And in reality it would be difficult to account for this feature except on the supposition that one who had lived through the events had been accustomed, when required to give a comprehensive sketch of the history of the ministry and sufferings of Jesus, to relate the facts in the main as they happened; and that a hearer of his has to a considerable extent reproduced them in the same order.
Lord Stratford soon discovered that Prince Menshikov was the hearer of larger demands, and that he was requiring the Porte to agree to a treaty acknowledging the right of.
On a sufficient acquaintance with the work this would probably have revealed the essential nature of the instrument to a hearer unacquainted with technicalities, and revealed it rather as a characteristic than as a limitation.
But Irenaeus was at most fifteen when thus frequenting Polycarp; writes thirty-five to fifty years later in Lyons, admitting that he noted down nothing at the time; and, since his mistaken description of Papias as " a hearer of John " the Zebedean was certainly reached by mistaking the presbyter for the apostle, his additional words " and a companion of Polycarp " point to this same mistaken identification having also operated in his mind with regard to Polycarp. In any case, the very real and important presbyter is completely unknown to Irenaeus, and his conclusion as to the book's authorship resulted apparently from a comparison of its contents with Polycarp's teaching.
Sometimes in plain narrative the lecturer would be specially awkward, while in abstruse passages he seemed specially at home, rose into a natural eloquence, and carried away the hearer by the grandeur of his diction.