Prescription against Heretics 21

From here, then, we draw up our prescription: if the Lord Christ Jesus sent the apostles to preach, no preachers other than those Christ appointed are to be received, because “no one knows the Father except the Son and him to whom the Son has revealed him,” and the Son is not seen to have revealed him to any others than the apostles, whom he sent to preach, of course what he revealed to them. And what they preached, that is, what Christ revealed to them, I will here also prescribe must be proved in no other way than through those same churches which the apostles themselves founded, preaching to them themselves, both by the living voice, as they say, and afterwards by letters. If this is so, it is equally clear that every doctrine which agrees with those apostolic churches, the wombs and origins of the faith, must be reckoned as truth, as holding without doubt what the churches received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, and Christ from God; and that every doctrine must be judged beforehand to be falsehood which savors of what is contrary to the truth of the churches and of the apostles of Christ and of God. It remains, then, for us to show whether this doctrine of ours, whose rule we set out above, is to be reckoned as coming from the tradition of the apostles, and by that very fact whether the others come from falsehood. We are in communion with the apostolic churches, because our doctrine differs in nothing from theirs. This is the testimony of truth.