Ch. 4. But Polycarp, too, was not only instructed by the Apostles, and acquainted with many that had seen Christ, but was also appointed by Apostles in Asia bishop of the church in Smyrna, whom we, too, saw in our early youth (for he lived a long time, and died, when a very old man, a glorious and most illustrious martyr’s death); he always taught the things which he had learned from the Apostles, which the Church also hands down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic churches testify, as do also those who, down to the present time, have succeeded Polycarp, who was a much more trustworthy and certain witness of the truth than Valentinus and Marcion and the rest of the evil-minded. It was he who was also in Rome in the time of Anicetus and caused many to turn away from the above-mentioned heretics to the Church of God, proclaiming that he had received from the Apostles this one and only truth which has been transmitted by the Church. And there are those who heard from him that John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe in Ephesus, when he saw Cerinthus within, ran out of the bath-house without bathing, crying: “Let us flee, lest even the bath-house fall, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.” And Polycarp himself, when Marcion once met him and said, “Knowest thou us?” replied, “I know the first-born of Satan.” Such caution did the Apostles and their disciples exercise that they might not even converse with any of those who perverted the truth; as Paul, also, said: “A man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition, reject; knowing that he that is such subverteth and sinneth, being condemned by himself.” There is also a very powerful Epistle of Polycarp written to the Philippians, from which those who wish to, and who are concerned for their own salvation, may learn the character of his faith and the preaching of the truth. (_b_) Tertullian, _De Prœscriptione_, 20, 21. (MSL, 2:38.) Tertullian worked out in legal fashion the argument of Irenæus from the testimony of the bishops in apostolic churches. He may have obtained the argument from Irenæus, as he was evidently acquainted with his works. From Tertullian’s use of the argument it became a permanent element in the thought of the West.