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or a long period the bishop continued to be known by the title of "the elder who presides"-a designation which obviously implies that he was still only one of the presbyters. When the Paschal controversy created such excitement, and when Victor of Rome threatened to renounce the communion of those who held views different from his own, Irenaeus of Lyons wrote a letter of remonstrance to the haughty churchman in which he broadly reminded him of his ecclesiastical position. "_Those, presbyters_ before Soter _who governed_ the Church over which you now preside, I mean," said he, "Anicetus, and Pius, Hyginus with Telesphorus and Xystus, neither did themselves observe, nor did they permit those after them to observe it.... But those _very presbyters_ before you who did not observe it, sent the Eucharist to those of Churches which did." [584:1] Irenaeus here endeavours to teach the bishop of Rome a lesson of humility by reminding him repeatedly that he and his predecessors were but presbyters. The pastor of Lyons speaks even still more distinctly respecting the status of the bishops who flourished in his generation. Thus, he says--"We should obey those presbyters in the Church who have the succession from the apostles, and who, _with the succession of the episcopate_, have received the certain gift of truth according to the good pleasure of the Father: but we should hold as suspected or as heretics and of bad sentiments the rest who depart from the principal succession, and meet together wherever they please.... From all such we must keep aloof, but we must adhere to those who both preserve, as we have already mentioned, the doctrine of the apostles, and exhibit, _with the order of the presbytery_, sound teaching and an inoffensive conversation." [585:1] "The order of the presbytery" obviously signifies the official character conveyed by "the laying on of the hands of the presbytery," and yet such was the ordination of those who, in the time of Irenaeus, possessed "the succession from the apostles" and "the succession of the episcopate." Some imagine that no one can be properly qualified to administer divine ordinances who has not received episcopal ordination, but a more accurate acquaintance with the history of the early Church is all that is required to dissipate the delusion. The preceding statements clearly shew that, for upwards of one hundred and fifty years after the death of our Lord, all the Christian ministers t
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