There is no reason, therefore, to conjecture any extraordinary mission or other conjuncture to bring him into that part of the world. He may have been ordained priest after he arrived there; but we cannot argue that with any certainty from his being called by Jerome(20) _a priest of Pothinus_; for even when church discipline attained its greatest strictness, and every bishop regarded an ecclesiastic ordained by himself as his subject, there was nothing to prevent a bishop from transferring one of his clergy to the jurisdiction of another bishop, whose subject he thenceforward became. So that the epithet made use of by Jerome only proves—what we know from Eusebius(21)—that Irenæus was a priest of the diocese of Lyons when Pothinus was bishop. It is the more necessary to remark this, as there appears to be a disposition gaining ground to take the slightest evidence as absolute proof. Undoubtedly a sceptical disposition is a great mischief; but a credulous temper, although less injurious to the possessor, is no slight evil, from its natural tendency to produce scepticism by an unavoidable reaction. But wheresoever Irenæus first entered into the priesthood, he had abode so long at Lyons in the year 177(22), that he had gained the character of a person _zealous for the gospel of Christ_(23), and recommended more by his intrinsic excellence than by his sacred office; and was so relied upon as to be chosen by the martyrs of Lyons, then in prison, as a fit person to send to Eleutherus, bishop of Rome, with their testimony against the Montanists. It is, indeed, barely said by Eusebius(24), that their epistles were written for the purpose of promoting the peace of the churches (τῆς τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν εἰρήνης ἕνεκα πρεσβεύοντες); but connecting them, as he does in his narrative, with the mention of the Montanist heresy, and of the dissensions occasioned by it (διαφωνίας ὑπαρχούσης περὶ τῶν δεδηλωμένων), it is unavoidable to conclude that they had reference to it. Some light may be thrown upon the subject by the assertion of Tertullian(25), that _a bishop of Rome_ had admitted the Montanists to communion by giving them letters of amity. Who the bishop was he gives no hint; and as he connects the matter with the account of the dissemination of the heresy of Praxeas, some, as Dupin(26) and Tillemont(27), have concluded that it could not have been an earlier bishop than Victor, because Praxeas did not appear as a heretic at an earlier period. This, however, as Massuet justly argues(28), is not conclusive; for the throwing together two things in a narrative by no means proves that they closely followed each other; and this visit of Praxeas to Rome may, with greater probability, be assumed to have been when he was a catholic. A sufficient space of time had evidently elapsed between the visit of Praxeas to Rome, under the bishop who had granted communicatory letters to the Montanists, and the time when Tertullian was writing(29), to allow of his becoming