We have only to place these pseudo-Pauline writings side by side with the Epistles of John and Ignatius to recognize the advance of the heresy which soon declared itself as Gnostic Doketism, with the Jew Cerinthus at Ephesus as its principal exponent. Moreover this steadily increasing inward danger of the Pauline mission-field, a danger not merely sporadic like the outbursts of persecution, but constant and increasing, is forcing the two great branches of the Christian brotherhood together on the basis of 'catholicity' and the 'apostolic' tradition. Between the churches of the Ægean and that of Rome, where both parties stand on neutral ground, there are exchanged generous and sympathetic assurances of essential unity of doctrine in the great outbreak of persecution in 85-90. Among the Pauline churches themselves there is an irresistible reaction against the vagaries and moral laxity of heretical teaching toward 'apostolic' tradition and ecclesiastical authority. It appears with almost startling vividness in the Pastoral Epistles, and meets its answer from without, perhaps from Rome, perhaps from Syria, in the homily dressed as an encyclical called the Epistle of James. It is not hard to foresee what sort of Christian unity is destined to come about. Nevertheless the creative spirit and genius of Paul was to find expression in one more splendid product of Ephesus before the Roman unity was to be achieved.--But before we take up the writings of the great 'theologian' of Ephesus we must trace the growth in Syria and at Rome of the Literature of the Church Teacher and Prophet. PART III THE LITERATURE OF CATECHIST AND PROPHET CHAPTER VI THE MATTHÆAN TRADITION OF THE PRECEPTS OF JESUS As we have seen in our study of the later literature addressed to, or emanating from, the Pauline mission-field, the church teacher and ecclesiastic who there took up the pen after the death of Paul had scarcely any alternative but to follow the literary model of the great founder of Gentile Christianity. Inevitably the typical literary product of this region became the apostolic letter, framed on the model of Paul's, borrowing his phraseology and ideas, when not actually embodying fragments from his pen and covering itself with his name. Homilies are made over into "epistles." Even 'prophecy,' to obtain literary circulation, must have prefixed epistles of "the Spirit" to the churches; and when at last a gospel is produced, this too is accompanied, as we shall see, by three successive layers of enclosing 'epistles.'