THE HISTORY OF THE BEGINNINGS.
The Founding of the Church by Christ and His Apostles.
§ 12. Character of the History of the Beginnings.
The propriety in a treatise on general church history of separating the Times of Jesus and the Times of the Apostles, closely connected therewith, from the History of the Development of the Church, and giving to them a distinct place under the title of the History of the Beginnings, rests on the fact that in those times we have the germs and principles of all that follows. The unique capacity of the Apostles, resulting from special enlightenment and endowment, makes that which they have done of vital importance for all subsequent development. In our estimation of each later form of the church’s existence we must go back to the doctrine and practice of Christ and His Apostles as the standard, not as to a finally completed form that has exhausted all possibilities of development, and made all further advance and growth impossible or useless, but rather as to the authentic fresh germs and beginnings of the church, so that not only what in later development is found to have existed in the same form in the beginning is recognised as genuinely Christian, but also that which is seen to be a development and growth of that primitive form.