Chapter 3:  A refutation of the heretics, from the fact that, in the various churches, a perpetual succession of bishops was kept up.

But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true.  To these things all the Asiatic Churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time – a man who was of much greater weight, and a more stedfast witness of truth, than Valentinus, and Marcion, and the rest of the heretics.  (Adversus Haereses, III, 3, 4, 180 A.D.)