amount of ingenuity and erudition to pervert the chronology.
Pearson, as we have seen, spent six years in this service; and the
learned Bishop of Durham has been engaged "off and on" for nearly
thirty in the same labour. At the close of his long task he seems
to have persuaded himself that he has been quite successful; and
speaking of the theory of Dr. Cureton, he adopts a tone of triumph,
and exclaims: "I venture to hope that the discussion which follows
will extinguish the last sparks of its waning life." [51:1] It
remains for the candid reader to ponder the statements submitted
to him in this chapter, and to determine how many sparks of life
now remain in the bishop's chronology.





CHAPTER IV.

THE TESTIMONY OF IRENAEUS, AND THE GENESIS OF PRELACY.


1. _The Testimony of Irenaeus._

The only two vouchers of the second century produced in support of
the claims of the Epistles attributed to Ignatius, are the letter
of Polycarp to the Philippians and a sentence from the treatise of
Irenaeus _Against Heresies_. The evidence from Polycarp's Epistle
has been discussed in a preceding chapter. When examined, it has
completely broken down, as it is based on an entire misconception
of the meaning of the writer. The words of Irenaeus can be adduced