But it is claimed that Linus was installed Bishop before the death of Peter, and Irenæus pretends to give the time. He says: "The blessed Apostles then having founded and built up the church, committed unto the hands of Linus the office of the Episcopate." (Book iii. ch. 2, sec. 3.) The blessed Apostles are Peter and Paul. Now we have just shown that these Apostles were never in Rome together, and that there was no church to be committed to the charge of Linus or anybody else. As it is an important part of the story that Peter died a martyr at Rome, this could only happen to him between A. D. 64 and A. D. 68, for the persecution under Nero commenced during the former year, and ended with his death in A. D. 68. We have the most conclusive proof that Peter was not in Rome in A. D. 64, when the persecutions under Nero commenced, nor afterwards. He was in Babylon--whether Babylon in Assyria, Babylon in Mesopotamia or Egypt--he was in Babylon more than two thousand miles away. Peter was born about the time of Christ, and was sixty-four years of age when the persecutions under Nero began. He was married, and when he wrote his first Epistle he was in Babylon and had his family with him, for he mentions the name of Marcus, and calls him his son. "The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus, my son." (1 Peter v. 13.) The date of this epistle is fixed by Dr. Lard-ner and other critics at A. D. 64. Did Peter, at the age of sixty-four, when he heard that Nero was feeding the wild beasts of the Amphitheatre with the flesh and bones of Christians, "lured by the smell of blood," start for Rome? If Peter was in Babylon in A. D. 64, an "Apostolic succession," so far as it depends on him, must fail, and Rome must surrender the authority by which she has held the religious world in subjection for the last seventeen centuries.