Besides,’ said he, ‘they are witnesses to our creed: for although they separated from the church a long while ago, they have never introduced any innovations concerning the faith.’ Being once at Nicæa on account of the ordination of a bishop, and seeing there Asclepiades bishop of the Novatians, then very aged, he asked him, ‘How many years have you been a bishop?’ When he was answered fifty years: ‘You are a happy man,’ said he, ‘to have had charge of so “good a work”