FRAGMENTS
FRAGMENTS FROM THE CHAPTERS OF RESPONSES ASCRIBED TO ST. POLYCARP,
Inserted into the Catena on the Four Evangelists by Victor, Bishop of Capua.I.
Matthew testifies that the Lord said A that which he prophesied by divine inspiration, he himself is reported to have said through Moses. But God, who through divine inspiration formed these words in the heart of Adam, He, the Father, is rightly reported to have spoken through the Lord. For Adam also uttered this prophecy; and the Father, who inspired him, is rightly said to have uttered it.
II.
THE SAME, on these words of Christ: "You shall drink my cup," etc. (Matt. xx, 23.)
By a drink of this sort, He signifies the passion. And James indeed was finished by martyrdom at the last; but his brother John was to pass without martyrdom: although he endured very many afflictions and B exiles; yet Christ judged him a martyr for his readiness for martyrdom. For the apostle Paul says, "I die daily" (1 Cor. xv, 31): while it is impossible for a man to die daily by that death with which this life is once finished. But because he was continuously prepared for death for the sake of the Gospel, he testified that he died daily in accordance with that meaning. It is also read that the blessed John was immersed in a tun of boiling oil for the name of Christ.
III.
THE SAME, On the beginning of the Gospel according to Mark.
Reasonably do the evangelists employ diverse principles; although one and the same is the intention of their evangelizing. Matthew, writing as it were to the Hebrews, wove together the order of Christ’s genealogy: that he might show Christ to have descended from the lineage of which all the prophets had sung that he would be born. John, however, being established at Ephesus, since they were ignorant of the Law as Gentiles, took the beginning of the Gospel from the cause of our redemption: which cause appears from this, that God willed His Son to be incarnate for our salvation. But Luke, beginning from the priesthood of Zacharias: that by the miracle of the nativity of his son, and by the office of such a preacher, he might declare the divinity of Christ to the Gentiles. Whence also Mark declares by the old compatibility of the prophetic mystery the coming of Christ; that his preaching might be proved to be not new, but uttered from antiquity. Or by this it was the care of the evangelists to use such a prologue as each judged to be desirable for his hearers. Nothing contrary, therefore, is found, where C it is permitted to reach the same destination by diverse writings.
IV.
THE SAME, on that text: "Do not call your friends, but the poor and the weak," etc. (Luke xiv, 12.)
He commands calling not friends, but the infirm, to a banquet. If, then, a lame man or any of them happens to be a friend, without doubt such a one is by no means to be invited for the sake of friendship; whence these commandments seem, as it were, to impugn one another. For if it is not friends, but the lame and the blind who are to be invited, and it happens that these are also friends, we must by no means invite them. But I think that by friends in this place we ought to understand those whom we love for the sake of the worldly consideration of this life, not for the sake of divine contemplation. These, therefore, are the friends who are to be left behind. Finally, for this reason He proposed the examples of the weak, whom we can desire for the sake of the necessity of no business, except only for the fruit of eternal reward.
V. IDEM, UPON THAT: "I have finished the work which You have given Me to do." (John 17:4).
How can He claim to have finished the work of human salvation, A when He had not yet ascended the standard of the Cross? Yet by the definition of the will, by which all the marks of the venerable passion He had decided to approach are signified, He indicates that the work is finished, etc.
VI-VII.
(Spicilegium Solesmense, Vol. I, p. 266. From the codex formerly of Saint-Germain, under no. 60, now preserved in the recently established Paris library under no. 858, of about the tenth century, bearing this title: *Exposition of John, deacon of the Roman Church, on Genesis.*)
"These fragments from the book of *Responses*," says the most learned editor of the *Spicilegium Solesmense* (Prolegomena, p. LI), "excellently confirm the authenticity of five other fragments of the same book which Feuardentius first published at the end of his annotations on Irenæus. For by comparing the inscription of our codex, *In the book of Responses, chapters XXII*, with the title of Feuardentius’s codex (*From the Response of the chapters of Saint Polycarp*), and by correcting one through the other, I have surmised that it is the same work of Polycarp, perhaps responding to disciples who were questioning him, a book still extant in the sixth century; ours is taken from chapter 21, and the entire work was titled: *Book of Responses of S. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna and martyr.*"
Saint Polycarp, in accordance with the custom of the ancients, replies to a certain disciple asking his master about the fashioning of man: that in the primordial man, as God fashioned him, four elements coalesced; but that the woman was formed from the dust of the earth and a rib, into the likeness of the Church.
A I. "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the earth; and then also fire from the dryness which is commonly in the earth and the water" (Gen. 2:7).
Victor, bishop of Capua, in his book of *Responses*, chapter twenty-one, according to the Hebrew translation:
"The divine Scripture records that God fashioned the human body by taking the mud of the earth; and by the name ‘mud’ it intended to signify the moist substance. Therefore, it clearly shows two elements, earth and water at the same time. But from certain qualities of these, an understanding of the remaining two is introduced, that is, air from the moisture which is common to it, and B water; then also fire from the dryness that is commonly in [the earth and] the water."
II. "And when he had fallen asleep, He took one of his ribs and filled up the flesh in its place, and the Lord God built the rib" (Gen. 2:21).
"We are born," he says, "because he is produced from a different nature; but the woman is from the rib of a man already made, and we from seed. Wherefore it is gathered that there are three principles of creating men: dust, rib, and seed. And for the sake of his side, that is, of his wife, Adam is cast out of paradise. And by the sacrament of the side of Christ, from which flowed the blood of martyrdom and the water of baptism, the Church receives paradise."