We are not told when he first filled the office which it is claimed he did. Eusebius states, that he succeeded Anacletus in the twelfth year of Domitian's reign, A. D. 93. Cave, in his life of Clement, from the best light he could get, adopted the conclusion of Dodwell, that he became bishop about A. D. 64 or A. D. 65. The reason of this confusion is readily explained. The Clement referred to by Paul has been made to fill the place of an imaginary Clement at the end of the century--a person who only existed in the brain of Irenaeus; and in trying to fix time and dates, the real and imaginary Clement create confusion. Irenaeus has purposely left the subject in darkness, as he does the time when Peter went to Rome, and John to Asia. Dates are always fatal to falsehood and misrepresentations. The real Clement is referred to by Paul in the fourth chapter and third verse of the epistle to the Philip-pians, which was written from Rome in A. D. 63. This is the only notice that is taken of him, and he is made the third Bishop of Rome by Irenaeus, simply because his name is found among others in one of Paul's epistles, as it was in the case of Linus, who was made first. Who was it that wrote the letter to the Corinthians ascribed to Clement? We cannot tell who wrote all, but we can who did write a part. The address of this letter by a person who, it is claimed, was at the time a Bishop, to a church outside the city, which, it was said, appealed to him for advice, is the first bold attempt, on the part of the See of Rome, to enforce an acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Papal authority. Can any reason be given why the church at Corinth, during the first century, should appeal to Rome for advice on any subject? The church at Corinth was the oldest, and after Paul's death knew of no higher authority than itself. There are no signs of a church to which an appeal could be made to the end of the century, except those manufactured by the aid of tradition, which do not deserve to be mentioned when men mean to be serious. This letter, like everything else suspicious, has no date. We can fix the date with almost entire certainty to every letter written by Paul, and there is no reason why a date should not be given to the one to the Corinthians, except that there is something wrong about it, and a date would expose the fraud. Archbishop Wake supposes it to have been written soon after the termination of the persecution under Nero, between the years A. D. 64 and A. D. 70, Lard-ner refers it to the year A. D. 96. (_Chevallier H. E. Introduction_.) The writer of this epistle was careful to leave no internal evidence by which its date could be determined, and what there is of that character is inserted apparently to mislead or afford grounds for dispute.