apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

GENUINENESS OF THE EPISTLE. 59
from a want of originality.
The thoughts and words of others are
reproduced with Httle or no modification, because the writer's mind
is receptive and not creative. The Epistle of Polycarp is essentially
common place, and therefore essentially intelligible.
It has intrinsically
no literary or theological interest. Its only value arises from the fact
that it is a monument of a highly important epoch in the progress of
the Church, of which very
little is
known, and about which every scrap
of information is welcome. On the other hand the letters of Ignatius
have a marked individuality. Of all early Christian writings they are
preeminent in this respect. They are full of idiomatic expressions,
quaint images, unexpected turns of thought and language. They exhibit
their own characteristic ideas, which evidently have a high value
for the writer, for he recurs to them again and again, but which the
reader often finds extremely difficult to grasp owing to their singularity.
5. Turning from the broader characteristics of style to individzial
expressions, we find the two separated by the same wide gulf. The
vocabulary is wholly different. Not a single one of the characteristic
words or types of words or phrases or turns of expression, which strike
us in the Ignatian letters, presents itself in the Epistle of Polycarp,
Such for instance are the compounds of a^tos, as a^ioyuaKapio-To, a^to-
^€os, etc. (see 11. pp. 27, 41, 191, 341), or of