These doctrines, Florinus,1 (to speak sparingly) are of no sound mind: these doctrines are dissonant to the Church and invest with the deepest impiety those who assent to them: these doctrines not even the heretics who are without the Church ever durst set forth: these doctrines the elders which were before us; who were pupils too of the Apostles, delivered not unto thee. For I saw thee, when I was yet a child, in Lower Asia with Polycarp, and thou wert in stately position in the royal palace and studying to approve thee to him. For2 I recall rather what happened then than what are more recent (for what we learnt from our very childhood grow on with our soul and are a part of it) so that I can even tell the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and converse and his goings forth and comings in and the manner of his life and the form of his body and discourses that he used to make to the people, and his intercourse with John how he would tell of it, and that with the rest of those who had seen the Lord, and how he would recount their words: and concerning the Lord what things they were which he had heard from them both as to His mighty works and His Teaching, as Polycarp having received them from the eye-witnesses of the Life of the Word, used to recount them consonantly to the Scriptures. These things did I then too by the mercy of God which was upon me hear diligently, noting them not on paper but in my own heart and ever by the grace of God do I ruminate them aright3. And I can protest before God that if the blessed and Apostolic Elder had heard any such thing, he would have cried out and stopped his ears, and as he was wont, saying, “O good God, unto what times hast Thou reserved me that I should endure these things,” would have fled even the place where sitting or standing he had heard such words. And from his epistles too, which he used to write either to the neighbouring Churches confirming them, or to any of the brethren, admonishing them and urging them, can this be shewn.