than that of any other Church, and more consonant with the Scriptures. This reply so incensed Victor, that he forthwith issued letters, announcing that the Asiatic brethren were cut off from the common unity of Christians(88). Here, however, he was not followed by those who had previously agreed with him; and Irenæus in particular, in the name of the Christians in Gaul under his jurisdiction, wrote both to Victor and to various other bishops(89), strongly pressing milder measures, and reminding the Roman prelate of the example of Anicetus, one of his predecessors, who paid Polycarp the highest honour, even when assured that he would not conform to the Western custom, and regarded his own as more apostolical. What the immediate result of these letters was we are not informed by any contemporary writer. Anatolius, indeed, (if the Latin version of his Treatise on the Paschal Cycle, published by Bucherius, is to be relied on,) asserts that Victor did not persist in his excommunication(90); and we know subsequently(91) that many Churches in Asia adhered to the Jewish reckoning, and yet were not on that account regarded with any aversion by their brethren; and it was not until the council of Nice that their bishops there assembled agreed to follow the general custom(92),—to which, however, many persons did not conform in the time of Chrysostom. The part which the bishop of Rome took in this matter requires perhaps a more explicit notice. It has, no doubt, been felt that Victor acted in a manner which countenances the claims set up by the popes of later days; but when we come to examine, we shall find that whatever claims he advanced, beyond what we should allow, were discountenanced by the then catholic Church. He did, or attempted to do, two things: first, to bring the whole Church to one practice in the observance of the feast of Easter; secondly, when he did not succeed with some Churches, to excommunicate the dissentients.