Now that Paul, in preaching to the Gentiles, laid the foundations of the churches from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum, would be plain both from his own words and from what Luke recorded in the Acts.
And from the words of Peter it would be clear, in how many provinces he too delivered the word of the new covenant, preaching Christ to those of the circumcision; this is evident from that acknowledged epistle of his which we have mentioned, in which he writes to those of the Hebrews in the Dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.
But how many of these, and which of them, becoming genuinely zealous, were approved as able to shepherd the churches founded by the apostles, it is not easy to say, except so far as one might gather from the words of Paul.
For of him there were countless fellow-workers and, as he himself named them, fellow-soldiers, of whom the greater number were granted by him a memory not to be forgotten, since he set down in his own epistles a perpetual testimony concerning them. Moreover, Luke also in the Acts, enumerating those known to him, mentions them by name.
Luke, an Antiochian by race and a physician by profession, was for the most part a companion of Paul, and conversed not casually with the rest of the apostles. In two divinely inspired books he has left us examples of the healing of souls which he gained from them: the Gospel, which he testifies he composed according to what was delivered to him by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, all of whom he says he had followed from the first; and the Acts of the Apostles, which he composed no longer from hearing but from what he himself received with his own eyes.
Of the rest of Paul's followers, Crescens is testified by him to have been sent to Gaul; and Linus, whom he mentions as being with him at Rome in the second Epistle to Timothy, has already been shown to have been the first after Peter to be allotted the bishopric of the church of Rome.
And Clement also, who was himself appointed the third bishop of the church of Rome, is testified by Paul to have been his fellow-worker and fellow-striver.
Besides these, that member of the Areopagus, Dionysius by name, whom Luke recorded in the Acts as the first to believe after Paul's address to the Athenians on the Areopagus, is related by another of the ancients, Dionysius the pastor of the diocese of the Corinthians, to have become the first bishop of the church at Athens.
But indeed, as we proceed on our way, the matters of the chronological succession of the apostles shall be told by us in due season; for now let us go on to the next things of the history.