generations. With the altered circumstances of the Church, the aspect
better spirit was infused into the Catholic Church, which it leavened and refreshed and invigorated. 2. IRENAEUS followed Ignatius after an interval of about two generations. With the altered circumstances of the Church, the aspect of the episcopal office has also undergone a change. The religious atmosphere is now charged with heretical speculations of all kinds. Amidst the competition of rival teachers, all eagerly bid ding for support, the perplexed believer asks for some decisive test by which he may try the claims of the disputants. To this question Irenaeus supplies an answer. 'If you wish,' he argues,' to ascertain the doctrine of the Apostles, apply to the Church of the Apostles, the succession of bishops tracing their descent from the primitive age and appointed by the Apostles themselves, you have a guarantee for the transmission of the pure faith, which no isolated, upstart, self-constituted teacher can furnish. There is the Church of Rome for instance, whose episcopal pedigree is perfect in all its links, and whose earliest bishops, Linus and Clement, associated with the Apostles themselves: there is the Church of Smyrna again, whose bishop Polycarp, the disciple of St John, died only the other day.' Thus the episcopate is regarded now not so much as the centre of ecclesiastical unity but rather as the depositary of apostolic tradition. This view is not peculiar to Irenaeus. It seems to have been advanced earlier by Hegesippus, for in a detached fragment he lays stress on the succession of the bishops at Rome and at Corinth adding that in each church and in each succession the pure faith was preserved; so that he seems here to be controverting that 'gnosis falsely so called' which elsewhere he denounces. It is distinctly maintained by Tertullian, the younger contemporary of Irenaeus, who refers, if not with the same frequency, at least with equal emphasis, to the tradition of the apostolic churches as preserved by the succession of the episcopate. 3. As two generations intervened between Ignatius and Irenaeus, so the same period roughly speaking separates Irenaeus from CYPRIAN. If with Ignatius the bishop is the centre of Christian unity, if with Irenaeus he is the depositary of the apostolic tradition, with Cyprian he is the absolute vicegerent of Christ in things spiritual. In mere strength of language indeed it would be difficult to surpass Ignatius,