“and whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is…”
and whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither a resurrection nor a judgment, he is the first-born of Satan.
Polycarp · The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians · ANF I, The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, Chapter VII
Polycarp's judgement on those who explain away the resurrection — the phrase Irenaeus says he used to Marcion's face at Rome, here written down in his own letter and aimed at no one by name.
How this is known
These words were matched, word for word, against this project’s own copy of the volume cited.
In the one letter of Polycarp's that survives, in the chapter the locator names. The volume's own footnote records that Eusebius has the same expression and that it became a commonplace afterwards.
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