken really seriously,[55] and he, more than any other Church Father, gave the laws and the liturgy of the Eastern Church their permanent form.