Ignatius is described as offering himself voluntarily that he may
suffer as a martyr, and as telling those to whom he writes that
his supreme desire is to be devoured by the lions at Rome. "I
desire," says he, "to fight with wild beasts." [57:5] "May I have
joy of the beasts that have been prepared for me ... I will entice
them that they may devour me promptly." [58:1] "Though I desire to
suffer, yet I know not whether I am worthy." [58:2] "I delivered
myself over to death." [58:3] "I bid all men know that of my own
free will I die for God." [58:4] The Church, instructed by
Polycarp, condemns this insane ambition for martyrdom. "We praise
not those," say the Smyrnaeans, "who deliver themselves up, _since
the gospel does not so teach us_." [58:5] In these letters
Ignatius speaks as a vain babbler, drunken with fanaticism;
Polycarp, in his Epistle, expresses himself like an humble-minded
Presbyterian minister in his sober senses. Ignatius is made to
address Polycarp as if he were a full-blown prelate, and tells the
people under his care, "He that honoureth the bishop is honoured
of God; he that doth aught against the knowledge of the bishop,
rendereth service to the devil" [58:6] Polycarp, on the other
hand, describes himself as one of the elders, and exhorts the
Philippians to "submit to the presbyters and deacons," and to be
"all subject one to another." [58:7] When their Church had got into
a state of confusion, and when they applied to him for advice, he
recommended them "to walk in the commandment of the Lord," and
admonished their "presbyters to be compassionate and merciful
towards all men," [58:8]--never hinting that the appointment of
a bishop would help to keep them in order; whereas, when Ignatius
addresses various Churches,--that of the Smyrnaeans included,--he
assumes a tone of High Churchmanship which Archbishop Laud himself
would have been afraid, and perhaps ashamed, to emulate. "As many