[581:3] “Nam et Alexandria a Marco Evangelista usque ad Heraclam et Dionysium Episcopos, presbyteri semper unum ex se electum, in excelsiori gradu collocatum Episcopum nominabant; quomodo si exercitus Imperatorem faciat; aut Diaconi eligant de se quem industrium noverint, et Archidiaconum vocent.”—­Epist. ad Evangelum.

[581:1] Heraclas now succeeded him.  The immediate successor of Heraclas was Dionysius.

[581:2] “Apud nos quoque et fere per provincias universas tenetur.”—­Cyprian, Epist. lxviii. p. 256.  The arrangement of which Cyprian speaks was now, perhaps, pretty generally established in the West, but he may have understood, through his intercourse with Firmilian, that in some parts of the East a different usage still prevailed.

[581:3] “Nam et Alexandriae.”

[582:1] Eutychius, the celebrated patriarch of Alexandria who flourished in the beginning of the tenth century, makes this assertion.  According to this writer there were originally twelve presbyters connected with the Alexandrian Church; and, when the patriarchate became vacant, they elected “one of the twelve presbyters, on whose head the remaining eleven laid hands, and blessed him and created him patriarch.”—­See the original passage in Selden’s Works, ii. c. 421, 422; London, 1726.  This passage furnishes a remarkable confirmation of the testimony of Jerome as to the fact that the Alexandrian presbyters originally made their bishops, but it is probably not very accurate as to the details.  As to the laying on of hands it is not supported by Jerome.

[582:2] The case is different with the modern English archdeacon who is a presbyter.

[583:1] “A fratribus constitutus et colobio episcoporum vestitus.”

[583:2] “Saluta omne collegium fratrum, qui tecum sunt in Domino.”

[583:3] The practice seems to have continued longer at Alexandria than at Rome and various other places.

[583:4] The statement of Jerome is not inconsistent with the fact that the senior elder was originally the president or bishop, for he was recognized as such by mutual agreement.  Neither is it at variance with the idea that the elders sometimes made a selection by lot out of three of their number previously put in nomination.  There are good grounds for believing that even after bishops begun to be elected by general suffrage, the people were in some places restricted to certain candidates chosen from among the elders by lot.  Cyprian apparently refers to this circumstance when he says that he was chosen by “the judgment of God" as well as by the vote of the people.  Epist. xl. p. 119.  The people of Alexandria, towards the close of the third and beginning of the fourth century, are said to have been restricted to certain candidates.  See p. 333, Period II. sec. i. chap. iv.  Cornelius of Rome is said to have been made bishop by “the judgment of God and of his Christ” and by the votes of the people.  Cyprian, Epist. lii. pp. 150, 151.