unknown quantities from one simple algebraic equation. His
principal witness, Aristides, were he now living and brought up in
presence of a jury, would find himself in rather an odd
predicament. He is expected to settle the date of the death of
Polycarp, and yet he knows nothing either of the pastor of Smyrna
or of his tragic end. It does not appear that he had ever heard of
the worthy apostolic Father. Aristides was a rhetorician who has
left behind him certain orations, entitled _Sacred Discourses_,
written in praise of the god Aesculapius. It might be thought that
such a writer is but poorly qualified to decide a disputed
question of chronology. Our readers may have heard of Papias,--one
of the early Fathers, noted for the imbecility of his intellect.
Aristides, it seems, was quite as liable to imposition. "The
credulity of a Papias," says Dr. Lightfoot, "is more than matched
by the credulity of an Aristides." [40:1] Such is the bishop's
leading witness. Aristides was an invalid and a hypochondriac;
and, in the discourses he has left behind him, he describes the
course of a long illness, with an account of his pains, aches,
purgations, dreams, and visions--interspersed, from time to time,
with what Dr. Lightfoot estimates as "valuable chronological
notices!" [40:2]

The reader may be at a loss to understand how it happens that this
eccentric character has been brought forward as a witness to the
date of the martyrdom of Polycarp. He has been introduced under
the following circumstances. In the postscript to the Smyrnaean
letter--an appendage of very doubtful authority--we are told that
the martyrdom occurred when Statius Quadratus was proconsul of
Asia. From certain incidental allusions made by Aristides in
his discourses, the bishop labours hard to prove that this