of God Perhaps: Inspecting others and/or being inspected Deacons: Being blameless as ministers of God and Christ, not people Free of love of money Self-restrained ‘in every way’ Compassionate Attentive Proceeding ‘according to the truth of the Lord, who became a deacon/minister for everyone’ Young Men: Being blameless ‘in all things’ Concerned about purity above all else Keeping themselves in check ‘with respect to all evil’ Virgins: Walking ‘in a blameless and pure conscience’ Elders: Being compassionate Being merciful to all Turning back those who have strayed Visiting all the weak/sick Always taking thought for the good ‘in the sight of God and people’ Knowing that ‘we are all in debt because of sin’ Widows’ most significant mention is in Pol. Phil. 4.3, where they are spoken of as ‘knowing that they are an altar of God’. He invokes it without clarification of its meaning. This in itself is notable because he seems to presume that his audience will understand why he employs this particular figure of speech and will know upon what discourses he draws in so doing. Perhaps this is an image with which Polycarp assumes his intended audience will be familiar. This is one of a number of such references in eight early Christian texts generally dated to the second through the fifth centuries AD. In addition to Pol. Phil., these texts are: Tertullian Ad uxorem, Methodius' Symposium, the Didascalia Apostolorum, the Apostolic Constitutions, Pseudo-Ignatius’ letter To the Tarsians, Gregory of Nazianzus Funeral Oration on His Father, and the Testamentum Domini. Margaret Butterfield concludes the following: {{block quote|The text here allows for the possibility of widows as attending to the conduct of community members, perhaps in order to ensure their worthiness for intercession." And; "Widows alone are portrayed as providing the connecting link to God. What is perhaps even more striking is that when we step back and look at this entire shifting set of identifications, the cast of characters remains the same: God, the widows, and the community. As portrayed in this brief passage, these are the only participants needed for engaging in this sort of human–divine contact. There is no mention here of elders or deacons—or priests. The community more generally, but widows in particular, emerge from this passage as the principal ritual officiants." With regard to the meaning of the metaphor it is suggested that perhaps inspecting others and/or being inspected was his other