Excerpt from The Gallican Church: Sketches of Church History in France Pothinus, the aged bishop of Lyons, was one of those who suffered martyrdom at this time. He was succeeded in his Office by Irenaeus, who lived to enrich the Church by theological works of endur ing value as to primitive doctrine and discipline. To him we owe the information that already in his time four Gospels, and four only, were universally received, and ascribed to the same four Evangelists as now. To him also we owe particulars of the episcopal succession from the Apostles in the churches of Rome, Smyrna, and Ephesus. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.