Section 216
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 185 when his army was ready to perish for want of water, it was saved by the prayers of the Christians ;" he says also, " that the same emperor threatened death to those that attempted to accuse us." To which he also adds, " What kind of laws are those which the wicked, unjust, and cruel put in force against us alone? which neither Vespasian observed, although be conquered the Jews, which Trajan in part annulled ; forbidding that the Chris tians should be hunted up ; which not even Adrian, though very inquisitive in all matters, nor he that was surnamed the Pious, confirmed." But every one may place these to what account he pleases. Let us proceed to the order of our history. Pothinus having died with the other martyrs of Gaul, in the nine tieth year of his age, he was succeeded by Irenaeus in the episco pate of the church at Lyons. We have understood he was a hearer of Polycarp in his youth. This writer has inserted the succession of the bishops in his third book against the heresies, where he reviews the catalogue down to Eleutherus, whose times we are now examining, as he laboured with him in the production of this work, writing as follows. CHAPTER VI. Catalogue of the bishops of Rome. blessed apostles having founded and established the church, transmitted the office of the episcopate to Linus. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in his Epistles to Timothy. He was succeeded by Anencletus, and after him Clement held the episcopate, the third from the apostles. Who, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been connected with them, might be said to have the doctrine of the apostles still sounding in his ears, and what they delivered before his eyes. And not only he, but many others were still left, who had been taught by the apostles. In the times of this Clement, there was no little dis sension among the brethren at Corinth, on occasion of which the church at Rome wrote a considerable Epistle to the Corin2 A