primitive conventions.  We know very little respecting the history of the Christian commonwealth during the former half of the second century, for the extant memorials of the Church of that period are exceedingly few and meagre; and as the proceedings of most of the synods which were then held did not perhaps attract much notice, [607:2] it is not remarkable that they have shared the fate of almost all the other ecclesiastical transactions of the same date, and that they have been buried in oblivion. [607:3] It is nowhere intimated by any ancient authority that synodical meetings commenced fifty years after the death of the beloved disciple, and the earliest writers who touch upon the subject speak of them as of apostolic original.  Irenaeus, the pastor of Lyons, had probably reached manhood when, according to Mosheim and others, synods were at first formed; he enjoyed the instructions of Polycarp, the disciple of the Apostle John; he was beyond question one of the best informed Christian ministers of his generation; and yet he obviously considered that these ecclesiastical assemblies were in existence in the first century.  Speaking of the visit of Paul to Miletus when he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the Church, [608:1] he says that the apostle then convoked “the bishops and presbyters of Ephesus and of the other adjoining cities” [608:2]—­plainly indicating that he summoned a synodical meeting.  Had an assembly of this kind been a novelty in the days of Irenaeus, the pastor of Lyons would not have given such a version of a passage in the inspired narrative.  Cyprian flourished shortly after the time when, according to the modern theory, councils began to meet in Africa, but the bishop of Carthage himself unquestionably entertained higher views of their antiquity.  He declared that conformably to “the practice received from divine tradition and apostolic observance,” [608:3] “all the neighbouring bishops of the same province met together” among the people over whom a pastor was to be ordained; [608:4] and he did not here merely give utterance to his own impressions, for a whole African synod concurred in his statement.  Subsequent writers of unimpeachable credit refer to the canons of councils of which we otherwise know nothing, and though we cannot now ascertain the exact time when these courts assembled, there is no reason to doubt that at least some of them were convened before the middle of the second century.  Thus, when Jerome ascribes the origin of Prelacy to an ecclesiastical decree, he alludes evidently to some synodical convention of an earlier date than any of the meetings of which history has preserved a record. [609:1]