“through the successions of the elders.” [514:2] They could farther refer to those who stood at the head of their respective presbyteries as the witnesses most competent to give evidence.  “We are able,” says Irenaeus, “to enumerate those whom the apostles established as bishops in the Churches, [514:3] together with their successors down to our own times, who neither taught any such doctrine as these men rave about, nor had any knowledge of it.  For if the apostles had been acquainted with recondite mysteries which they were in the habit of teaching to the perfect disciples apart and without the knowledge of the rest, they would by all means have communicated them to those to whom they entrusted the care of the Church itself, since they wished that those whom they left behind them as their successors, and to whom they gave their own place of authority, should be quite perfect and irreproachable in all things.” [514:4]

Had the succession to the episcopal chair been regulated by the arrangements of modern times, there would have been little weight in the reasoning of Irenaeus.  The declaration of the bishop respecting the tradition of the Church over which he happened to preside would have possessed no special value.  But it was otherwise in the days of this pastor of Lyons.  The bishop was generally one of the oldest members of the community with which he was connected, and had been longer conversant with its ecclesiastical affairs than any other minister.  His testimony to its traditions was, therefore, of the highest importance.  In a few of the great Churches, as we have elsewhere shewn, [515:1] the senior elder now no longer succeeded, as a matter of course, to the episcopate; but age continued to be universally regarded as an indispensable qualification for the office, [515:2] and, when Irenaeus wrote, the law of seniority appears to have been still generally maintained.  It was, therefore, with marked propriety that he appealed to the evidence of the bishops; as they, from their position, were most competent to expose the falsehood of the fables of Gnosticism.

V. It is well known that, in some of the most ancient councils of which we have any record, the senior bishop officiated as moderator [515:3] and, long after age had ceased to determine the succession to the episcopal chair, the recognition of its claims, under various forms, may be traced in ecclesiastical history.  In Spain, so late as the fourth century, the senior chief pastor acted as president when the bishops and presbyters assembled for deliberation [515:4] In Africa the same rule was observed until the Church of that country was overwhelmed by the northern barbarians.  In Mauritania and Numidia, even in the fifth century, the senior bishop of the province, whoever he might be, was acknowledged as metropolitan. [516:1] In the usages of a still later age we may discover vestiges of the ancient regulation, for the bishops sat, in the order of their seniority, in the provincial synods. [516:2] Still farther, where the bishop of the chief city of the province was the stated metropolitan, the ecclesiastical law still retained remembrancers of the primitive polity; as, when this dignitary died, the senior bishop of the district performed his functions until a successor was regularly appointed. [516:3]