[424:2] But a man who is supposed to have enjoyed far higher advantages than Polycarp--a minister who is said to have been contemporary with all the apostles--a ruler of the Church who is understood to have occupied a far more prominent and influential position than the pastor of Smyrna--is exhibited in the legend of his martyrdom as appearing "of his own free will" [424:3] at the judgment-seat of the Emperor, and as manifesting the utmost anxiety to be delivered into the mouth of the lion. In the commencement of the second century the Churches of Rome and Ephesus doubtless possessed as much spiritual enlightenment as any other Churches in the world, and it is a libel upon their Christianity to suppose that they could have listened with any measure of complacency to the senseless ravings to be found even in the recent edition of the Ignatian Letters. [424:4] The writer is made to assure the believers in these great cities that he has an unquenchable desire to be eaten alive, and he beseeches them to pray that he may enjoy this singular gratification. "I hope," says he, "_through your prayers_ that I shall be devoured by the beasts in Rome." [425:1] ... "I beg of you, be not with me in the love that is not in its season. Leave me, that I may be for the beasts, that by means of them I may be worthy of God.... With provoking _provoke ye the beasts_ that they may be a grave for me, and may leave nothing of my body, that not even when I am fallen asleep may I be a burden upon any man.... I rejoice in the beasts which are prepared for me, and _I pray that they may be quickly found for me_, and I will provoke them that they may quickly devour me." [425:2] Every man jealous for the honour of primitive Christianity should be slow to believe that an apostolic preacher addressed such outrageous folly to apostolic Churches.