And among those who shone in these times was Quadratus also, who, an account holds, was distinguished, together with the daughters of Philip, by the gift of prophecy. And many others besides these were known in those days, holding the first rank in the succession from the apostles; who also, being such notable disciples, built upon the foundations of the churches everywhere that had been laid beforehand by the apostles, increasing the proclamation yet more and sowing abroad the saving seeds of the kingdom of the heavens throughout the whole inhabited world in its breadth.
For indeed very many of the disciples of that time, their souls smitten by the divine word with a more vehement love of philosophy, first fulfilled the saving exhortation by distributing their substance to the needy; then, setting out on journeys abroad, they performed the work of evangelists, ambitious to preach Christ to those who were still wholly ignorant of the word of the faith, and to deliver to them the writing of the divine Gospels.
And these men, having merely laid down the foundations of the faith in certain foreign places, and having appointed others as shepherds, and committing to these very men the cultivation of those just brought in, themselves again passed on to other lands and nations, with the grace and co-working of God; for even the most numerous wonderful powers of the divine Spirit were still at that time working through them, so that at the first hearing whole multitudes, all together and to a man, eagerly received into their souls godliness toward the Maker of all things.
But since it is impossible for us to enumerate by name all those who, in the first succession from the apostles, became shepherds or even evangelists in the churches throughout the inhabited world, we have with reason set down in writing the remembrance only of those by name through whom the tradition of the apostolic teaching is still even now being borne down to us by way of memoirs.