apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

the comparison still further ;
LETTER OF THE SMYRN.^ANS. 613
'
'
Christus ',
he writes, inter duos latrones
ligno suspensus ad exemplum patientiae praebebatur ;
Cyprianus autem
inter duos apparitores ad passionem curru portatus Christi vestigia
sequebatur (Scrm. 309, Op. v. p. 1248).'
Irenaeus again (iii.
18. 5) speaks of the martyrs as 'conantes vestigia
assequi passionis Domini,' and elsewhere (iii. 13. i)
he describes
S. Stephen as 'per omnia martyrii Magistrum imitans.' In like manner
Eusebius {^Mart.
Palaest. 7) relates how Agapius, one of the Palestinian
martyrs, was led into the arena together with a criminal reported to be
a parricide. The criminal was thrown to the wild beasts but rescued and
pardoned at the last moment amidst the plaudits of the multitude, while
the Christian saint was mangled by a savage bear, taken back to the
prison, and drowned in the sea the next day. Eusebius sees a parallel
to this incident in the release of Barabbas {jkovovovyl ko-t avrov IkCivov
Tov i-m. Tov a-MTTJpos Bapa/3(3a.v). Nor does this craving cease with the
age of the pagan persecutions. The lives of the medieval saints belonging
to the mendicant orders are treated in the same way. The stigmata
of S. Francis, when he 'received the last marks of his similitude to
his Redeemer", are only a more startling manifestation of this tendency
which reappears in divers forms.
The tendency itself therefore casts no discredit on the genuineness
of the narrative. If there be any ground for it
suspicion, must He in the
character of tlie incidents themselves in which the parallelism is sought.
But here we are forced to pronounce an acquittal. The violent wresting
and the artificial treatment, which are necessary to discover the resemblances,
afford sufficient evidence that the narrator was dealing with
historical facts and not with arbitrary fictions which he might mould
as he pleased. A writer for instance, who had carte blajiche to invent
and manipulate incidents at discretion, would never have placed himself
in such straits as to compare the poor slave-lad — more sinned against
than sinning
— who under torture revealed his master's hiding-place,
with the traitor disciple Judas who voluntarily and recklessly sold the
hfe of lives for base gain. This is an extreme case ;
but there is more
or less wresting throughout. The most striking coincidence is the
name Herodes"; but this name was sufficiently frequent in Polycarp's
time, and there is only a faint resemblance between the position of the
1
Milman Latin Christianity iv. p. person, and that his name suggested the
parallel
t8o.
drawing out of the
-
Even Lipsius (p. 202) considers that ferings of Christ,
this Herodes was probably a historical
with the suf-