The Christians hoped to have taken away the 'poor body,' but 'the jealous and envious Evil One, the adversary of the family of the righteous,' instigated the Jews to urge upon the magistrate not to give up his body, lest they (the Christians) should abandon the crucified One and begin to worship this man,... 'not knowing' (add the narrators) 'how impossible it would be for them to forsake at any time the Christ Who suffered for the salvation of the whole world of those who are saved—suffered, though sinless, for sinners—not to worship any other.' The body was placed again on the pile and consumed. Then 'the bones, more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold,' were taken up and laid in a suitable place.
So died a Polycarp as had died an Ignatius, both martyred, and both memorable for 'nobleness, patient endurance, and loyalty to their Master.' The motto of their deaths was the motto of their lives, condensed into the saying of the martyr of Antioch to the martyr of Smyrna:—
'ὁπου πλειων κοπος, πολυ κερδος.
'The greater the pain, the greater the gain.'
We know nothing certain of the tombs which tradition or affection have pointed out as the last resting-place of the calcined remains of either Saint, but we need no longer such perishable monuments. The English-speaking and English-reading race have in the volumes of the Bishop of Durham a fitting shrine for those literary remains which survive destruction. Scholarship and piety, study and prayer, have here combined to shed light upon the writings, and to raise a monument to the lives, of those champions of early Christianity, who in their day wrought a good work, and still speak, though dead.
FOOTNOTES:
[64] Bishop Lightfoot's 'Ignatius and Polycarp,' by Prof. A. Harnack, Ph.D, in 'Expositor' for December, 1885, p. 401.
[65] 'The Apostolic Fathers,' p. 116. By Canon Scott Holland.
[66] ἑχτρομα, 'Ep. to the Romans,' 9, with Bp. Lightfoot's note. Compare 1 Corinth. xv. 8.