Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 36

Well then, if you want to exercise your curiosity to better purpose in the matter of your salvation, run through the apostolic Churches where the very chairs of the Apostles still preside in their own places, and where their authentic letters are read aloud, sounding each one's voice and representing each one's face. Is Achaia near you? You have Corinth. If you're not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi and the Thessalonians. If you can reach Asia, you have Ephesus. But if you border Italy, you have Rome, from which authority is also close at hand for us. What a fortunate Church this is! The Apostles poured out their whole teaching on it with their own blood; there Peter is matched to the Lord's passion; there Paul is crowned with John's exit; there the Apostle John, after being plunged into burning oil and suffering nothing, is banished to an island. Let us see what he learned, what he taught, when he stood shoulder to shoulder with the African Churches. He knows one God, the Creator of the universe, and Christ Jesus, the Son of God the Creator, born of the Virgin Mary, and the resurrection of the flesh; he blends the Law and the Prophets with the evangelical and apostolic writings, and from them draws his faith; he seals it with water, clothes it with the Holy Spirit, feeds it with the Eucharist, urges it toward martyrdom, and so admits no one against this institution. This is the institution — I do not say merely the one that predicted future heresies, but the one from which heresies have issued. Yet they did not spring from it, since they were formed against it. Just as from the olive's kernel a bitter, wild oleaster arises, and from the poppy a windy, empty caprifig springs up beside the most pleasing and sweetest fig, so heresies come from our fruit, not our stock; from the grain of truth, but from the forest of lies.