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Irenaeus wrote several letters against those who were disturbing the
sound ordinance of the Church at Rome. One of them was to Blastus
On Schism; another to Florinus
On Monarchy, or That God is not the Author of Evil. For
Florinus seemed to be defending this opinion. And because he was
being drawn away by the error of Valentinus, Irenaeus wrote his work
On the Ogdoad, in which he shows that he himself had been acquainted
with the first successors of the apostles. At the close of the
treatise we have found a most beautiful note which we are constrained to
insert in this work. It runs as follows:
"I adjure thee who mayest copy this book, by our Lord Jesus
Christ, and by his glorious advent when he comes to judge the living
and the dead, to compare what thou shalt write, and correct it
carefully by this manuscript, and also to write this adjuration, and
place it in the copy."
These things may be profitably read in his work, and related by us,
that we may have those ancient and truly holy men as the best example of
painstaking carefulness. In the letter to Florinus, of which we have
spoken, Irenaeus mentions again his intimacy with Polycarp, saying:
"These doctrines, O Florinus, to speak mildly, are not of sound
judgment. These doctrines disagree with the Church, and drive into
the greatest impiety those who accept them. These doctrines, not even
the heretics outside of the Church, have ever dared to publish.
These doctrines, the presbyters who were before us, and who were
companions of the apostles, did not deliver to thee.
"For when I was a boy, I saw thee in lower Asia with Polycarp,
moving in splendor in the royal court, and endeavoring to gain his
approbation. I remember the events of that time more clearly than
those of recent years. For what boys learn, growing with their mind,
becomes joined with it; so that I am able to describe the very place
in which the blessed Polycarp sat as he discoursed, and his goings out
and his comings in, and the manner of his life, and his physical
appearance, and his discourses to the people, and the accounts which
he gave of his intercourse with John and with the others who had seen
the Lord. And as he remembered their words, and what he heard from
them concerning the Lord, and concerning his miracles and his
teaching, having received them from eyewitnesses of the 'Word of
life,' Polycarp related all things in harmony with the Scriptures.
These things being told me by the mercy of God, I listened to them
attentively, noting them down, not on paper, but in my heart. And
continually, through God's grace, I recall them faithfully. And
I am able to bear witness before God that if that blessed and
apostolic presbyter had heard any such thing, he would have cried out,
and stopped his ears, and as was his custom, would have exclaimed, O
good God, unto what times hast thou spared me that I should endure
these things ? And he would have fled from the place where, sitting
or standing, he had heard such words. And this can be shown plainly
from the letters which he sent, either to the neighboring churches for
their confirmation, or to some of the brethren, admonishing and
exhorting them." Thus far Irenaeus.
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