because
its decision was already the most authoritative and impressive in
Christendom.[322] Whilst giving a formal scheme of proof that assigned
the same theoretical value to each Church founded by the Apostles,
Irenaeus added a reference to particular circumstance, viz., that in his
time many communities turned to Rome in order to testify their
orthodoxy.[323] As soon as we cease to obscure our vision with theories
and keep in view the actual circumstances, we have no cause for
astonishment. Considering the active intercourse between the various
Churches and the metropolis, it was of the utmost importance to all,
especially so long as they required financial aid, to be in connection
with that of Rome, to receive support from her, to know she would
entertain travelling brethren, and to have the power of recommending
prisoners and those pining in the mines to her influential intervention.
The evidence of Ignatius and Dionysius as well as the Marcia-Victor
episode place this beyond doubt (see above). The efforts of Marcion and
Valentinus in Rome have also a bearing on this question, and the
venerable bishop, Polycarp, did not shrink from the toil of a long
journey to secure the valuable fellowship of the Roman Church;[324] it
was not Anicetus who came to Polycarp, but Polycarp to Anicetus. At the
time when the controversy with Gnosticism ensued, the Roman Church
showed all the rest an example of resolution; it was naturally to be
expected that, as a necessary condition of mutual fellowship, she should
require other communities to recognise the law by which she had
regulated her own circumstances. No community in the Empire could regard
with indifference its relationship to the great Roman Church; almost
everyone had connections with her; she contained believers from all the
rest. As early as 180 this Church could point to a series of bishops
reaching in uninterrupted succession from the glorious apostles Paul and
Peter[325] down to the present time; and she alone maintained a brief
but definitely formulated _lex_, which she entitled the summary of
apostolic tradition, and by reference to which she decided all questions
of faith with admirable certainty. Theories were incapable of overcoming
the elementary differences that could not but appear as soon as
Christianity became naturalised in the various provinces and towns of
the Empire. Nor was it theories that created the empiric unity of the
Churches, but the unity which th