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Polycarp of Smyrna

Epistle to the Philippians

Chapter 10

Exhortation to the practice of virtue.1

Stand fast, therefore, in these things, and follow the example of the Lord, being firm and unchangeable in the faith, loving the brotherhood,2 and being attached to one another, joined together in the truth, exhibiting the meekness of the Lord in your intercourse with one another, and despising no one. When you can do good, defer it not, because “alms delivers from death.”3 Be all of you subject one to another,4 “having your conduct blameless among the Gentiles,”5 that ye may both receive praise for your good works, and the Lord may not be blasphemed through you. But woe to him by whom the name of the Lord is blasphemed!6 Teach, therefore, sobriety to all, and manifest it also in your own conduct.

Notes

  1. This and the two following chapters are preserved only in a Latin version.↩
  2. Comp. 1 Pet. ii. 17.↩
  3. Tobit iv. 10, xii. 9.↩
  4. Comp. 1 Pet. v. 5.↩
  5. 1 Pet. ii. 12.↩
  6. Isa. lii. 5.↩

Translation by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and Frederick Crombie: The Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. 1: The Apostolic Fathers (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1870).
Text from Project Gutenberg eBook #77576, proofread by Distributed Proofreaders from Internet Archive scans. Public domain.