lty and deference, as to the teaching of inspiration. They
are conscious, as are we in reading them, that they are not moving on
the same level of insight as the Apostles; they are sub-apostolic in
that sense also. Hence there appear constant traces of study of the
Apostolic writings, so far as these were accessible in the locality of
each writer at his date of writing (for the details of this subject, and
its bearing on the history of the Canonical Scriptures of the New
Testament, see _The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers_, Oxford,
1905). As Lightfoot points out (_Apostolic Fathers_, pt. i. vol. i. p.
7), however, personality, with its variety of temperament and emphasis,
largely colours the Apostolic Fathers, especially the primary group.
Clement has all the Roman feeling for duly constituted order and
discipline; Ignatius has the Syrian or semi-oriental passion of
devotion, showing itself at once in his mystic love for his Lord and his
over-strained yearning to become His very "disciple" by drinking the
like cup of martyrdom; Polycarp is, above all things, steady in his
allegiance to what had first won his conscience and heart, and his
"passive and receptive character" comes out in the contents of his
epistle. Of the rest, whose personalities are less known to us, Papias
shares Polycarp's qualities and their limitations, the anonymous
homilist and Hermas are marked by intense moral earnestness, while the
writer to Diognetus joins to this a profound religious insight. These
personal traits determine by selective affinity, working under
conditions given by the special local type of tradition and piety, the
elements in the Apostolic writings which each was able to assimilate and
express--though we must allow also for variety in the occasions of
writing. Thus one New Testament type is echoed in one and another in
another; or it may be several in turn. The latter is the case in
Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp; perhaps also in "Barnabas." In Hermas
there is special affinity to the language and thought of the epistle of
James, and in the homilist to those of Paul. Yet their very use of the
same terms or ideas makes us the more aware of "a marked contrast to the
depth and clearness of conception with which the several Apostolic
writers place before us different aspects of the Gospel" (Lightfoot).
While Apostolic phrases are used, the sense behind them is often
different and less evangelic. They have not caught the Apostol