at several points along the line, and exactly where they might
have been expected, [513:2] we find individuals in occupation of the
chair who had attained to extreme longevity.

IV. The statement of Hilary illustrates the peculiar cogency of the
argumentation employed by the defenders of the faith who flourished
about the close of the second century. This century was pre-eminently
the age of heresies, and the disseminators of error were most
extravagant and unscrupulous in their assertions. The heresiarchs, among
other things, affirmed that the inspired heralds of the gospel had not
committed their whole system to written records; that they had entrusted
certain higher revelations only to select or perfect disciples; and that
the doctrine of Aeons, which they so assiduously promulgated, was
derived from this hidden treasure of ecclesiastical tradition. [514:1]
To such assertions the champions of orthodoxy were prepared to furnish a
triumphant reply, for they could shew that the Gnostic system was
inconsistent with Scripture, and that its credentials, said to be
derived from tradition, were utterly apocryphal. They could appeal, in
proof of its falsehood, to the tradition which had come down to
themselves from the apostles, and which was still preserved in the
Churches "through the successions of the elders." [514:2] They could
farther refer to those who stood at the head of their respective
presbyteries as the witnesses most competent to give evidence. "We are
able," says Irenaeus, "to enumerate those whom the apostles established
as bishops in the Churches, [514:3] together with their successors down
to our own times, who neither taught any such doctrine as these men rave
about, nor had any knowledge of it. For if the apostles had been
acquainted with recondite mysteries which they were in the habit of
teaching to the perfect disciples apart and without the knowledge of the
rest, they would by all means have communicated them to those to whom
they entrusted the care of the Church itself, since they wished that
those whom they left behind them as their successors, and to whom they
gave their own place of authority, should be quite perfect and
irreproachable in all things." [514:4]

Had the succession to the episcopal chair been regulated by the
arrangements of modern times, there would have been little weight in the
reasoning of Irenaeus. The declaration of the bishop respecting the
tradition of the Church over which