s, St. Irenaeus wrote
to him as follows:[2] "These things were not taught you by the bishops
who preceded us. I could tell you the place where the blessed Polycarp
sat to preach the word of God. It is yet present to my mind with what
gravity he everywhere came in and went out: what was the sanctity of his
deportment, the majesty of his countenance and of his whole exterior,
and what were his holy exhortations to the people. I seem to hear him
now relate how he conversed with John and many others, who had seen
Jesus Christ; the words he had heard from their mouths. I can protest
before God, that if this holy bishop had heard of any error like yours,
he would have immediately stopped his ears, and cried out, according to
his custom: Good God! that I should be reserved to these times to hear
such things! That very instant he would have fled out of the place in
which he had heard such doctrine." St. Jerom[3] mentions, that St.
Polycarp met at Rome the heretic Marcion, in the streets, who resenting
that the holy bishop did not take that notice of him which he expected,
said to him: "Do not you {224} know me, Polycarp?" "Yes," answered the
saint, "I know you to be the first-born of Satan." He had learned this
abhorrence of the authors of heresy, who knowingly and willingly
adulterate the divine truths, from his master St. John, who fled out of
the bath in which he saw Cerinthus.[4] St. Polycarp kissed with respect
the chains of St. Ignatius, who passed by Smyrna on the road to his
martyrdom, and who recommended to our saint the care and comfort of his
distant church of Antioch; which he repeated to him in a letter from
Troas, desiring him to write in his name to those churches of Asia to
which he had not leisure to write himself.[5] St. Polycarp {225} wrote a
letter to the Philippians shortly after, which is highly commended by
St. Irenaeus, St. Jerom, Eusebius, Photius, and others, and is still
extant. It is justly admired both for the excellent instructions it
contains, and for the simplicity and perspicuity of the style; and was
publicly read in the church in Asia, in St. Jerom's time. In it he calls
a heretic, as above, the eldest son of Satan. About the year 158, he
undertook a journey of charity to Rome, to confer with pope Anicetus
about certain points of discipline, especially about the time of keeping
Easter, for the Asiatic churches kept it on the fourteenth day of the
vernal equinoctial moon, as the Jews did, on what