Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

264 THE SECOND AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.his disciple Polycarp. Iremeus, by birth a nativeof lesser Asia, enjoyed when young the instructionsand intimate friendship of the bishop of Smyrna.In his old a^e O he delighted o to remember howPolycarp had described his intercourse with John ,and with those who had seen the Lord: how herepeated their discourse, and what he had heardfrom them respecting the teaching and the miraclesof that Word of life whom they had seenwith their own eyes. "These things," says Irenaeus ," through the mercy of God I then diligentlylistened to, writing them down not on paper, buton my heart, and by His grace I ruminate uponthem perpetually."25 Later in life he left Smyrna ,and settled in Lyons, of which Church he was apresbyter when the terrible persecution of 177broke out there. Elected thereupon to succeeda martyr as bishop, he crowned an episcopate oftwenty-five years with a similar martyrdom. Hewrote, as he says, during the episcopate of Eleu-therius, who was the twelfth bishop of Rome fromPeter, and sat from 177 to 192. After describingat length the Gnostic errors concerning the divinenature, he sets forth in contrast the unity of thetruth as declared by the Church in the followingwords :" The Church, though she be spread abroadthrough the whole world unto the ends of the earth ,has received from the Apostles and their disciples25 Frag. Epist. ad Florin, torn. i. p. 340.