apostles have drawn one and the
same wicked and deceitful and seducing spirit, so also the prophets and
the apostles, one and the same holy spirit, good, leading, true, and
instructing. For one is the God of the Old and the New Testament. One is
Mediator between God and man, for the production of the creatures endued
with reason and perception, and for the provision of what is useful, and
adapted to them: and one is the Comforter who wrought in Moses and the
prophets and the apostles. All the saints therefore were saved in
Christ, hoping in him, and waiting for him; and through him they
obtained salvation, being saints worthy of love and of admiration,
having obtained a testimony from Jesus Christ in the Gospel of our
common hope." [Page 81. Sec. 5.]

In his Epistle to the Romans he speaks to them of his own prayer to God,
and repeatedly implores them {90} to pray for him. "Pray to Christ for
me, that by these instruments [the teeth of the wild beasts] I may
become a sacrifice of God. I do not, as Peter and Paul, command you:
they were Apostles, I am a condemned man. They were free; but I am still
a servant. Yet if I suffer, I shall become the freedman of Jesus Christ,
and shall rise again free: and now in my bonds I learn to covet
nothing." [Page 28. Sec. 4.] Again he says, "Remember the Church in Syria
in your prayers." [Page 30. Sec. 9.] He prays for his fellow-labourers in
the Lord: he implores them to approach the throne of grace with
supplications for mercy on his own soul. Of prayer to saint or angel he
says nothing. Of any invocation offered to them by himself or his
fellow-believers, Ignatius appears entirely ignorant.

* * * * *

SAINT POLYCARP.

The only remaining name among those, whom the Church has reverenced as
apostolical fathers, is the venerable Polycarp. He suffered martyrdom by
fire, at a very advanced age, in Smyrna, about one hundred and thirty
years after his Saviour's death. Of Polycarp, the apostolical bishop of
the Catholic Church of Smyrna, only one Epistle has survived. It is
addressed to the Philippians. In it he speaks to his brother Christians
of prayer, constant, incessant prayer; but the prayer of which he speaks
is supplication addressed only to God [31]. He marks out for our
imitation the good example of St. Paul and the other Apostles; assuring
us that they had not run in vain, {91} but were gone to the place
prepared for them by the Lord, as the rew