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THE

BRITISH MAGAZINE.

JAN. 1, 1839.

ORIGINAL PAPERS.

IRENEUS.

IF Polycarp is an object of great interest, as the disciple of St. John, and the hearer both of him and of other contemporaries of our Lord,— if Justin is so, as having been the first man of eminent learning who came over from the walks of heathen philosophy to submit his mind to the doctrine of Christ,-Irenæus, again, has claims upon our attention scarcely less, as having been brought up in the Christian faith under the eye of Polycarp; having, therefore, no previous tinge of Judaism or heathen philosophy, but imbued with Christian principles almost, if not quite, from his cradle, and at the same time displaying equal vigour of mind, if not equal knowledge of heathen learning, with either Justin or Clement of Alexandria.* To these circumstances we are no doubt to attribute it, that the appear in his writings a greater justness of reasoning, and a more u: exceptionable use of scripture, than is to be found in the writers of ue Alexandrian school.

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With regard to the time of his birth we know nothing certain. We find him still a lad, mais érv,t listening to the Christian instruction of Polycarp, not long, as it would appear, before the death of that martyr. For, after saying that he had seen Polycarp in the early part of his life, iv τn purn nirikig-in order to account for what might appear improbable, viz., his being the contemporary of that martyr at all, he says, that Polycarp lived to a very advanced age, γὰρ παρέμεινε, καὶ πάνυ γηραλέος . . . . . ἐξῆλθε τοῦ βίου, it evident that this must have taken place towards the very close of Polycarp's life, and yet not so near to it but that he had had time to marks his manner of life, and the discourses he made to the people, and remembered his account of his familiar intercourse with the apostle John, and the survivors of those who had seen the Lord, and

This makes

Tertullian (adv. Valent. 5) calls him omnium doctrinarum curiosissimus explorator. § Ep. ad Flor.

+ Epist. ad Florinum.

VOL. XV.-Jan. 1839.

Adv. Haer. III. iii. 4.

B

his rehearsals of their sayings, and of their accounts of the discourses and miracles of the Lord. All this would require, one should suppose, at least five or six years. Then, again, we are to bear in mind that he would not have been capable of marking things of such a nature, so as to remember them, as he tells us he did perfectly, when a young child, nor until his mind had in some degree begun to expand. So that we can scarcely suppose him younger than sixteen at the time of Polycarp's martyrdom, and the expression rais would admit of his being some years older.

Dodwell, indeed, has endeavoured to arrive at greater accuracy, and thinks that, by another casual expression of Irenæus, in his letter to Florinus, he is enabled to fix the date absolutely. Irenæus remarks that he had seen Florinus, when himself still a lad, in the company of Polycarp, in Lower Asia; when at the same time Florinus was getting on very prosperously at the court of the emperor; Xapπρῶς πράττοντα ἐν τῇ βασιλικῇ αὐλῇ. Taking it for granted that Irenæus intends to say that he was an actual witness of the prosperity of his friend, and consequently that the imperial court must have been at that very time sojourning in Lower Asia, and having ascertained that Adrian is the only emperor who appears to have remained any time there, he fixes upon the year 122 as the probable year in which Adrian might have been there, and thus imagines that he has established at least one date with certainty. Now the stress of the observation of Irenæus does not lie upon the success of Florinus at court, but upon his having associated with Polycarp, and having endeavoured to gain his good opinion; that, so far as appears, is the only thing which Irenæus witnessed. The imperial court may therefore have been at some other place, and Florinus may have been only on a visit at Smyrna, at the time when Irenæus saw him there.

There is another objection to this hypothesis of Dodwell, and that is, that it is inconsistent with the date of the martyrdom of Polycarp, which took place A.D. 166-7. We have seen above that Irenæus could not have known him for many years before his death, whereas Dodwell's notion would require him to have been acquainted with him forty years before, when it is impossible Polycarp could have been very old, to say nothing of Irenæus' implication as to its having been towards the close of his life. If we suppose, then, that he was acquainted with him for six or eight years, and that he was about eighteen at the time of his martyrdom, it will make the birth of Irenæus to have taken place about the year 150. This, at all events, is the latest date we can assign to it. Dupin* and Massuet place it A.D. 140; Tillemont+ twenty years earlier; and Dodwell is desirous of carrying it up ten or twenty years earlier still. Perhaps Massuet's date may be nearest the truth. But exactness in these particulars is of the less moment, as we have, established by his own mouth, the main circumstance on account of which it is of importance to ascertain it. For the chief, if not the only, reason for desiring to fix the date of his birth is, that we may judge what kind of witness he is likely to

*Tom. i. S. Irenée.

+ Tom. iii. S. Irenée, art. ii.

have been of apostolical tradition. Now we have seen him expressly affirming that he had heard Polycarp recount the narratives and doctrines of St. John and other contemporaries of Christ; and he likewise informs us he paid diligent attention to him, and that he remeinbered him so minutely that he could point out the place where he sat, and trace the walks he was accustomed to take; and moreover, that he not only heard his words, but treasured them up in his memory, and was continually refreshing his remembrance of them by meditation upon them. The testimony of such a witness must be more than ordinarily valuable.

Upon the death of Polycarp, it is probable that he put himself under the guidance of Papias, as he is called by Jerome his disciple. Certain it is that he several times quotes that pious but too credulous writer, and that with evident approbation. There is likewise a person, whom he does not name, but whom he often mentions, from whom he appears to have learnt much, and who was a contemporary of the apostolical generation. Some have conjectured him to have been the same as Papias; Dodwell thinks him to have been Pothinus, the predecessor of Irenæus in the see of Lyons: yet, if he had been either one or the other of them, there appears no reason why he should not have have named him; for he does mention Papias by name more than once, and Pothinus was likewise a person of sufficient eminence to have been quoted by name. The probability appears to be, that he was a person of no great note, but who had the advantage of being a hearer of those who had seen the Lord.

How long Irenæus continued to reside in Asia Minor we know not; but we find him next at Lyons,† a priest of the church there, under Pothinus, its venerable bishop. What led him there we are not informed. The place lay a good way up the Rhone, near the mouth of which was Marseilles, a Greek colony from Asia Minor,§ with which commercial intercourse had been kept up ever since B. c. 600. Business or relationship might have taken him thither, or even to Lyons itself. For although this latter was a Roman colony, and its name, Lugdunum, sufficiently evinces that it was not of Greek foundation, yet the number of Greek names || amongst the Christians there shews that there must have been many of that race residing there. Indeed, the circumstance that the Montanist heresy, which arose in Phrygia, spread in no long time to Lyons, and that the Lyonnese wrote to the churches in Asia and Phrygia, both to give an account of the persecution, and to discountenance the opinions of Montanus, clearly prove that there was some reason for frequent intercourse and sympathy between Lyons and Asia Minor.

There is no reason therefore to conjecture any extraordinary mission or other conjuncture to bring him into that part of the world. He may have been ordained priest after he arrived there; but we cannot argue

+ Euseb. Hist. V. 4.

Jerome, Catalog.

* Ep. ad Flor.
§ Athen. Deipnosoph. xiii. 5. Justin, xliii. 3.
Pothinus the bishop, Attalas, (IIepyaunvòc T

yέver Euseb. v. i. 7,) Alcibiades, Biblias, Alexander, (pi rò yέvos, Ibid. 21,) all mentioned by Eusebius, besides others recorded in the martyrologies.

that with any certainty from his being called by Jerome a priest of Pothinus; for even when church discipline attained its greatest strictness, and every bishop regarded an ecclesiastic ordained by himself as his subject, there was nothing to prevent a bishop from transferring one of his clergy to the jurisdiction of another bishop, whose subject he thenceforward became. So that the epithet made use of by Jerome only proves what we know from Eusebius, that Irenæus was a priest of the diocese of Lyons when Pothinus was bishop.

It is the more necessary to remark this, as there appears to be a disposition gaining ground to take the slightest evidence as absolute proof. Undoubtedly a sceptical disposition is a great mischief; but a credulous temper, although less injurious to the possessor, is no slight evil, from its natural tendency to produce scepticism by an unavoidable reaction.

But wheresoever Irenæus first entered into the priesthood, he had abode so long at Lyons in the year 177* that he had gained the character of a person zealous for the gospel of Christ,† and recommended more by his intrinsic excellences than by his sacred office; and was so relied upon as to be chosen by the martyrs of Lyons, then in prison, as a fit person to send to Eleutherus, bishop of Rome, with their testimony against the Montanists. It is indeed barely said by Eusebius, that their epistles were written for the purpose of promoting the peace of the church, (τῆς τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν εἰρήνης ἕνεκα πρεσBEVOVTEC); but connecting them, as he does in his narrative, with the mention of the Montanist heresy, and of the dissensions occasioned by it, (διαφωκάς ὑπαρχούσης περὶ τῶν δεδηλωμένων,) it is unavoidable to conclude that they had reference to it. Some light may be thrown upon the subject by the assertion of Tertullian, (adv. Praxean, i.) that a bishop of Rome had admitted the Montanists to communion by giving them letters of amity. Who the bishop was he gives no hint; and as he connects the matter with the account of the dissemination of the heresy of Praxeas, some, as Dupin§ and Tillemont,|| have concluded that it could not have been an earlier bishop than Victor, because Praxeas did not appear as a heretic at an earlier period. This however, as Massuet justly argues, is not conclusive; for the throwing together two things in a narrative by no means proves that they closely followed each other; and this visit of Praxeas to Rome may with greater probability be assumed to have been when he was a catholic. A sufficient space of time had evidently elapsed between the visit of Praxeas to Rome, under the bishop who had granted communicatory letters to the Montanists, and the time when Tertullian was writing, to allow of his becoming tinged with the Patripassian heresy, of his disseminating it secretly, of his avowing it openly, of his being convinced of his error, and being reconciled to the church;

* Tillemont, Memoires, Note 1. Sur les Martyrs de Lion.
↑ Euseb. V. 4.
H. E. V. iii. 2.

In his account of Tertullian's Treatise against Praxeas.
Tom. ii. Note 4, Sur les Montanistes.
Dissertationis in Irenæum, sect. ii. 8, 9.

** See Tertullian in loco.

finally, of his relapsing, and ultimately quitting the church. All this would take up many years, and allow ample time for the supposition that Eleutherus was the bishop alluded to; not to say that a bishop of Rome was little likely to have listened to him when an avowed heretic. And then the letter of the martyrs has a well-defined object-viz., to dissuade him from contributing to rend the church in pieces by countenancing a set of men who had been excommunicated by the churches by whom they were surrounded, and by those in Gaul with which they were in some degree connected; and thoroughly explains the expression of Eusebius, τῆς τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν εἰρήνης ἕνεκα πρεσβεύοντες. There is another circumstance, which, so far as I know, has not been adverted to-viz., that the Montanists appear not to have differed from the other Christians of Asia Minor in the observance of Easter; and as we know that Victor excommunicated those churches for differing from him, he is not likely to have patronized a sect who also differed from him in a matter he regarded as so important.

As we know that the church of Lyons sent these letters to Eleutherus, with one of their own, preserved by Eusebius, giving an account of the martyrdoms, it has been supposed by some that Irenæus actually wrote this letter; and the idea is confirmed by the circumstance, that Ecumenius, in his Commentary on the First Epistle of St. Peter, cap. 3, p. 498, has preserved a fragment of a writing of Irenæus, concerning Sanctus and Blandina. Now, these two persons are mentioned particularly in the letter of the church of Lyons; of which, therefore, this (numbered xiii.) is probably another remnant. There is no ground for doubting that Irenæus did really visit Rome; the more especially, as two of his subsequent compositions were occasioned by errors of priests of that church-viz., Florinus and Blastus.

Pothinus died in this persecution, as really a martyr as others who have been regarded as more truly such. Being upwards of ninety years old, suffering under infirmity both of age and sickness, dragged to the tribunal, and back again to prison, without any regard to his weakness and age, beaten, kicked, and assailed with every missile that came to hand, it is more wonderful that he did not breathe his last under their hands, than that he lingered out two days in the prison. Irenæus succeeded him ;† and if we may judge of him by the ability, learning, zeal, and sound judgment displayed in his writings, and by the Christian temper he evinced on the occasion of the paschal controversy, we may safely conclude that he was a more than worthy

successor.

Before I proceed further, I will observe a little upon the visit of Irenæus to Rome, which appears to have been the third application made to Rome from any distant church; the first being from Corinth, under St. Clement, the second by Polycarp, to Anicetus. The first was not unnatural, when we consider that Clement had been the companion of St. Paul, and that the church of Corinth was under pecuniary obligations to that of Rome. The second was a consultation, as between

* Euseb. H. E. V. i. 14.

† Euseb. H. E. V. v. 3.

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