What Polycarp Used to Say

I put you under oath, whoever copies out this book, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by his glorious appearing, when he comes to judge the living and the dead: compare what you have copied against the copy you took it from, and correct it carefully. And copy out this oath as well, and put it into your transcript. [a]

These opinions, Florinus — to put it mildly — do not come from sound teaching. They do not agree with the church, and they carry the people who hold them into the worst kind of godlessness. Even the heretics outside the church have never dared to put them forward. The elders before our time, the ones who had been with the apostles, did not hand them down to you. [c]

When I was still a boy I saw you in Lower Asia with Polycarp, making your way in the imperial court and trying to win his good opinion. I remember what happened then more vividly than what happens now — what we take in as children grows up along with the soul and becomes part of it. So I can even describe the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and talk, how he went out and came in, the way he lived, what he looked like, and the talks he gave to the people. I can hear him telling us about his time with John and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord, and calling up their words from memory. Whatever he had heard from them about the Lord — his miracles and his teaching — Polycarp would report; and since he had it from eyewitnesses of the word of life, it all agreed with the Scriptures.

By God’s mercy on me I listened closely to those things then, and stored them up not on paper but in my heart, and by God’s grace I keep going over them accurately in my mind. And I can testify before God that if that blessed and apostolic elder had heard anything of this kind, he would have cried out and stopped his ears and said, the way he always did: “Good God, what times have you kept me for, that I should have to put up with this?” And he would have fled from the very spot where he had heard such words, whether he was sitting or standing. You can see the same thing from the letters he sent out — to the churches nearby, to strengthen them, or to particular brothers, to warn them and urge them on.

The dispute is not only about the day, but about the form the fast itself takes. Some think they have to fast one day, others two, others still more; others count out forty hours, measuring the daytime hours and the nighttime hours together as making up their day. This variation among those who keep the fast did not begin in our time but long before, with our predecessors — people who, most likely, were not very exact about it, and who handed on to those after them a custom that had come in through plain simplicity or private preference. And still, all of them lived at peace with one another, and we keep peace together too. The disagreement about the fast confirms the harmony of our faith. [f]

And the elders who led the church before Soter — the church you now lead — Anicetus and Pius, Hyginus and Telesphorus and Sixtus: they did not keep it that way themselves, and they did not let those who were with them do so. Even so, though they did not keep the feast in that manner, they were at peace with people who came to them from districts where it was kept that way, although the practice stood out all the more sharply to those who did not follow it. And nobody was ever thrown out of the church over this. On the contrary, the elders before you, who did not keep the custom, used to send the thanksgiving to believers in districts that did.

And when the blessed Polycarp was staying in Rome in Anicetus’ time, although they had a small disagreement about certain other points, they were at once well disposed toward each other on this one, and unwilling to let any quarrel arise over it. Anicetus could not persuade Polycarp to give up keeping it his own way, since Polycarp had always kept it so with John the Lord’s disciple and with the other apostles he had been with; and Polycarp could not persuade Anicetus to keep it Anicetus’ way either, since Anicetus said he had to hold to the practice of the elders before him. That is how matters stood, and they stayed in fellowship with each other. Anicetus gave way to Polycarp in the assembly and let him lead the thanksgiving, as a mark of respect; and they parted from each other in peace, at peace with the whole church, both those who kept the custom and those who did not.

As long as a person has the means to do good to his neighbors and does not do it, he will be counted a stranger to the Lord’s love. [l]

God’s will and God’s working are the cause that makes and foresees every time and place and age, and every nature. The will is the reason of the thinking soul, the reason that is in us, since it is the faculty belonging to the soul that is free to act. The will is the mind wanting something — an appetite with understanding in it, reaching after the thing it wants. [m]

God is beyond measure, the builder of the world, and all-powerful. So the things he made reach out to immensity, made by the world’s builder and by an all-powerful will, with an effect that was new, powerfully and effectively, so that the whole fullness of the things produced might come into being although they had no existence before — both whatever does not fall under our observation and whatever lies in front of our eyes. And in the same way he holds all things, each in particular, and brings each one on to the end that belongs to it, the end for which it was called into being and produced, with nothing turned into anything other than what that end had been by nature from the start. For this is what belongs to God’s working: not only to run out past the endlessness of the understanding, and even to overpass our powers of mind and reason and speech, and time and place and every age, but to go beyond substance as well, and beyond fullness or completeness. [n]

Not bending the knee on Sunday is a symbol of the resurrection, by which we have been set free, through the grace of Christ, from sins and from death, which has been put to death under him. This custom goes back to the time of the apostles, as the blessed Irenaeus, martyr and overseer of Lyons, says in his book On Easter, where he mentions Pentecost as well: on that feast we do not bend the knee either, because it counts for as much as the Lord’s day, for the reason just given. [o]

For just as the ark was gilded inside and out with pure gold, so also the body of Christ was pure and shining. Inside it was adorned by the Word, and outside it was guarded by the Spirit, so that from both the brightness of the natures might be plainly shown. [p]

If we always speak well of those who deserve it, and never speak ill of those who do not deserve it, we too will come to the glory and the kingdom of God. [q]

It belongs to God, and it suits his character, to show mercy and pity, and to bring salvation to his creatures even when they have fallen under the danger of destruction. “For with him,” Scripture says, “is atonement.” [r]

The Christian’s business is nothing other than to be always preparing to die. [s]

So we have come to believe that our bodies also rise again. Though they go to decay, they do not perish; the earth takes the remains and keeps them, like fertile seed mixed into richer ground. Again, a bare grain is sown, and by the command of God its maker it sprouts and rises clothed and splendid — but not before it has died and come apart and been mixed into the earth. So our belief in the resurrection of the body is not an empty one. [t]

Though the body is dissolved at the appointed time, because of the first disobedience, it is put into the earth as into a crucible, to be cast again — not as this perishable body, but pure and no longer subject to decay. To each body its own soul will be given back; and when the soul is clothed with it, it will feel no grief but will be glad, staying permanently in a state of purity, with a just partner for its companion and not a treacherous one, possessing in every respect the things that belong to it and receiving them with perfect exactness. They will not receive bodies different from the ones they had, nor bodies released from suffering or disease, nor bodies made glorious, but bodies as they left this life — in sins or in righteous actions. Such as they were, that is what they will be clothed with when they take life up again; and such as they were in unbelief, so they will be judged, and judged faithfully.

When the Greeks arrested slaves belonging to Christians who were still under instruction, and then used force on them to learn from them some secret thing practiced among Christians, the slaves had nothing to say that would satisfy their torturers, except that they had heard from their masters that the divine sharing was the body and blood of Christ. Imagining that this meant actual flesh and blood, they told their questioners so. The questioners took this to be what Christians really did, passed the information on to other Greeks, and tried to force the witnesses Sanctus and Blandina, under torture, to admit that the charge was true. Blandina answered them admirably: “How could people put up with a charge like that, when for the sake of their practice they did not even eat the meat they were allowed?” [v]

How can anyone say that the serpent, which God made speechless and without reason, was given reason and speech? If it had the power on its own to speak, to discern, to understand, and to answer what the woman said, there would have been nothing to stop every serpent from doing the same. And if they say instead that it was by God’s will and arrangement that this serpent spoke to Eve with a human voice, they make God the author of sin. Nor was it possible for the evil spirit to give speech to a nature that has none, and so to produce out of what is not something that is; for if that were possible, he would never have stopped conferring with men and deceiving them by means of serpents and animals and birds. And where did it get its information — a mere animal — about the command God gave to the man alone, and in private, when not even the woman herself knew of it? And why did it choose to attack the woman rather than the man? [y]

If you say it attacked her as the weaker of the two, I answer that on the contrary she was the stronger, since she appears to have been the man’s helper in breaking the command. She resisted the serpent by herself, and it was only after holding out for a while and arguing back that she ate from the tree, out-maneuvered by cunning; whereas Adam put up no fight at all and made no refusal, and took the fruit handed to him by the woman — which shows utter feebleness and an unmanly softness of mind. The woman, beaten in the contest by a spirit, deserves some pardon; but Adam will deserve none, since he was beaten by a woman, and he was the one who had received the command from God in person. The woman had heard of the command from Adam, and she treated it as nothing, either because she thought it beneath God to speak through him, or because she had her doubts — perhaps she even took the view that Adam had given her the command on his own authority.

The serpent found her working alone, so that he could talk with her apart. He watched whether she was eating from the trees or not, and then put the fruit of the forbidden tree in front of her. If he saw her eating, then plainly she had a body subject to decay, for “everything that goes in at the mouth passes out into the latrine.” And if her body decayed, obviously she was mortal as well. But if she was mortal, then there was certainly no curse in it, and it was no sentence of condemnation when the voice of God said to the man, “For you are earth, and to earth you will go back” — that is simply the true course of things, now and always. Then again, if the serpent saw the woman not eating, how did he get someone who had never eaten to eat? And who pointed out to this accursed, man-killing serpent that the sentence of death God had pronounced on them would not take effect at once, when he said, “On the day you eat of it, you will certainly die”? And not only that, but that along with going unpunished, the eyes of people who had not seen until then would be opened? Yet with that opening of their eyes they set foot on the road of death.

When Balaam spoke these things long ago in parables, he was not recognized; and now that Christ has appeared and fulfilled them, he has not been believed. That is why Balaam, seeing this ahead of time and wondering at it, cried out: “Alas, alas! Who will live when God brings these things about?” [ac]

Setting out the law again for the generation that came after those who were struck down in the wilderness, he published Deuteronomy — not as giving them a law different from the one laid down for their fathers, but as going back over that same law from the beginning, so that by hearing what had happened to their fathers they might fear God with their whole heart. [ad]

Christ was pictured beforehand in these men, and recognized, and brought into the world. He was prefigured in Joseph; then from Levi and Judah he was descended in the flesh, as king and priest; he was recognized by Simeon in the temple; through Zebulun he was believed in among the nations, as the prophet says, “the land of Zebulun”; and through Benjamin — that is, Paul — he was glorified, by being preached throughout the whole world. [ae]

And this was not without meaning. By the number of the ten men, Gideon was shown to have Jesus for a helper, as the agreement he made with them indicates. And when he refused to share in their idol worship, they laid the blame on him; for “Jerubbaal” means the judgment seat of Baal. [ag]

“Take Joshua the son of Nun.” It was fitting that Moses should lead the people out of Egypt, but that Joshua should lead them into the inheritance; and that Moses, like the law, should come to an end, but that Joshua, as the word, and as no false figure of the Word who has being of his own, should be a preacher to the people. And again, that Moses should give the fathers manna for food, but Joshua wheat — the firstfruits of life, a figure of the body of Christ, as Scripture also says that the Lord’s manna stopped when the people had eaten wheat from the land. [ai]

“And he laid his hands on him.” Joshua’s face was made glorious too by Moses laying his hands on him, though not to the same degree as Moses’ own. Since he had obtained a certain measure of grace, the Lord said, “And you will confer on him some of your glory.” For what is given does not stop belonging to the giver. [al]

But he does not give the way Christ gives, by breathing, because he is not the source of the Spirit. [am]

“You are not to go with them, and you are not to curse the people.” He is not hinting at anything about the people — they all lay open before his sight — but at the mystery of Christ, marked out beforehand. Since Christ was to be born of those fathers according to the flesh, the Spirit gives instructions to Balaam beforehand, so that he would not go off in ignorance and pronounce a curse on the people. Not that his curse could have taken any effect against the will of God; it was done as a display of the providence God exercised toward them on account of their forefathers. [an]

“And he mounted his donkey.” The donkey was a figure of the body of Christ, on which all men, resting from their labors, are carried as in a carriage. For the Savior has taken up the burden of our sins. And the angel who appeared to Balaam was the Word himself; and in his hand he held a sword, to indicate the power he had from above. [ao]

“God is not like a man.” By this he shows that all men are liars, since they shift from one thing to another; but it is not so with God, for he always stays true, completing whatever he wishes. [ap]

“To take vengeance for the Lord on Midian.” For when this man Balaam no longer speaks in the Spirit of God but against God’s law, setting up a different rule about sexual immorality, he is certainly no longer to be counted a prophet, but a fortune-teller. He did not keep to the command of God, and he received the just return for his own scheming. [aq]

Know this: every man is either empty or full. If he does not have the Holy Spirit, he has no knowledge of the Creator; he has not received Jesus Christ, who is the Life; he does not know the Father who is in heaven. If he does not live by reason, by the heavenly law, he is not sober-minded, and he does not act uprightly. Such a man is empty. But if he receives God, who says, “I will live among them and walk among them, and I will be their God,” then such a man is not empty, but full. [ar]