an festival on the
14th Nisan, the practice almost universal, therefore, in the
country in which Claudius Apollinaris is supposed to write this
fragment. How is it possible, therefore, that this isolated convert
to the views of Victor and the Roman Church could write of so vast
and distinguished a majority as 'some who through ignorance raised
contentions' on this point, when notably all the Asiatic Churches
at that time were agreed to keep the fourteenth of Nisan, and in
doing so raised no new contention at all, but, as Polycrates
represented, followed the tradition handed down to them from their
fathers, and authorized by the practice of the Apostle John
himself?

with more to the same effect.

I will hand over this difficulty to those who share our author's views
on the point at issue in the Quartodeciman controversy. Certainly I
cannot suggest any satisfactory mode of escape from the dilemma which is
here put. But what, if the writer of these fragments was not an
'isolated convert to the views of Victor,' but a Quartodeciman himself?
What, if the Quartodecimans kept the 14th, not as the commemoration of
the last Supper, but of the Passion, so that Melito himself would have
heartily assented to the criticisms in these fragments? [245:1] This is
the obvious view suggested by the account of the controversy in
Eusebius, and in Irenaeus as quoted by Eusebius; and it gains
confirmation from these fragments of Apollinaris. It seems to me highly
improbable that Apollinaris should have been an exception to the
practice of the Asiatic Churches. So far I agree with our author. But
this is a reason for questioning the soundness of his own views on the
Quartodeciman controversy, rather than for disputing the genuineness of
the fragments attributed to Apollinaris.

After this account of Melito and Apollinaris, the two chief
representatives of the later school of St John, it will be worth while
to call attention to a statement of Irenaeus in which he professes to
record the opinion of the Asiatic elders on a point intimately affecting
the credibility of the Fourth Gospel, the chronology of our Lord's life
and ministry [245:2].

The Valentinians, against whom this father is arguing, sought for
analogies to the thirty aeons of their pleroma, or supra-sensual world,
in the Gospel history. Among other examples they alleged the thirty
years' duration of our Lord's life. This c