Now Irenæus does undoubtedly call the same persons by the _name_ of Bishops and Presbyters interchangeably. But it has been long ago pointed out that the circumstance of the same _name_ being borne by persons holding two different offices, proves nothing. It is unsafe to infer from the circumstance that _bishops_ are called _presbyters_, or _presbyters bishops_, that therefore there was not a permanent officer set over the other presbyters, and endued with functions which they could not exercise, although not at first distinguished by a specific name. On the other hand, we learn from him that there were to be found in every part of the Christian world bishops or presbyters placed at the head of Churches, which from their importance, must have had other presbyters in them, and which we know from other sources to have had other presbyters in them; that there was only one of these at one and the same time; that they were intrusted with the government of the Churches, and called the Bishops of those Churches; that the authority of the office was handed down from individual to individual; and that the individuals who filled this office, and by consequence the office itself, were appointed by inspired apostles(190). All these facts are irreconcileable with the hypothesis that all presbyters were equal in authority and function. The question whether these bishops and presbyters might not have been simply pastors of independent congregations, is answered by finding that they had other presbyters under them, (as Irenæus under Pothinus, and Florinus and Blastus under the Bishops of Rome,) and _that_ in places such as Rome, where there were probably more congregations than one. There is nothing in Irenæus to favour the idea that the subject‐presbyters were not properly clergymen; on the contrary, the letter of the martyrs to Eleutherius would appear to speak of Irenæus as a clergyman, when we at the same time know him to have been a presbyter: and it does appear in the highest degree improbable that the flourishing Church of Rome, which we know to have been the place of residence of two Apostles at once, should have been left, down to Irenæus’s time, with only a single clergyman in it, which must have been the case upon this theory; to say nothing of Smyrna, which, according to the same scheme, must have been left destitute of spiritual superintendence during Polycarp’s visit to Rome, which S. Irenæus has recorded.