“For neither I, nor any other such one, can come up to the wisdom of the blessed and…”
For neither I, nor any other such one, can come up to the wisdom of the blessed and glorified Paul. He, when among you, accurately and stedfastly taught the word of truth in the presence of those who were then alive.
Polycarp · The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians · ANF I, The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, Chapter III
Writing to the church Paul had founded, Polycarp refuses the comparison before anyone can make it — he writes about righteousness only because they asked him to, and he is not Paul.
How this is known
These words were matched, word for word, against this project’s own copy of the volume cited.
In Polycarp's own letter at the chapter named, outside the quotation marks the volume reserves for Scripture; the appeal to those who were then alive is the kind of claim only a man of his generation could make.
Read in Roberts & Donaldson, ANF vol. 1 (1885) · Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, revised by A. Cleveland Coxe
Also by
- Polycarp every saying recorded of this person, and their page