Before the earliest books of the New Testament were written, the Apostolic teaching must have been given orally, and there is much evidence that elementary ‘forms’ or summaries of Christian teaching were used in the Church from the middle of the 1st century.  Attention may be drawn, for instance, to such phrases as ‘the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me’^[1] and the frequent occurrence in the Pastoral Epistles of references to ‘the sound doctrine’,^[2] ‘the deposit’,^[3] ‘the faith’^[4] and ‘the excellent teaching’.^[5]  Similar allusions are found in other Epistles to ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’^[6] and to ‘the confession’^[7] – all of which suggest a body of objective teaching which was used in giving instruction in the fundamentals of the Faith before any part of the New Testament had been written.  Some of these summaries of Apostolic teaching were doubtless used from an early date in the instruction of adult candidates for Baptism, in preaching, and in teaching.^[8]  Early Baptism was administered ‘in the Name of the Lord Jesus’,^[9]