cribing the circumstances under which he first heard the news of the
battle of Trafalgar, will be able to realize the vividness of the
stories which the aged Polycarp would tell to his youthful pupil of his
intercourse with the last surviving Apostle--the memory of the narrator
being quickened and the interest of the hearer intensified, in this
case, by the conviction that they were brought face to face with facts
such as the world had never seen before.

One incident more is recorded of this veteran preacher of the Gospel. In
the closing years of his life he undertook a journey to Rome, where he
conferred with the bishop, Anicetus. The main subject of this conference
was the time of celebrating the Passion. Polycarp pleaded the practice
of St John and the other Apostles with whom he had conversed, for
observing the actual day of the Jewish Passover, without respect to the
day of the week. On the other hand, Anicetus could point to the fact
that his predecessors, at least as far back as Xystus, who succeeded to
the see soon after the beginning of the century, had always kept the
anniversary of the Passion on a Friday and that of the Resurrection on a
Sunday, thus making the day of the month give place to the day of the
week. Neither convinced the other, but they parted good friends. This
difference of usage did not interfere with the most perfect cordiality;
and, as a sign of this, Anicetus allowed Polycarp to celebrate the
Eucharist in his stead [100:1]. About forty years later, when the
Paschal controversy was revived, and Victor, a successor of Anicetus,
excommunicated the Asiatic Churches, Irenaeus, though himself an
observer of the Western usage, wrote to remonstrate with Victor on this
harsh and tyrannical measure. An extract from his letter is preserved by
Eusebius, in which these incidents respecting his old master are
recorded [100:2]. Irenaeus insists strongly on the fact that "the
harmony of the faith" has never been disturbed hitherto by any such
diversities of usage.

To this visit to Rome Irenaeus makes another reference in his extant
work against Heresies. The perfect confidence with which he appeals to
the continuity of the Apostolic tradition, and to the testimony of
Polycarp as the principal link in the chain, gives a peculiar
significance to this passage, and no apology is needed for quoting it at
length. After speaking of the succession of the Roman bishops, through
whom the true doctrine has been h