the holy city immediately after its restoration by Hadrian, [519:2] and
then goes on to give a list of others, their successors, whose
pastorates were of the ordinary duration. He mentions likewise that the
sixteenth bishop was chosen by _election_. [519:3] May we not here
distinctly recognize the close of one system, and the commencement of
another? As the sixteenth bishop was appointed about A.D. 199, the law
had, probably, been then only recently enacted.

IV. Eusebius professes to trace the episcopal succession from the days
of the apostles in Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem; and it has
often been shewn that the accuracy of these four lists is extremely
problematical; but it is remarkable that in other Churches the episcopal
registry cannot be carried up higher than the end of the second century.
The roll of the bishops of Carthage is there discontinued, [519:4] and
the episcopal registry of Spain there also abruptly terminates. But the
history of the Church of Caesarea affords the most extraordinary
specimen of this defalcation. Caesarea was the civil metropolis of
Palestine, and a Christian Church existed in it from the days of Paul
and Peter. [520:1] Its bishop in the early part of the fourth century
was the friend of the Emperor Constantine and the father of
ecclesiastical history. Eusebius enjoyed all needful facilities for
investigating the annals of his own Church; and yet, strange to say, he
commences its episcopal registry about the close of the second century!
[520:2] What explanation can be given of this awkward circumstance? Had
Eusebius taken no notice of any of the bishops of his own see, we could
appreciate his modesty; but why should he overlook those who nourished
before the time of Victor of Rome, and then refer to their successors
with such marked frequency? [520:3] May we not infer, either that he
deemed it inexpedient to proclaim the inconvenient fact that the bishops
of Caesarea were as numerous as the bishops of Jerusalem; or that he
found it impossible to recover the names of a multitude of old men who
had only a nominal precedence among their brethren, and who had passed
off the stage, one after another, in quick succession?

V. A statement of Eutychius, who was patriarch of Alexandria in the
tenth century, and who has left behind him a history of his see from the
days of the apostles, supplies a remarkable confirmation of the fact
that, towards the close of the second century, a n