Leading off, then, is Clement of Rome:
"The Apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus, the Christ, was sent from God. Thus Christ is from God and the Apostles from Christ. In both instances the orderly procedure depends on God's will. And so the Apostles after receiving their orders and being fully convinced by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and assured by God's Word went out in the confidence of the Holy Spirit to preach the Good News that God's Kingdom was about to come. They preached in country and city and appointed their first converts after testing them by the Spirit to be bishops and deacons of future believers." Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 42, c. 96 AD.***
Secondly we have Augustine of Hippo:
"For in the Catholic Church, not to speak of the purest wisdom... there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep, down to the present episcopate. And so, lastly, does the name itself of Catholic, which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house." Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental, Chapter 4, c. 397.***
Off you go, then....
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