apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

GENUINENESS OF THE EPISTLE. 599
is the part assigned to him by this theory What is supposed to be his
motive in the production of this letter bearing Polycarp's name He is
eager to estabUsh the authority of the episcopate. Therefore he writes
a letter which has proved a stronghold of presbyterianism. He desires
to put down a particular type of heresy. So he disposes of the subject
of heresy in two or three lines (§ 7) of which the is
purport far from
obvious. He wishes to accredit certain previous forgeries of his own
bearing the name of Ignatius.
One of these was a letter from Ignatius
to Polycarp. So in order to identify this letter he makes Polycarp
mention in the letter of Ignatius,
to which he alludes, an injunction
which is not found in the document which he wishes to recommend.
But another hypothesis
still remains. May not this Episde of
Polycarp have been written by a different hand from the Ignatian letters,
and still be a forgery This hypothesis has never, so far as I am aware,
been seriously maintained, and it stands self-condemned. No instance
has been produced in early Christian Uterature of a later forgery composed
to support an earlier by another hand. The thing is hardly
credible. Moreover both the earlier and the later forgery must have
been composed between the ages of Ignatius and Irenaus. But what
can have been the motive of the Polycarpian forger What did he find
in the previous Ignatian forgery which made him take so much pains
to establish its credit Was it the support of episcopacy Why, he
writes in such a way that he himself has been mistaken for a presbyterian.
But this Epistle of Polycarp, it will be said,
exhibits resemblances
to the Ignatian letters which are too close to be accidental. This is
certainly true. Here and there we find passages which strike our ear
as echoes of the Ignatian language and thought (see iii. pp. 327, 329,
331, 332, 334. 336, 33^, 340, 342, 343)- But is not this what we should
have expected under the circumstances I have already remarked on
the unoriginal and receptive character of Polycarp's mind. It is probable
that, if all the Jewish and Christian literature accessible to him were
open to ourselves, we should be able to trace other obligations in his
epistle besides those passages which we know to be borrowed. One instance
I have pointed out in the notes (iii. p. 325 sq). He was fresh
from the study of the Ignatian letters.
Two of them were addressed to
himself or to his church. Four others were written in his companionship.
They had all recently been copied out under his eye. Could
such a man under such conditions have refrained from embodying
thoughts and expressions from these in his own epistle