The value of tradition from the authority of Irenæus may be judged of by the following statement he makes, evidently intended to strengthen the assertion he made about the presence of St. John in Asia Minor. In all cases where he wants it to appear that the Apostle was there, he connects the principal subject with other statements in a way as if the main fact was incidentally mentioned. "Now Jesus was, as it were, beginning to be thirty years old when he came to receive baptism, and according to those men he preached only one year, reckoning from his baptism. On completing his thirtieth year he suffered, being still a young man, and who had by no means attained to advanced age. Now, that the first stage of early life embraces thirty years, and that extends onwards to the fortieth year, every one will admit; but from the fortieth and fiftieth year a man begins to decline towards old age, which our Lord possessed, while he still fulfilled the office of teacher, even as the gospel and all the elders testify." "Those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord (affirming) that John gave to them that information. And he remained among them up to the time of Trajan. Some of them, moreover, saw not only John, but the other Apostles, and heard the same account from them, and bear testimony as to the validity of the statement. Which, then, should we rather believe?--whether such as these, or Ptolemæus, who never saw the Apostles, and who never in his dreams attained to the slightest trace of an Apostle?" (Book ii. chap. 22, sec. 5.) It seems that Irenæus had got into a dispute with Ptolemæus, and attempts to silence him, as he does all opponents, by the authority of the disciples, and especially of John, who is the only one he names. John, too, was in Asia at the time. It is not said where the other Apostles were. Ptolemæus claimed, as appears in the first part of the same section, "that Christ preached for one year only, and then suffered in the twelfth month." The argument with Ptolemæus was, that Christ was too young, and preached too short a time, to be regarded as a teacher of much authority; and in this way, as Irenæus says, "destroying his whole work, and robbing him of that age which is both necessary and more honorable than any other; that more advanced age, I mean, during which also, as a teacher, he excelled all others." The objection is put down in a summary way, claiming that the time of Christ's preaching extended over a period of _ten years_. This is what the Apostles stated, _and what John said while he was in Asia, and who remained there to the time of the death of Trajan_.