ir respective schools. It
is therefore with special interest that we look to see what the most
eminent scholar of the beloved disciple says about the Apostle of the
Gentiles. Now St Paul occupies quite the most prominent place in
Polycarp's Epistle. This prominence is partly explained by the fact that
he is writing to a Church of St Paul's founding, but this explanation
does not detract from its value. St Paul is the only Apostle who is
mentioned by name; his writings are the only Apostolic writings which
are referred to by name; of his thirteen Epistles, there are probable
references to as many as eleven [95:4]; there are direct appeals to his
example and his teaching alike: there is even an apology on the writer's
part for the presumption of seeming to set himself up as a rival to the
Apostle by writing to a Church to whom he had addressed an Epistle
[96:1]. Altogether the testimony to the respect in which St Paul is held
by the writer is as complete as language can make it. If therefore the
Epistle be accepted as genuine, the position of the Tuebingen school must
be abandoned.

From considering the phenomena of the extant Epistle, we pass by a
natural transition to the second point which I proposed to investigate,
the traditions of the author's teaching.

Polycarp was no longer a young man, when his Epistle was written. But he
lived on to see a new generation grow up from infancy to mature age
afterwards; and as the companion of Apostles and the depositary of the
Apostolic tradition, his influence increased with his increasing years.
Before he died, even unbelievers had come to regard him as the 'Father
of the Christians.'

Of his later years a glimpse is afforded to us in the record of an
eye-witness. Among the disciples of his old age were two youths,
companions for the time, but destined to stand far apart in after life--

'Like cliffs that had been rent asunder;'

the elder, Florinus, who became famous afterwards as a heretical leader;
the younger, Irenaeus, who stood forward as the great champion of
orthodoxy. The following is the remonstrance addressed by Irenaeus to
his former associate after his defection:--

These opinions, Florinus, that I may speak without harshness, are
not of sound judgment; these opinions are not in harmony with the
Church, but involve those adopting them in the greatest impiety;
these opinions even the heretics outside the pale of the Church
have ne