Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 20
Let Christ Jesus our Lord permit me to speak for now — whoever he is, the Son of whatever God, a human being and God of whatever composition, a teacher of whatever faith, a guarantor of whatever reward — to lay out what he was, what he had been, what will of the Father he carried out, what he prescribed for humanity to do, and what he himself proclaimed throughout his time on earth, whether publicly to the crowds or privately to his disciples. From these he had chosen twelve principal men to stand at his side, destined as masters for the nations. When one of them fell away, the remaining eleven, as he was departing to the Father after the resurrection, received his command to go and teach the nations, immersing them in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Spirit.
Accordingly the Apostles — whom that title defines as 'the sent' — chose Matthias by lot as the twelfth to replace Judas, acting on the authority of the prophecy in David's Psalm. Empowered by the promised Holy Spirit for mighty works and speech, they first bore witness to faith in Jesus Christ throughout Judea and established churches there. Then they went out into the world and proclaimed the same doctrine of the same faith to the nations, founding churches in every city. From those original churches all later churches have borrowed the transmission of faith and the seeds of doctrine, and still borrow them daily in order to become churches themselves; by that very fact these daughter churches are also counted as apostolic, as offspring of the apostolic churches.
Every kind of thing must be traced back to its own origin; that is a necessity. So, numerous and great as these churches are, there is only one first church from the Apostles, the source of them all. Therefore all of them are first, and all are apostolic, as long as they demonstrate their unity by maintaining communion in peace, the bond of brotherhood, and the mutual sharing of hospitality — rights governed by no other principle than the single tradition of the same sacrament.
Latin
Christus Jesus Dominus noster permittat dicere interim, quisquis est, cujuscumque Dei Filius, cujuscumque materiae homo et Deus, cujuscumque fidei praeceptor, cujuscumque mercedis repromissor, quid esset, quid fuisset, quam Patris voluntatem administraret, quid homini agendum determinaret, quamdiu in terris agebat, ipse pronuntiabat, sive populo palam, sive discentibus seorsum; ex quibus duodecim praecipuos lateri suo adlegerat destinatos nationibus magistros. Itaque, uno eorum decusso, reliquos undecim, digrediens ad Patrem post resurrectionem, jussit ire et docere nationes, intinguendas in Patrem et in Filium et in Spiritum Sanctum. Statim igitur Apostoli (quos haec appellatio missos interpretatur), assumpto per sortem duodecimo Matthia in locum Judae, ex auctoritate prophetiae quae est in psalmo David, consecuti promissam vim Spiritus Sancti ad virtutes et eloquium primo per Judaeam contestata fide in Jesum Christum et ecclesiis institutis, dehinc in orbem profecti, eamdem doctrinam ejusdem fidei nationibus promulgaverunt, et proinde ecclesias apud unamquamque civitatem condiderunt, a quibus traducem fidei et semina doctrinae, caeterae exinde ecclesiae mutuatae sunt, et quotidie mutuantur ut ecclesiae fiant: ac per hoc et ipsae apostolicae deputantur, ut soboles apostolicarum ecclesiarum. Omne genus ad originem suam censeatur necesse est. Itaque tot ac tantae ecclesiae, una est illa ab Apostolis prima, ex qua omnes. Sic omnes prima, et apostolicae, dum una omnes probant unitatem; dum est illis communicatio pacis, et appellatio fraternitatis, et contesseratio hospitalitatis: quae jura non alia ratio regit, quam ejusdem sacramenti una traditio.