first time when a man was received into the Church. This was not a controversy between a broad-minded view of heresy and Cyprian’s rigid ecclesiasticism, as we tend to suppose, but between the old strict adherence to traditional liturgical practice because of the inherent authority of this ‘Apostolic Tradition’, and the new tendency to innovate upon it in accordance with logical reasonableness or theological presuppositions. It was a third century controversy, and not a modern one. But it marks a