apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

620 EPISTLE OF S. POLYCARP.
Quintus, is altogether inadequate as a chronological note. This attempt
to stratify temper and opinion in chronological order in matters of this
kind must appear in the highest degree visionary to any one who listens
to the lessons of experience. Enthusiasm has its ebb and flow, and
does not rise continually or fall continually. Whensoever there was an
extravagant zeal for self-immolation, accompanied, as it
inevitably would
be accompanied, by the scandals of relapses and apostasies, there would
be the counteracting warnings from the steadier and wiser heads in the
Christian community. It was certainly so in the age of Cyprian. It
was not less so in still later persecutions. It must have been so in the
age of Polycarp. The two tempers do not betoken different epochs.
They live and they speak side by side'. While some Christians in
the age of Polycarp courted death with a culpable recklessness, others
purchased life by an unpardonable sacrifice of principle. This latter
was the charge brought against Basilides and the Basilideans, the
contemporaries of Polycarp^. Between these two extremes there must
have been along the scale divers intermediate positions, whenever
persecutions were raging. This is a matter, not of archaeological investigation,
but of practical experience. Even, if the scanty remains
of early Christian literature which we possess had contained no indications
of any protest against this extravagant thirst for martyrdom up
to this time, the fact would have been valueless as a chronological
mark. The protest would only then be made, when the occasion required
it. The hasty impetuosity of Quintus, followed by his equally
rapid apostasy, necessitated such a caution, to prevent the repetition of
scandals. We read of no case resembling that of Quintus during the
persecutions of Vienne and Lyons. No protest therefore was required
on this latter occasion, and none is
given \
^
Clement of Alexandria for instance 856) ' Basilidis quoque sermones detra-
(Strotii. iv. 16, 17, p. 571) condemns both hentes quidem iis qui usque ad mortem
extremes— the disparagement of martyr- certant pro vcritate, etc' Irenxus elsedom
and the suicidal passion for martyr- where (iii. 18, 5) speaks of persons
dom— who
as prevaihng in his own day. disparage martyrdom.
Against the latter he speaks in the " It would only be waste of time to
strongest terms elsewhere {Stron. iv. 10, consider at length other arguments which
p. 597 sq). are urged by Keim, for they will pro-
-
Agrippa Castor in Euseb. H. E. iv. bably fail to influence any one but their
7 i^ofivvfjL^vovs dTrapa(pv\dKTws rriv TrlaTiv author, (i) Thus he holds the idea of
Kara toi)s tCov diwyfxuji' Kaipois, Iren. martyrdom, as a sacrifice ('Todesopfer ),
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