But granting the _existence_ of Bishops such as we have them now, and their appointment by Apostles, another question arises, first suggested, so far as we know, by S. Jerome, whether the powers now exclusively reserved to Bishops, such as ordination and government, were so exclusively delegated to them by the Apostles, as that those powers exercised by other presbyters are invalid. The question does not appear to have occurred to Irenæus: but we have no hint in him of other presbyters having the same authority as the bishops of the Churches; on the other hand, he expressly states that the Apostles committed the Churches to the government and teaching of individual bishops or presbyters in each, _making them their successors, and giving them their own office_(191). And the very circumstance of their committing the Churches to those individuals did (by what appears to me inevitable consequence) exclude all others from _the same place_ to which those individuals were appointed, and constitute them an order by themselves. And that the universal Church understood the appointment in that sense is proved by the fact, recorded by Irenæus, that the succession of authority was kept up in individuals down to his time; the evident implication being that it was so in all Churches.
The evidence, therefore, supplied by Irenæus, although not enabling us, _by itself_, to discuss the whole question fully, is in support of the discipline of the Church of England, which refuses to recognize the ordinations of any but bishops, properly so called, and having their authority in succession from the Apostles(192).
CHAPTER IV. ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY TRINITY.
The controversy which Irenæus carried on with the Gnostics being directly and explicitly on the subject of the Divine Nature, led him to treat distinctly of the divinity and humanity of Christ and his incarnation, of the providential government of God, and his various manifestations. He is thus led, almost of necessity, to enunciate the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity in various aspects, but most especially in regard to the twofold nature of Christ.
In direct reference to the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity, he describes the agency of the three Persons in the creation of man; the Father willing and commanding, the Son ministering and forming, the Spirit sustaining and nourishing him(193). So again he declares that God made all things by his Word or Son, and Wisdom or Spirit, using the terms personally; and that this was the same thing as making them by himself(194), because they are his hands(195). And again, in explaining God's dispensations in regard to man, he affirms(196) that God was seen under the Old Testament by the Spirit of prophecy, that he was seen subsequently by means of the Son, adoptively, i. e. adopting human nature into the divine(197), and that he will be seen in his character of Father in the kingdom of heaven; and that in this way the Spirit in the Son prepares man, and the Son brings him to the Father, and the Father grants to him immortality: and so again in the work of man's redemption(198), the Spirit operates, the Son supplies, the Father approves, and man is perfected to salvation. He likewise gives two statements of the substance of the Creed, in which the three Persons of the Trinity are spoken of in the same manner as in the Nicene Creed, both of which will be given in a subsequent chapter.