apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

596 EPISTLE OF S. POLYCARP.
of the Church, which occupies so large a space
on the canvas of
Ignatius. Indeed ' the Church ' is not once named by him, and the
only occurrence of the word eKKXrjata itself is in the opening
letter, where it is
applied to the particular community.
of the
3. The divergence of the two writers as regards Scriptural quotations
is equally remarkable. Though the seven Ignatian letters are many
times longer than Polycarp's Epistle, the quotations in the latter are
incomparably more numerous as well as more precise than in the
former. The obligations to the New Testament are wholly different in
character in the two cases. The Ignatian letters do indeed show a
considerable knowledge of the writings included in our Canon of the
New Testament ;
but this knowledge betrays itself in casual words and
phrases, stray metaphors, epigrammatic adaptations, and isolated coincidences
of thought. Where there is an obligation, the borrowed figure
or expression has passed through the mind of the writer, has been
assimilated, and has undergone some modification in the process.
Quotations from the New Testament strictly speaking there are none.
The nearest approaches are such sentences as ' Be thou wise as the
'
serpent in all things and innocent at all times as the dove {Foiyc. 2
from Matt. x. 16), or 'Through their wrong-doings I am advanced
further in discipleship {fxaXXov /xa^T^revo/xat) ; but by reason of this am
I not justified' {Roi. 5, from i Cor. iv. 4); and even such examples
can be counted on the fingers. On the other hand in Polycarp's
Epistle sentence after sentence is frequently made up of passages from
the Evangelical or Apostolic writings'. There is
nothing at all, for
example, in Ignatius which can compare with the large and repeated
use made by Polycarp of the First Epistle of S. Peter, which was
sufficiently prominent to attract the notice of Eusebius {ff. E. iv. 15
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