much, but in those who taught the truth; nor in those who related strange commandments,[1] but in those who rehearsed the commandments given by the Lord to faith,[2] and proceeding from truth itself. If, then, any one who had attended on the elders came, I asked minutely after their sayings,—what Andrew or Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the Lord's disciples: which things[3] Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I imagined that what was to be got from books was not so profitable to me as what came from the living and abiding voice.
II.[4]
[The early Christians] called those who practised a godly guilelessness,[5] children, [as is stated by Papias in the first book of the Lord's Expositions, and by Clemens Alexandrinus in his Pædagogue.]
III.[6]
Judas walked about in this world a sad[7] example of impiety; for his body having swollen to such an extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out.[8]
- ↑ Literally, "commandments belonging to others," and therefore strange and novel to the followers of Christ.
- ↑ Given to faith has been variously understood. Either not stated in direct language, but like parables given in figures, so that only the faithful could understand; or entrusted to faith, that is, to those who were possessed of faith, the faithful.
- ↑ Which things: this is usually translated, "what Aristion and John say;" and the translation is admissible. But the words more naturally mean, that John and Aristion, even at the time of his writing, were telling him some of the sayings of the Lord.
- ↑ This fragment is found in the Scholia of Maximus on the works of Dionysius the Areopagite.
- ↑ Literally, "a guilelessness according to God."
- ↑ This fragment is found in Œcumenius.
- ↑ Literally, "great."
- ↑ Literally, "were emptied out." Theophylact, after quoting this
