o, says Dr. Harnack:--

'Ignatius' conception of the position and significance of
the bishop has its earliest parallel in the original
conception of the author of the Apostolic Constitutions (_i.
e._ the end of the 3d cent.); and the Epistles show that the
Monarchical Episcopate in Asia Minor was so firmly rooted,
so highly elevated above all other offices, so completely
beyond dispute, that on the ground of what we know from
other sources of early Church history, no single
investigator would assign the statements under consideration
to the second, but at the earliest to the third century.'

Let the reader, however, look up the references under the head of
"Apostolical Constitutions" in the Index to vol. i. of the Bishop's
work, and we shall be very much surprised if he agree with Dr. Harnack's
first conclusion. Will there not be even a lurking apprehension that Dr.
Harnack, in arguing from the 'original conception of the author of the
Apostolic Constitutions,' is confounding the 'long' and the 'middle'
Recensions of the letters? Possibly the anxiety of determination to fix
upon the third century rather than the close of the first as the date of
the establishment of Episcopacy may have been tolerable in the time of
Daille, but is it tolerable or should it be repeated now when the means
of a far more critical study of the question is open to all? In fact,
Dr. Harnack is evidently disturbed by the _parti pris_ of his position;
and he may be said to abandon it immediately for a more negative one:
but even so, how can a critic with the authorities placed before him
come even to his second and modified conclusion:--'The statements of
Ignatius regarding the rank to which the Episcopate has attained,
occupy, so far as our knowledge goes, an altogether isolated position in
the second century.' Isolated! This can be examined upon evidence. The
point is this: Are there, or are there not, witnesses to show that
monarchical Episcopacy had been developed in the later years of the
Apostolic Age? Irenaeus (born c. 130, according to Lipsius) was a scholar
of Polycarp, and Polycarp was a scholar of St. John. He delighted to
recal the reminiscences of his teacher, as did Polycarp those of St.
John. He was a travelled scholar; if born in Asia Minor, he lived at
Rome during middle life, and was Bishop of Lyons in Gaul in his later
years. He was probably the most learned Christian of his ti