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The genuine epistles of the Apostolic fathers
The genuine epistles of the Apostolic fathers Author:Clement Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A DISCOURSE CONCERNING The EPISTLE Of ST. POLYCARP To The PHI- LIPPIANS. Of the time when St. Polycarp wrote this Epistle. The reason of it being place... more »d before the Epistles of Ignatius. That St. Polycarp wrote several other pieces; yet nothing of his now remaining but only this Epistle. Whether this Epistle has been interpolated, as those of Ignatius were ? the latter part of it vindicated against the exceptions of Monsieur Daille, and some others. Of the transla- tion of it into our own language by Dr. Cave ; and of the present edition of it. 1. The next piece that follows in the present collection, is the Epistle of St. Polycarp to the Philippians. In placing which I have followed the example, not so much of our most reverend Archbishop Usher, d as of Edit Poir- St. Polycarp himself; though in the order of time the nai. 'oion. Epistles of Ignatius ought to have had the precedence ; St. Polycarp not writing this letter to the Philippians till about, or a little after, the time when that glorious martyr suffered for the faith of Christ; as from several passages in the Epistle itself may plainly be made to appe ar. 2. For first, having in his ninth chapter exhorted the Philippians to obey the word of righteousness, and to exercise all patience after the examples of those holy men whom they had seen among them; he particularly e E gf instances in Ignatius as one of them. Now the acts fN0jj0cbarfJ| of the martyrdom tf that holy Bishop tell us, that the / Mn. of time when they beheld his patience set forth before their /"' """' eyes was, when he passed by them in chains to Rome, in order to his being cast to- the wild beasts, according to the sentence pronounced upon him by the Emperor Trajan; consequently this Epistle must have been written some time after...« less