In his Epistle to the Romans he speaks to them of his own prayer to God, and repeatedly implores them {90} to pray for him.  “Pray to Christ for me, that by these instruments [the teeth of the wild beasts] I may become a sacrifice of God.  I do not, as Peter and Paul, command you:  they were Apostles, I am a condemned man.  They were free; but I am still a servant.  Yet if I suffer, I shall become the freedman of Jesus Christ, and shall rise again free:  and now in my bonds I learn to covet nothing.” [Page 28.  Sec. 4.] Again he says, “Remember the Church in Syria in your prayers.” [Page 30.  Sec. 9.] He prays for his fellow-labourers in the Lord:  he implores them to approach the throne of grace with supplications for mercy on his own soul.  Of prayer to saint or angel he says nothing.  Of any invocation offered to them by himself or his fellow-believers, Ignatius appears entirely ignorant.

* * * * *

Saint Polycarp.

The only remaining name among those, whom the Church has reverenced as apostolical fathers, is the venerable Polycarp.  He suffered martyrdom by fire, at a very advanced age, in Smyrna, about one hundred and thirty years after his Saviour’s death.  Of Polycarp, the apostolical bishop of the Catholic Church of Smyrna, only one Epistle has survived.  It is addressed to the Philippians.  In it he speaks to his brother Christians of prayer, constant, incessant prayer; but the prayer of which he speaks is supplication addressed only to God [31].  He marks out for our imitation the good example of St. Paul and the other Apostles; assuring us that they had not run in vain, {91} but were gone to the place prepared for them by the Lord, as the reward of their labours.  But not one word does he utter bearing upon the invocation of saints in prayer; he makes no allusion to the Virgin Mary.

    [Footnote 31:  [Greek:  deaesesin aitoumenoi ton pantepoptaen
    Theon].  Sect. 7.]

Before we close our examination of the recorded sentiments of the apostolical fathers on the immediate subject of our inquiry, we must refer, though briefly, to the Epistle generally received as the genuine letter from the Church of Smyrna to the neighbouring Churches, narrating the martyrdom of Polycarp.  It belongs, perhaps, more strictly to this place than to the remains of Eusebius, because, together with the sentiments of his contemporaries who witnessed his death and dictated the letter, it purports to contain the very words of the martyr himself in the last prayer which he ever offered upon earth.  With some variations from the copy generally circulated, this letter is preserved in the works of Eusebius. [Euseb.  Paris, 1628, dedicated to the Archbishop by Franciscus Vigerus.] On the subject of our present research the evidence of this letter is not merely negative.  So far from countenancing any invocation of saint or martyr, it contains a remarkable and very interesting passage, the plain common-sense rendering of which bears decidedly against all exaltation of mortals into objects of religious worship.  The letter, however, is too well known to need any further preliminary remarks; and we must content ourselves with such references and extracts as may appear to bear most directly on our subject.