of the reasons which satisfy even men like Lipsius and
Hilgenfeld. To any ordinary judicial mind, I imagine, this coincidence,
so far as it goes, would appear to point to Polycarp as the author of
the Epistle; for the two facts come to us on independent authority--the
one from oral tradition through Irenaeus, the other in a written
document older than Irenaeus. Or, if the one statement arose out of the
other, the converse relation of that which this hypothesis assumes is
much more probable. Irenaeus, as he tells us in the context, was
acquainted with the Epistle, and it is quite possible that in repeating
the story of Polycarp's interview with Marcion he inadvertently imported
into it the expression which he had read in the Epistle. But the
independence of the two is far more probable. As a fact, men do repeat
the same expressions again and again, and this throughout long periods
of their lives. Such forms of speech arise out of their idiosyncrasies,
and so become part of them. This is a matter of common experience, and
in the case of Polycarp we happen to be informed incidentally that he
had a habit of repeating favourite expressions. Irenaeus, in a passage
already quoted, mentions his exclamation, 'O good God,' as one of these
[116:1].

Our author however declares that the passage in the Epistle which
contains this expression is directly aimed at Marcion and his followers;
and, inasmuch as Marcion can hardly have promulgated his heresy before
A.D. 130-140 at the earliest, this fact, if it be a fact, condemns as
spurious a work which professes to have been written some years before.
But is there anything really characteristic of Marcion in the
description? Our author does not explain himself, nor can I find
anything which really justifies the statement in the writers to whom I
am referred in his footnote. I turn therefore to the words themselves--

For every one who doth not confess that Jesus Christ has come in
the flesh, is antichrist; and whosoever doth not confess the
testimony of the cross, is of the devil; and whosoever perverteth
the oracles of the Lord to (serve) his own lusts, and saith that
there is neither resurrection nor judgment, this man is a
first-born of Satan [116:2].

To illustrate the relation of these denunciations to Marcionite
doctrine, I will suppose a parallel. I take up a book written by a
Nonconformist, and I find in it an attack (I am not concerned with the