intact a body of doctrinal definitions and disciplinary law, we should
not naturally select some mode of oral transmission as the safest
available. Yet this expedient has found much favour in the past. Even
among the Jews, with their extreme respect for sacred books, the written
word was made of none account by the traditions of expositors. The
votaries of the Greek mystic cults deliberately avoided writing down
their more important formulae. Several considerations were in favour of
this curious policy. There were no scientific canons for the
interpretation of written texts; allegorising commentators read their
own wild fancies into the plainest sentences. The only way of meeting
them was to fall back on the traditional interpretation. We use the
texts to test the traditions; but criticism in its early stages pursues
the opposite course, and as a natural consequence rates tradition above
Scripture. Other reasons which discouraged the use of writing were,
first, the fear that no literary skill might be equal to the difficulty
of accurate statement; secondly, the natural reluctance of the religious
mind to let the deepest truths be exposed to the vulgar scoffs and
criticism of the uninitiated; thirdly, some remnant of the primitive
superstition that the formulae of a ritual are magic spells, which would
lose their potency if published to the world; and, finally, the natural
instinct of a sacerdotal class to reserve the knowledge of deepest
mysteries to a select inner circle. For all these reasons a jealously
guarded tradition, commonly designated as the _arcana_ or _secreta_, was
to be found in all the early Christian Churches. To give a few examples:
the Apostles' Creed, the distinctive symbol of the Roman Church, was
preserved by oral tradition only down to the fourth century, and was not
imparted to any catechumen until the time of his baptism. The minute
rules of penitential discipline were first committed to writing by
Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, towards the close of the
seventh century; and this innovation was sharply criticised by some