It is hardly necessary to ask the question, where it was the Therapeutæ form of government, by Bishops, was first organized. Alexandria seems to have been the common mother of all that is new in religion. It is here where have sprung up, in all ages, those subtle questions which have led the minds of men from sense and reason to pursue mischievous phantoms. We infer from the writings of Eusebius, and from other sources, that the Therapeutæ Christians in Alexandria were numerous at an early date. The letter of Adrian from Alexandria, in A. D. 134, is the first notice we have of a church with a Bishop at its head. It was this letter that led the author of the "Decline and Fall," after a careful survey of the subject, with a penetration that nothing escaped, and an industry which left no ground unexplored, to conclude that the first regular Christian church government was instituted at Alexandria. If Christian churches are not indebted to the Therapeutæ for their form of church government, from what source do they derive it? _Not_ From the Jews; not from Paul; not from the Apostles. CHAPTER XIX. Linus never Bishop of Rome.--Clement, third Bishop, and his successors to the time of Anicetus, myths.--Chronology of Eusebius exposed, also that of Irenæus. At what time was Linus, said to be the successor of Peter, made Bishop of Rome? The last trace we have of him, he was with Paul, in Rome, in the fall of A. D. 65. After this we know nothing of him, except from vague and more than doubtful tradition. According to Irenaeus, it was when Peter and Paul were in Rome together, after they had laid the foundation of the church at that place. Paul went to Rome for the first time in A. D. 61, where he remained to the spring of A. D. 63. We have shown that during this time Peter was not there. Paul remained absent until the summer or fall of A. D. 65, and soon after his return was committed to prison. In A. D. 64, Peter was in Babylon, two thousand miles away. As Irenaeus is the founder of the story, and the only authority in subsequent ages, when it was that Linus was appointed over the church of Rome as the successor of Peter, it devolves on those who pretend to believe him to show when it was that Peter and Paul were together in Rome, laying the foundation of a church, or anything else. This can never be done; and if not, it destroys the first link in the Apostolic chain, and what is left is worthless.