invested with additional authority, and if he soon afterwards died, it is not to be wondered at that his removal was the signal for the renewal of agitation.  Questions which, perhaps, had not hitherto been mooted, now arose.  How was the vacant place to be supplied?  Was the senior presbyter, no matter how ill adapted for the crisis, to be allowed to take quiet possession?  If other influential Churches required to be consulted, some time would thus be occupied; so that delay in the appointment was unavoidable.

During this interval the spirit of faction was busily at work.  The heretic Marcion sought admission into the Roman presbytery; [546:1] and Valentine, who appears to have been now recognized as an elder, [546:2] no doubt supported the application.  The presbytery itself was probably divided, and there is good reason to believe that even Valentine had hopes of obtaining the presidential chair!  His pretensions, at this period of his career, were sufficiently imposing.  Though he may have been suspected of unsoundness in the faith, he had not yet committed himself by any public avowal of his errors; and as a man of literary accomplishment, address, energy, and eloquence, he had few compeers.  No wonder, with so many disturbing elements in operation, that the see remained so long vacant.

Some would willingly deny that Valentine was a candidate for the episcopal chair of Rome, but the fact can be established by evidence the most direct and conclusive.  Tertullian, who had lived in the imperial city, and who was well acquainted with its Church history, expressly states that “Valentine hoped for the bishopric, because he excelled in genius and eloquence, but indignant that another, who had the superior claim of a confessor, obtained the place, he deserted the Catholic Church” [546:3] The Carthaginian father does not, indeed, here name the see to which the heresiarch unsuccessfully aspired, but his words shut us up to the conclusion that he alluded to Rome. [546:4] And we can thus discover at least one reason why the history of this vacancy has been involved in so much mystery.  In a few more generations the whole Church would have felt compromised by any reflection cast upon the orthodoxy of the great Western bishopric. [547:1] How sadly would many have been scandalized had it been proclaimed abroad that the arch-heretic Valentine had once hoped to occupy the chair of St Peter!

VIII.  Two letters which are still extant, and which are supposed to have been addressed by Pius, the immediate successor of Hyginus, to Justus, bishop of Vienne in Gaul, supply corroborative evidence that the presiding pastor had recently obtained additional authority.  Though the genuineness of these documents has been questioned, the objections urged against them have not been sufficient to prevent critics and antiquarians of all parties from appealing to their testimony. [547:2] It is not improbable that they are Latin translations from Greek originals, and we