: hikanotatae], from which those who wish to
do so and who care for their own salvation may learn both the
character of his faith and the preaching of the truth' [Endnote
82:2]. He would hardly have used such language if he had not had
reason to think that the Epistle was at least fairly accessible to
the Christians for whom he is writing. But allowing for the somewhat
slow (not too slow) multiplication and dissemination of writings
among the Christians, this will throw back the composition of the
letter well into the lifetime of Polycarp himself. In any case it
must have been current in circles immediately connected with
Polycarp's person.

Against external evidence such as this the objections that are
brought are really of very slight weight. That which is reproduced
in 'Supernatural Religion' from an apparent contradiction between
c. ix and c. xiii, is dismissed even by writers such as Ritschl
who believe that one or both chapters are interpolated. In c. ix
the martyrdom of Ignatius is upheld as an example, in c. xiii
Polycarp asks for information about Ignatius 'et de his qui cum eo
sunt,' apparently as if he were still living. But, apart from the
easy and obvious solution which is accepted by Ritschl, following
Hefele and others, [Endnote 83:1] that the sentence is extant only
in the Latin translation and that the phrase 'qui cum eo sunt' is
merely a paraphrase for [Greek: ton met' autou]; apart from this,
even supposing the objection were valid, it would prove nothing
against the genuineness of the Epistle. It might be taken to prove
that the second passage is an interpolation; but a contradiction
between two passages in the same writing in no way tends to show
that that writing is not by its ostensible author. But surely
either interpolator or forger must have had more sense than to
place two such gross and absurd contradictions within about sixty
lines of each other.

An argument brought by Dr. Hilgenfeld against the date dissolves
away entirely on examination. He thinks that the exhortation Orate
pro regibus (et potestatibus et principibus) in c. xii must needs
refer to the double rule of Antoninus Pius (147 A.D.) or Marcus
Aurelius and Lucius Verus (161 A.D.). But the writer of the
Epistle is only reproducing the words of St. Paul in 1 Tim. ii. 2
([Greek: parakalo ... poieisthai deaeseis ... hyper basileon kai
panton ton en hyperochae onton]). The passage is wrongly referred
in 'Supernatural Religion' to 1