apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

champion of orthodoxy against the
POLYCARP THE ELDER. 445
Gnostic schools, and Florinus who
lapsing into more than one heresy called down upon himself the rebuke
of his old comrade. The description of those earlier days cannot be
given better than in the words of Irenceus remonstrating with his former
fellow-student after his defection';
These opinions, Florinus, that I may speak without harshness, are not of
'
sound judgment ; these opinions are not in harmony with the Church, but
involve those who adopt them in the greatest impiety ; these opinions even
the heretics outside the pale of the Church have never ventured to broach ;
these opinions the elders before us, who also were disciples
of the Apostles,
did not hand down to thee. For I saw thee, when I was still a boy (ttois
en av), in Lower Asia in company with Polycarp, while thou wast faring
prosperously in the royal court and endeavouring to stand well with him.
For I distinctly remember {8iaiJ.vT]fxoveva)) the incidents of that time better
than the events of recent occurrence; for the lessons received from childhood
(eK TralBcov), growing with the growth of the soul, become identified with
it ;
so that I can tell the very place in which the blessed Polycarp used to
sit when he discoursed, and his goings out and his comings in, and his
manner of life, and his personal appearance, and the discourses which he
held before the people {rrpos to nXridos), and how he would describe his intercourse
with John and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord, and how
he would relate their words. And whatsoever things he had heard from
them about the Lord and about His miracles and about His teaching,
Polycarp, as having received them from eye-witnesses of the life of the Word,
would relate altogether in accordance with the Scriptures. To these things
I used to listen at the time with attention by God's mercy which was bestowed
upon me, noting them down not on paper but in my heart ;
and
constantly, by the grace of God, I ruminate upon them faithfully (yvrjcrias).
And I can testify in the sight of God, that if that blessed and apostolic elder
had heard anything of this kind, he would have cried out, and stopped his
ears, and would have said after his wont, ' O good God, for what times hast
Thou kept me, that I should endure these things,' and would have fled from
the very place where he was sitting or standing when he heard such words.
And indeed this can be shown from his letters, which he wrote either to the
neighbouring churches for their confirmation or to certain of the brethren
for their warning and exhortation.'
1
Quoted by Euseb. j^.^. V. 20. In the Biogr. in. p. 263 sq, s. v. 'Irenaeus'),
Contemporary Review, May 1875, p. 834, shows that it must be placed during the
I had urged the probability that the episcopate of Victor, and therefore not
Letter to Florinus was an earlier writing ijefore A.D. 189. This point however
than the extant work of Ireneeus On Here- does not materially affect the question of
sies, but the Syriac fragment xxviii (Ire- the time when the intercourse of Polycarp
nceus II. p. 457, ed. Harvey), as pointed with Irenreus and Florinus took place.
out by R. A. Lipsius {Diet, of Christ.