that was delivered to him from the beginning"--this, so far
as we can read the man from his own utterances or from the
notices of others, was the characteristic of Polycarp. His
religious convictions were seen to be "founded," as Ignatius
had said long before (Polyc. 1) "on an immovable rock." He
was not dismayed by the plausibilities of false teachers,
but "stood firm as an anvil under the hammer's stroke."
(_ib._ 3).'

The Church has ever claimed for her Saint not so much the reverence paid
to the martyr, or the deference due to the ruler, or the teachableness
powerful in the writer, as the attention obligatory to an 'elder.' Why?
We may give the reason in the Bishop's words:

'While the oral tradition of the Lord's life and of the
Apostolic teaching was still fresh, the believers of
succeeding generations not unnaturally appealed to it for
confirmation against the many counterfeits of the Gospel
which offered themselves for acceptance. The authorities for
this tradition were "the Elders." To the testimony of these
Elders appeal was made by Papias in the first, and by
Irenaeus in the second generation after the Apostles. With
Papias the Elders were those who themselves had seen the
Lord, or had been eye-witnesses of the Apostolic history:
with Irenaeus the term included likewise persons who, like
Papias himself, had been acquainted with these
eye-witnesses. And among these Polycarp held the foremost
place.'

The existing letter to the Philippians is now recognized as a genuine
work of the Saint; and this on the testimony of internal evidence, quite
as much as on the direct testimony of Irenaeus, his own disciple. The
arbitrary method of a Daille, the interpolation-theory of Ritschl, and
the wholesale rejection of the Epistle by Schwegler, Zeller, and
Hilgenfeld, have ceased to command attention or demand refutation. The
Epistle is too closely confined to the letters and martyrdom of Ignatius
to warrant our looking for much refutation in it of existing error; but
the spirit and counsel of the 'elder' is truly there warning against
false and hypocritical brethren, and impelling his readers to turn unto
the word delivered unto them from the beginning.

Never was Christian counsel and sturdy faith more needed than in the
period covered by the lifetime of Polycarp. The Bishop of Durham
describes it as 'the most