Matt 28:19-20
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age."
1 Cor 11:2
I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you
Quote
But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles,
and conversed with many who had seen Christ,
….., having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles,
and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true.
To these things all the Asiatic Churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time,—a man who was of much greater weight, and a more stedfast witness of truth, than Valentinus, and Marcion, and the rest of the heretics. He it was who, coming to Rome in the time of Anicetus caused many to turn away from the aforesaid heretics to the Church of God, proclaiming that he had received this one and sole truth from the apostles,—that, namely, which is handed down by the Church.
Source: Irenaeus - Against Heresies: Book III – Ch III
Who was Polycarp?
Polycarp was the bishop of Smyrna on the West Coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey) in the first half of the second century.
He reportedly sat at the feet of the apostle John and knew St. Ignatius of Antioch.
On account of this, he is one of the apostolic fathers, the earliest group of the fathers of the church who play a special role in transmitting to us the teachings given to us from the apostles themselves (also referred to as apostolic tradition).
Polycarp was apprehended by the Roman authorities when in his eighties, around the year 155AD.
Source – www.crossroadsinitiative.com.au
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