that it occurred in the seventh year of M. Aurelius. [37:1]
Dr. Lightfoot, indeed, asserts that Jerome "derived his knowledge
from Eusebius," [37:2] and that, "though well versed in works of
Biblical exegesis, ... he was otherwise _extremely ignorant_ of
early Christian literature." [37:3] We have here unhappily another
of those rash utterances in which the Bishop of Durham indulges
throughout these volumes; for assuredly it is the very extravagance
of folly to tax Jerome with "extreme ignorance of early Christian
literature." Those who are acquainted with his writings will
decline to subscribe any such depreciatory certificate. He was
undoubtedly bigoted and narrow-minded, but he had a most capacious
memory; he had travelled in various countries; he had gathered a
prodigious stock of information; he was the best Christian scholar
of his generation; he has preserved for us the knowledge of not a
few important facts which Eusebius has not registered; and he at
one time contemplated undertaking himself the composition of an
ecclesiastical history. [37:4] We cannot, therefore, regard him as
the mere copyist of the Bishop of Caesarea. "Every one acquainted
with the literature of the primitive Church," says Dr. Doellinger,
"knows that it is precisely in Jerome that we find _a more exact
knowledge of the more ancient teachers_ of the Church, and that we
are indebted to him for more information about their teaching and
writings, than to any other of the Latin Fathers." [38:1]
Dr. Doellinger is a Church historian whom even the Bishop of Durham
cannot afford to ignore,--as, in his own field of study, he has,
perhaps, no peer in existence,--and yet he here states explicitly,
not certainly that Jerome was extremely ignorant of early
Christian literature, but that, in this very department, he was
specially well informed. The learned monk of Bethlehem must have
felt a deep interest in Polycarp as an apostolic Father: he was