Chapter 10

'are startled by the ringing cry of the trumpet-call—sharp, stirring, penetrating—sounding for the battle. The fire of the hot East bursts in, like a sun, strong and impassioned; a vivid personality, in flamewith love, flashes in upon the world, quivering as a sword of the cherubim; a rhetoric in which the rapid, electric thought breaks out of the strained and formless chaos of theimagination, as lightning out of the rolling and dark thunder-cloud; a theology, which, by the intense passion of metaphor, forces an almost violent entrance into the secrets of the Most High; a morality which can carry forward into the heights of holiness the madness of faith, the extravagance of zeal, the recklessness of enthusiasm, the audacity of love, dragging them into the service of Christ at the chariot-wheels of God's triumph—such are the characteristics of Ignatius of Antioch.'[65]

The Roman name of Ignatius (or Egnatius) tells nothing as to his birth or origin. It was not unknown in Syria and Palestine, and was sometimes borne by Jews. But another and a second name—Theophorus—of regular recurrence in the seven genuine Epistles records at least his spiritual birth. Ignatius probably assumed the name of 'the God-bearer' at the time of his conversion or his baptism; the precedent lay before him of a Saul commemorating a critical incident in his career (Acts xiii. 9) by a similar adoption of a name; and that assumed by Ignatius became in its turn an epithet freely applied to the Fathers at the Œcumenical councils. The name gave birth to more than one beautiful legend. Was not Ignatius, according to the Eastern belief, the 'God-borne' ΘΕὁφορος, the very child whom the Lord took into His arms (St. Mark ix. 36, 37)? Was he not the 'God-bearer' Θεοφὁρος on the fragments of whose heart according to Western tradition, was found stamped in golden letters the name of Jesus Christ? Whether he were a slave or not must remain uncertain. It is a more probable deduction from his own language that he—the 'untimely birth,'[66]—the 'one born out of due time' and 'the last' of the faithful, had been rescued from a pagan life, such as Antioch on the Orontes, the home of panders and dancing girls, and 'Daphnici mores' would have applauded.

'His,' says Bishop Lightfoot, 'was one of those "broken" natures out of which God's heroes are made. If not a persecutor of Christ, if not a foe to Christ, as seems probable, he had at least been for a considerable portion of his life an alien from Christ. Like St. Paul, like Augustine, like Francis Xavier, like Luther, like John Bunyan, he could not forget that his had been a dislocated life; and the memory of the catastrophe, which had shattered his former self, filled him with awe and thanksgiving, and fanned the fervour of his devotion to a white heat.

There is no chronological inconsistency in supposing that Ignatius was a disciple of some Apostle, if nothing can be affirmed as to the date of his accession to the ministry or episcopate. On the supposition that he was martyred, as an old man, abouta. d.110, his birth may be placed abouta. d.40. When 25 years of age, or ina. d.65, companionship would still have been opened to him with St. Peter and St. Paul; or, if his teacher were St. John, his conversion may be brought toa. d.90, when he would be about 50 years of age. Confessedly all this is conjectural or traditional, as are also any details of episcopal administration.' A 'pitchy darkness' envelopes the life and work of Ignatius, till it is 'at length illumined by a vivid but transient flash of light.' The story of Ignatius begins and ends with the story of his death. 'If his martyrdom had not rescued him from obscurity, he would have remained like his predecessor Euodius, a mere name.' His martyrdom has made him a distinct and living personality, a true father of the Church, a teacher and example to all time.'

Thrilling though the narrative of this martyrdom must ever be, the barest outline only can be given here. The Martyrologies, if they are to be set aside as not containing authentic history, will fascinate afresh the student who turns to them to find in the notes and discussions light cast upon many a critical and ecclesiastical problem. The genuine Epistles have furnished the Bishop with the materials of a sketch of terror which every one will read with the deepest interest.

For some unknown reason the Church of Antioch was by God's will deprived of its venerable head; and with other 'convicts,' collected from the provinces to be

'Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday.'

Ignatius was led Romeward. His journey lay along a route which in part had been traversed by Xerxes. The procession of the Persian, foremost among his myriads of men for beauty and stature, halting near Sardis to decorate a beautiful plane-tree with golden ornaments, and commit it to the custody of an 'immortal'[67]is in vivid contrast to the procession of 'criminals,' the Christian leader 'bound amidst ten leopards (or soldiers) who wax worse when kindly treated,' halting also at Sardis, his own decoration the 'bonds' which are to him 'spiritual pearls,' and at Smyrna, writing letters which shall make him immortal.[68]At Troas, like another St. Paul, he looked upon the shores of the Europe which was in later agesto rise up and call them blessed; and from thence he wrote how prepared, how eager he was to meet the 'fire, the sword, the wild beasts,' how to be 'near to the sword was to be near to God; to be encircled by wild beasts was to be encircled by God.' And then Rome at last!—among those who thirsted for his blood, among those whose very love he dreaded lest it should do him the injury of keeping him from martyrdom. Touching is the appeal he had sent before him to the Church 'filled with the grace of God without wavering and filtered clear from every foreign stain':—

'Let me be given to the wild beasts, for through them I can attain unto God. I am God's wheat, and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread of Christ. Entice the wild beasts that they may become my sepulchre and may leave no part of my body behind, so that I may not, when I am fallen asleep, be burdensome to any one.'

Into the colossal pile, erected for the display of the bloodiest of inhuman crimes, he was led; and his own impassioned appeal was answered:

'Come fire and cross, and grapplings with wild beasts! Come cuttings and manglings, wrenching of bones, hacking of limbs, crushings of my whole body! Come cruel tortures of the devil to assail me! Only be it mine to attain unto Jesus Christ!'

Men, with tear-stained faces, looked away from his death to 'form themselves'—as he had bidden them—

'into a chorus in love and sing to the Father in Jesus Christ. God had vouchsafed that the Bishop from Syria should be found in the West, having summoned him from the East. Good was it to set from this world unto God, that he might rise unto Him.'

Love is perhaps wrong in asserting that his remains were brought back to Antioch: it is unerringly right in having raised the Epistle to the Romans—'his pæan prophetic of his coming victory'—to be the martyr's manual of a grateful posterity.

'The glory of Ignatius as a martyr,' writes the Bishop of Durham, 'has commended his lessons as a doctor. His teaching on matters of theological truth and ecclesiastical order was barbed and fledged by the fame of his constancy in that supreme trial of his faith.'

If interest in the heresies he combated may be said to be confined to-day to scholars who study them as a chapter in heresiology, or seek in them a bone of contention, the interest in the points of ecclesiastical order delineated by him was nevermore intense than now. Only last year the testimony of the Ignatian Epistles to the burning question of Apostolical succession was one point in the discussion between Canon Liddon of St. Paul's and Dr. Hatch; this year, the view presented by the Bishop of Durham meets with its ablest antagonist in Dr. Harnack. In very truth the letters of the martyr have been the battlefield of the controversy, which affirms or disallows the threefold ministry of the Church of Christ.

It will be perceived at once how much turns, not first upon the interpretation of the Epistles, but upon the genuineness of the text presenting itself for interpretation. What is the text? Never before have the lovers of textual criticism had the opportunity of examining and answering this question as they have now in the Bishop of Durham's volumes. He first describes at length the Manuscripts and Versions, on which a true text may be reasonably founded, and then gives the text, together with the Versions, accompanied by Introductions and Notes which leave nothing to desire. The labour necessary for massing and bringing together all this information is only equalled by the exactness and orderliness with which it is presented. But the Bishop writes not only for the scholar, but for the man of general culture and intelligence, who can enter with interest into a problem historical and antiquarian, as well as textual and critical. To many the battle of the giants, over the 'long,' the 'middle,' and the 'short,' form or recension of the Ignatian Epistles, will be an intellectual treat, as he watches the fence and scholarship of the various disputants. He will see that in literary as in political controversy the spirit of compromise is to-day in the ascendant, and that 'middle'-men have for once their value.

To explain these terms. By the 'short' form is meant that which consists ofthreeEpistles only—to St. Polycarp, to the Ephesians, and to the Romans. This exists only in a Syraic version. By the second, 'the middle form,' are understood these three Epistles, and four more, namely, Epistles to the Smyrnæans, Magnesians, Philadelphians, and Trallians. This form is originally Greek, and is found also in Latin, Armenian, and—in a fragmentary state—in Syriac and Coptic. The third or 'long' form, contains the seven already enumerated in a more expanded state, together with six others, the recension being in a Greek and in a Latin translation.[69]

Practically the contest as to the truest form has been reducedto a duel between the 'short' and the 'middle.' The 'long' form can be shown to be the work of an unknown author, probably of the latter half of the fourth century, and constructed from the genuine Ignatian Epistles by interpolation, alteration and omission. But the 'long' form died hard, and mainly through the thrusts of our own Ussher.

'The history of the Ignatian Epistles,' says the Bishop, 'in Western Europe before and after the revival of letters, is full of interest. In the Middle Ages the spurious and interpolated letters alone have any wide circulation. Gradually, as the light advances, the forgeries recede into the background. Each successive stage diminishes the bulk of the Ignatian literature, which the educated mind accepts as genuine; till at length the true Ignatius alone remains, divested of the accretions which perverted ingenuity has gathered about him.'

In the 'long' recension there is a letter to one Mary of Cassobola. This was made the parent of a 'correspondence between St. John and the Virgin,' bearing the name of Ignatius: and it is not improbably connected with the outburst of Mariolatry in the eleventh and following centuries. But with 'the first streak of intellectual dawn this Ignatian spectre vanished into its kindred darkness.' The forgery was 'consigned to the limbo of foolish and forgotten things.' This pretender set aside, St. Ignatius was represented in Western Europe by the epistles of the 'Long' recension. The Latin text was printed in 1498, and the Greek in 1557. At first no doubt was felt about their genuineness. Gradually, however, unwelcome critics pointed out gross anachronisms and blunders. Men, with unpleasant habits of comparison, noted that Eusebius, the Church historian (C.a. d.310-25), quoted from only seven epistles, and that the divergence of the 'long' text from that given by early Christian writers[70]fully warranted the comment of Ussher, that it was difficult to imagine 'eundem legere se Ignatium qui veterum ætate legebatur.' Theological and ecclesiastical prejudice lent bitterness to the rising strife. On the Continent, Reformer and Romanist ranged themselves in opposite camps: the one quoting with delight passages which favoured Roman supremacy, or advocated Episcopacy; the other throwing them over as 'nursery stories' (or 'silly tales,'nænia), and denouncing'the insufferable impudence of those who equipped themselves with ghosts like these for the purpose of deceiving' (Calvin). After the publication of the edition of Vedelius, a Genevan Professor, in 1623, Anglican writers, such as Whitgift, Hooker, and Andrewes, seem to have accepted without hesitation the twelve (the seven named by Eusebius and five others) contained in that edition; but in England as on the Continent, the absence of so much, which could alone lead men to a right conclusion, prevented the consideration of the question on its true merits:—

'Episcopacy was the burning question of the day; and the sides of the combatants in the Ignatian controversy were already predetermined for them by their attitude towards this question. Every allowance should be made for their following their prepossessions, where the evidence seemed so evenly balanced. On the one hand, external testimony was so strongly in favour of the genuineness of certain Ignatian letters; on the other hand, the only Ignatian letters known were burdened with difficulties. At the very eve of Ussher's revelation, a fierce literary war broke out on this very subject of Episcopacy—evoked by the religious and political troubles of the times.'

On the one side were Hall's (Bishop of Exeter) 'Episcopacy by Divine Right asserted' (1639), and 'An Humble Remonstrance' on behalf of Liturgy and Episcopacy (1641); Ussher's 'The original of Bishops and Metropolitans,' and Jeremy Taylor's 'Of the Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy' (1642); on the other, the five Presbyterian ministers whose initials composed the monstrous name Smectymnuus,[71]issued their 'Answer to the Book entituled an Humble Remonstrance' (1641), and Milton, in his short treatise 'Of Prelatical Episcopacy' (1641), fulminated with 'fiery eloquence and reckless invective' against Ussher.

'Had God,' wrote Milton, 'intended that we should have sought any part of useful instruction from Ignatius, doubtless He would not have so ill-provided for our knowledge as to send him to our hands in this broken and disjointed plight; and if He intended no such thing, we do injuriously in thinking to taste better the pure evangelic manna by seasoning our mouths with the tainted scraps and fragments from an unknown table, and searching among the verminous and polluted rags dropped overworn from the toiling shoulders of Time, with these deformedly to quilt and interlace the entire, the spotless, and undecaying robe of Truth. What impiety,' he added,'the confronting and paralleling the sacred verity of St. Paul with the offals and sweepings of antiquity, that met as accidently and absurdly as Epicurus his atoms to patch up a Leucippean Ignatius.'

'Out of his own mouth,' says Bishop Lightfoot, 'he was soon convicted.' The "better provision for knowledge" came full soon. To the critical genius of Ussher belongs the honour of restoring the true Ignatius. Ussher observed that the quotations from this Father in three English writers, Robert (Grosseteste) of Lincoln (c. 1250), John Tyssington (c. 1381), and William Wodeford (c. 1396), agreed—not with texts hitherto known (the Greek and Latin of the 'long' Recension), but—with the quotations in Eusebius and Theodoret. He concluded that somewhere in the libraries of England he ought to find MSS. of a version corresponding to this earlier text of Ignatius: and he discovered two—(1.)Caiensis395 [L1], a MS. given to Gonville and Cains College, Cambridge, in 1444 by Walter Crome; and (2.)Montacutianus[L2], a parchment from the library of Bishop Montague or Montacute, of Norwich. Of the first a transcript was made for Archbishop Ussher, and is still in the library of Dublin University (D.3.II), and is dated 20 June, 1631. It is full of inaccuracies, arising sometimes from indifference to spelling on the part of the transcriber, or to carelessness and inattention, but most frequently from ignorance of the numerous and perplexing contractions. The second has disappeared, probably on the day when Parliament ordered the Archbishop's books to be seized and confiscated (1643). Bishop Lightfoot has in part restored it by drawing attention to the collation of this Montacute MS., which occurs between the lines or in the margin of the Dublin transcript of the Caius MS. Archbishop Ussher's examination of the Latin version, thus discovered, induced in his mind a suspicion that Bishop Grosseteste was himself the translator. A marginal note, for example, betrayed the nationality of its author; 'Incus est instrumentum fabri; dicitur Angliceanfeld[anvil].' Who so likely to have had the ability to translate from a Greek version as Robert Grosseteste, one of the very few Greek scholars of his age? Evidence is not wanting that the Ignatian Epistles were imported from Greece, and translated under the Bishop's direction by one or other of the Greek scholars who were with him: and it is significant, in connection with this point, that Tyssington and Wodeford belonged to the Franciscan Convent at Oxford to which Grosseteste left his books.

The result of Ussher's discovery was to determine, that this Latin translation—valuable for critical purposes on account ofits extreme literalness[72]—represented the Ignatius known to the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries. The Greek text still remained unknown, and Ussher attempted to restore it from the 'long' recension by the aid of his newly discovered Latin version. This he did by bringing the former as nearly as possible into conformity with the latter. Ussher's book appeared in 1644. It was marred by one blot. Eusebius had mentioned seven Epistles, but Ussher—deceived by a mistake on the part of St. Jerome—exscinded the Epistle to Polycarp, and condemned it as spurious. Two years later, Isaac Voss published the Greek of six Epistles from a Florentine MS., the Epistle to the Romans having disappeared from the copy; and this omission was finally rectified in 1689 by Ruinart. From the middle of the seventeenth century disputants ceased to trouble themselves about the 'long' form. Controversy, presently to be noted, raged about the Vossian letters, Daillé (1666) attacking them, Pearson defending them.

It is a great leap to the year 1845, but not till then did a new era dawn upon the questions at issue. It was in that year that Cureton published the 'Antient Syriac Version of the Epistles of St. Ignatius to St. Polycarp, the Ephesians, and the Romans.' This version was discovered in two MSS. at the British Museum, and contained the Epistles named in a shorter form than either of the Greek or Latin texts.[73]Cureton's contention was that he had discovered the genuine Ignatius, and that the remaining four Epistles of the Vossian collection, as well as the additional portions of these three, were forgeries. Cureton was opposed by Dr. Wordsworth, the late Bishop of Lincoln, then Canon of Westminster, and defended by Bunsen. There followed quickly theVindiciæ Ignatianæ(1846) andCorpus Ignatianum(1849), in which Cureton was considered to have not only refuted his adversary, but also to have presented arguments which rallied to his standard Ritschl, Lipsius, Pressensé, Ewald, Milman, and Böhringer. Opposition to Cureton's view was not, however, wanting. The Orientalists, Petermann and Merx, united with the Conservative critical school, represented by Denzinger and Uhlhorn, in preferring the Vossian collection; while the Tübingen school (Baur andHilgenfeld) opposed itself to Ignatian letters, short, middle, or long, as utterly subversive of their theories of the growth of the Canon, and of the history of the Early Church. The Bishop of Durham was himself, at that time on Cureton's side, 'led captive' (as he says) 'for a time by the tyranny of this dominant force.' We can but record the change in his opinions, and leave to the reader to follow, in the Bishop's own pages, the reasons which induced him to abandon a method and decline results that would not stand the test of a searching criticism. Independent investigation of the phenomena of the Armenian version and of the Syriac fragments led him to regard the 'short' or Curetonian recension as an abridgment or mutilation, rather than the nucleus, of the 'middle' or Vossian form; and Zahn's monograph,Ignatius von Antiochien(1873), never yet answered, dealt a fatal blow at the claims of the Curetonian letters. Since then Lipsius has been convinced by Merx; Renan and Harnack are agreed; and most scholars will come to the conclusion, that through the Bishop of Durham's own serious investigation of the diction and style of the 'short' form, 'the last sparks of its waning life have been extinguished.' The collection was directed by no doctrinal, Eutychian or Monophysite, motive, nor composed (as Hefele suggested) in support of moral aim or monastic piety. It is simply a 'loose and perfunctory curtailment of the middle form, neither epitome nor extract, but something between the two,' and to be dated about the yeara. d.400 or somewhat earlier.

The ground having been thus cleared from the accretions of the 'long' form and the mutilations of the 'short,' the Bishop of Durham considers in the next place the genuineness of the seven Epistles known to Eusebius, and preserved to us not only in the original Greek, but also in Latin and other translations. It is a bitter reflection, that discussion on this subject was (and—in a less degree—is still) evoked, not so much by critical and textual variations and difficulties, as by the exigencies of party spirit and theological animosity. A dreary, if necessary, page of ecclesiastical history has to be studied, when French Protestant and English Puritan turned passionately against the discovery of Ussher and Voss. It is small comfort to the charitably minded to be told that, had no Daillé attacked[74]the Ignatian letters, Pearson would not have stepped forward as their champion.

The consideration of the genuineness of the Seven Epistles falls naturally under the head of external and internal evidence.

The Bishop gives his conclusion on the external evidence in the following words:—

'(1.) No Christian writings of the second century, very few writings of antiquity, whether Christian or pagan, are so well authenticated as the Epistles of Ignatius. If the Epistle of Polycarp be accepted as genuine, the authentication is perfect. (2.) The main ground of objection against the genuineness of the Epistle of Polycarp is its authentication of the Ignatian Epistles. Otherwise there is every reason to believe that it would have passed unquestioned. (3.) The Epistle of Polycarp itself is exceptionally well authenticated by the testimony of his disciple Irenæus. (4.) All attempts to explain the phenomena of the Epistle of Polycarp, as forged or interpolated to give colour to the Ignatian Epistles, have signally failed.'

These four propositions sum up an examination minute and masterful. Not only is the testimony of the Epistle of Polycarp adduced, but also that of Irenæus; that of the letter of the Smyrnæans, giving the account of the martyrdom of Polycarp; that of Lucian, and that of Origen (middle of third century). After the age of Eusebius (half a century later than Origen) 'no early Christian writing outside the Canon is attested by witnesses so many and so various in the ages of the Councils and subsequently.' Dr. Harnack, however, is opposed to the Bishop's conclusions, and considers that, 'if we do not retain the Epistle of Polycarp, the external evidence on behalf of the Ignatian Epistles is exceedingly weak, and hence is highly favourable to the suspicion that they are spurious.' This is not the place to enter into the dispute. We can but record our opinion, that in the Bishop's pages Dr. Harnack's objections are met by anticipation.

The internal evidence is treated by the Bishop under six heads.

1. The Historical and Geographical Circumstances dealing specially with the condemnation and the journey to Rome. Under this section are collected also the personal notices yielding their testimony to the genuineness of the letters in a manner not less striking, because incidental and allusive, than the testimony of the geographical section. The reader will linger here over the thought of the consolation and refreshment brought to the good Ignatius on his way to martydom. We learn to love Crocus and Alce, 'names,' says Ignatius, 'belovedby me,' Burrhus and the widow of Epitropus, for the love they bore the Saint; we learn to see in the Bishop of Durham's pages how such names bear undesigned testimony to the Epistles which record them.

2. The Theological Polemics.

3. The Ecclesiastical Conditions. To these we shall return immediately, after a few words on—

4. The Literary Obligations, 5, The Personality of the Writer, and 6, The Style and Diction of the Letters. As regards the Literary Obligations, the Bishop lays down the following maxim: 'A primary test of age in any early Christian writing is the relation which the notices of the words and deeds of Christ and His Apostles bear to the Canonical writings;' and he adds, 'Tried by this test, the Ignatian Epistles proclaim their early date. There is no sign whatever in them of a Canon or authoritative collection of Books of the New Testament.' There are frequent references to the facts of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, and Gospel sayings are given; but there is 'not a single reference to written evangelical records, such as the "Memoirs of the Apostles," which occupy so large a place in Justin Martyr.' The same holds good of the Apostolic Epistles.

'I would ask,' the Bishop concludes, 'any reader who desires to apprehend the full force of these (facts with reference to Ignatius) to read a book or two of Irenæus continually, and mark the contrast in the manner of dealing with the Evangelical narratives and the Apostolic letters. He will probably allow that an interval of two generations or more is not too long a period to account for the difference of treatment.'

The personality of the writer is no doubt unusual. A power of communication with angels,[75]'extravagant' humility and self-depreciation;[76]and a not less 'extravagant' desire for martyrdom (confined, however, to the Epistle to the Romans), are not certainly what a later age commended or found in the Martyrs; but due allowance being made for the temperament of the Saint and the circumstances of the case, 'it is a picture much more explicable as the autotype of a real person than as the invention of a forger.'

Once more, the Style and Diction of the Letters may be, as Daillé and his followers have thought, 'forced and unnatural' in the use of images, 'confused' as to language, and 'bombastic' as to diction. But what then? asks the Bishop:—

'What security did his position as an Apostolic Father give that he should write simply and plainly, that he should avoid solecisms, that his language should never he disfigured by bad taste or faulty rhetoric?''It may not,' he continues, 'be considered very good taste to draw out the metaphor of a hauling engine (Ephes. 9)—to compare the Holy Spirit to the rope, the faith of the believers to the windlass, &c. But on what grounds, prior to experience, have we any more right to expect either a faultless taste or a pure diction in a genuine writer at the beginning of the second century, than in a spurious writer at the end of the same?'

'It may not,' he continues, 'be considered very good taste to draw out the metaphor of a hauling engine (Ephes. 9)—to compare the Holy Spirit to the rope, the faith of the believers to the windlass, &c. But on what grounds, prior to experience, have we any more right to expect either a faultless taste or a pure diction in a genuine writer at the beginning of the second century, than in a spurious writer at the end of the same?'

Elaborate compounds, Latinisms, reiterations, are no proof of spuriousness.

It is not, however, so much on these as on so-called anachronisms that assailants have attacked the letters. In every instance a supposed success has ended in a reverse. Thus the term 'leopard,' applied to the soldiers who conveyed Ignatius,[77]was said to have been unknown before the age of Constantine; and it was argued that the forger of these letters had antedated the word by two centuries. Pearson pointed out an example of the word abouta. d.202; but the Bishop of Durham has found it in a rescript of the Emperors Marcus and Commodus (a. d.177-80), and in an early treatise written by Galen, which carries it back within about half a century of Ignatius. Evidently it was then a familiar term. Another alleged anachronism is the use of the term 'Catholic Church.'[78]Cureton and others have urged, that a period of full fifty years must have intervened between the time when Ignatius wrote and the first trace we find of the term 'Catholic Church.' This, says Bishop Lightfoot, 'is founded on the confusion of two wholly different things'—Catholic as a technical, and Catholic as a general term. Centuries before the Christian era, the word Catholic καθολικος is found in the sense of 'universal'; both before and after the age of Ignatius it is common in writers, classical and ecclesiastical. 'In this sense the word might have been used at any time, and by any writer, from the first moment that the Church began to spread, while yet the conception of its unity was present to the mind.' It was only later that the term 'Catholic' acquired a technical meaning—orthodoxy as opposed to heresy, conformity as opposed to dissent. In Smyrn. 8, 'where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church,' the word is used in its sense of 'universal,' as contrasted with the Smyrnæan or local Church over which Polycarp presided. Not only is its use here not indicative of a laterdate, but this archaic sense emphasizes an early one. After the word 'Catholic' had acquired its later and technical use, it could not have been employed in its earliest meaning without the risk of considerable confusion.

We must refer our readers to a similarly thorough refutation of the charge of anachronism brought against these letters on account of their use of the term 'Christian,' and suggest to them an examination of the interesting proofs of the position next secured,[79]that certain characteristics of style and diction tell largely in favour of their genuineness.

We turn, after noting the summary of the internal evidences attesting the genuineness of these letters, to the headings omitted (2, 3) on the Theological Polemics and the Ecclesiastical Conditions. That summary is as follows (i. 407):—

'The external testimony to the Ignatian Epistles being so strong, only the most decisive marks of spuriousness in the Epistles themselves, as, for instance, proved anachronism, would justify us in suspecting them as interpolated, or rejecting them as spurious.—But so far is this from being the case, that one after another the anachronisms urged against these letters have vanished in the light of further knowledge.—As regards the argument which Daillé calls "palmary"—the prevalence of episcopacy as a recognized institution—we may say boldly that all the facts point the other way. If the writer of these letters had represented the churches of Asia Minor as under presbyterial government, he would have contradicted all the evidence which, without one dissentient voice, points to episcopacy as the established form of Church government in these districts from the close of the first century.—The circumstances of the condemnation, captivity, and journey of Ignatius, which have been a stumbling-block to some modern critics, did not present any difficulty to those who lived near the time, and therefore knew best what might be expected under the circumstances; and they are sufficiently borne out by example, more or less analogous, to establish their credibility.—The objections to the style and language are beside the purpose.—A like answer holds with regard to any extravagances in sentiment, or opinion, or character.—While the investigation of the contents of these Epistles has yielded this negative result in dissipating the objections, it has at the same time had a high positive value, as revealing indications of a very early date, and therefore presumably of genuineness, in the surrounding circumstances, more especially in the types of false doctrine which it combats, in the ecclesiastical status which it presents, and in the manner in which it deals with the evangelical and apostolic documents.—Moreover, we discover in the personal environments of the assumed writer, and more especially in the notices of his route, many subtle coincidences which we are constrained to regard as undesigned, and which seem altogetherbeyond the reach of a forger.—So likewise the peculiarities in style and diction of the Epistles, as also in the representation of the writer's character, are much more capable of explanation in a genuine writing than in a forgery.—While external and internal evidence thus combine to assert the genuineness of these writings, no satisfactory account has been or apparently can be given of them as a forgery of a later date than Ignatius. They would be quite purposeless as such; for they entirely omit all topics which would especially interest any subsequent age.'

The Section upon 'Ecclesiastical Conditions' deals with the ministry of men, the ministry of women, and the liturgy of the Church. Interesting though the two last points are of necessity to any student of Church organization and ritual, we pass them by to consider the 'Ecclesiastical Polemics.' The Bishop of Durham's view of the ministry of men—especially of episcopacy—as furnished by the Seven Epistles is briefly as follows. The name of Ignatius is inseparably connected with the championship of episcopacy. Such extracts as the following sufficiently attest the prominence and authority he assigns to the office: 'We ought to regard the bishop as the Lord Himself; 'Vindicate' (O Polycarp) 'thine office in things, temporal as well as spiritual. Let nothing be done without thy consent, and do thou nothing without the consent of God;' 'Give heed (ye Smyrnæans) to your bishop, that God also may give heed to you;' 'Let no man do anything pertaining to the Church without the bishop.' Further, the extension of the episcopate in the time of Ignatius is quite clear. He is himself the bishop 'belonging to Syria.' He salutes and names the Bishops of Ephesus, of Magnesia, and Tralles. In those parts of Asia Minor and Syria, with which he is brought into contact, the episcopate properly so called is an established and recognized institution. This is in accordance with what the Bishop of Durham traces elsewhere in the history of the origin and development of episcopacy;[80]but it is not in accordance with Dr. Harnack's view. 'The evidence,' says the Bishop, 'points to episcopacy as the established form of Church government in these districts from the close of the first century.' Not so, says Dr. Harnack:—

'Ignatius' conception of the position and significance of the bishop has its earliest parallel in the original conception of the author of the Apostolic Constitutions (i. e.the end of the 3d cent.); and the Epistles show that the Monarchical Episcopate in AsiaMinor was so firmly rooted, so highly elevated above all other offices, so completely beyond dispute, that on the ground of what we know from other sources of early Church history, no single investigator would assign the statements under consideration to the second, but at the earliest to the third century.'

Let the reader, however, look up the references under the head of "Apostolical Constitutions" in the Index to vol. i. of the Bishop's work, and we shall be very much surprised if he agree with Dr. Harnack's first conclusion. Will there not be even a lurking apprehension that Dr. Harnack, in arguing from the 'original conception of the author of the Apostolic Constitutions,' is confounding the 'long' and the 'middle' Recensions of the letters? Possibly the anxiety of determination to fix upon the third century rather than the close of the first as the date of the establishment of Episcopacy may have been tolerable in the time of Daillé, but is it tolerable or should it be repeated now when the means of a far more critical study of the question is open to all? In fact, Dr. Harnack is evidently disturbed by theparti prisof his position; and he may be said to abandon it immediately for a more negative one: but even so, how can a critic with the authorities placed before him come even to his second and modified conclusion:—'The statements of Ignatius regarding the rank to which the Episcopate has attained, occupy, so far as our knowledge goes, an altogether isolated position in the second century.' Isolated! This can be examined upon evidence. The point is this: Are there, or are there not, witnesses to show that monarchical Episcopacy had been developed in the later years of the Apostolic Age? Irenæus (born c. 130, according to Lipsius) was a scholar of Polycarp, and Polycarp was a scholar of St. John. He delighted to recal the reminiscences of his teacher, as did Polycarp those of St. John. He was a travelled scholar; if born in Asia Minor, he lived at Rome during middle life, and was Bishop of Lyons in Gaul in his later years. He was probably the most learned Christian of his time. 'The appreciation of the position of the man,' urges Bishop Lightfoot, 'is a first requisite to an estimate of his evidence.' And what is his evidence? Just that which is marked by such development as the man, his time, and circumstances, would lead us to expect, when compared with the Ignatius, from whom he is separated by about two generations. To Ignatius, the bishop is the centre of ecclesiastical unity; so Irenæus, the depositary of Apostolic tradition. Irenæus overlooks the identity of 'bishop' and 'presbyter' in the New Testament, and speaks of 'bishopsandpresbyters from Ephesus and the other cities adjoining' coming to St. Paul at Miletus. It is to him an undisputed fact, that the bishops of his own age traced their succession back in an unbroken line to men appointed to the episcopate by the Apostles themselves. Thus he points out the sequence of the bishops of the Church of Rome 'founded by the blessed Apostles,' St. Peter and St. Paul, up to his own day; and in the case of the Church in Smyrna, he finds in Polycarp not only one 'instructed by Apostles and who had conversed with many who had seen Christ,' but also 'one who was appointed bishop in the Church of Smyrna by Apostles in Asia.'[81]Similar opinions are reflected in many passages, and they lead up to this conclusion:—

'After every reasonable allowance made for the possibility of mistakes in details, the language (of Irenæus) from a man standing in his position with respect to the previous and contemporary history of the Church leaves no room for doubt as to the early and general diffusion of episcopacy in the regions with which he was acquainted.'

Yet it is by fastening upon alleged 'mistakes in details,' and through counter-conclusions with respect to some of the passages quoted, that Dr. Harnack affirms that 'from the words of Irenæus there is absolutely nothing gained in regard to the origin of the episcopate and its spread during the period betweena. d.90 and 140.' His method is somewhat vexatious. He takes, for example, the list of the Bishops of Rome, and he says, 'Irenæus communicates this list, and declares that the Apostles hadordainedLinus as Bishop of Rome;' and he adds, 'that this is false can be proved, and is not denied even by Lightfoot.' The marvellous part of this statement is, that Irenæus says nothing of the kind. The word 'ordination' does not occur in the passage in question. The sentence is far from faithfully translated by the Bishop of Durham:[82]Linus 'was entrusted with the office of the bishopric' by the Apostles. Again, what is 'false'? the whole list, or the statement as regards Linus individually? Neither is false when rightly understood, and no denial is therefore forthcoming from the Bishop of Durham, or required for what is not questioned. But Dr. Harnack—not satisfied with having refuted an imaginary foe—next proceeds to ask, 'What reliance then can we have in the statement of Irenæus, that Polycarp was ordained a bishop by the Apostles'? It might be answered, 'Your first premiss was wrong, and until that be mended, further argument is unnecessary.' But examine the question on its own merits—viz.that due to 'an appreciation of the position' of Irenæus—and its veracity is beyond question.

The Bishop of Durham supports the language of Irenæus by the testimony of Polycrates, of Ephesus, his contemporary, if junior; but without dwelling upon that and other passages of more general reference, we can come nearer to the time of Ignatius by reference to his contemporary, Polycarp. We assume, with Bishop Lightfoot, that the testimony of Irenæus to Polycarp is of the highest value; but that assumption is no rash one. Every one can verify the value of the testimony by perusing the Bishop's interesting pages on the subject. The relation of Polycarp to the Apostles has been given above. It is to his language about episcopacy that we wish to refer. In Polycarp's letter to the Philippians, the Bishop of Smyrna speaks at length about the duties of presbyters, deacons, widows, &c., but he makes no mention either of the bishop, or—in other parts where it might have been expected—of obedience due to him. This is naturally explained on the supposition that the see was then vacant, or that ecclesiastical organization was not fully developed at Philippi. How rash, however, it would be to affirm the non-existence of episcopacy, or to raise objections to it such as would render incredible the statements of Ignatius, may be inferred from the 'Letter of the Smyrnæans,' which, speaking of 'the glorious martyr Polycarp, who was found an Apostolic and prophetic teacher in our own time, a bishop of the Holy Church which is in Smyrna,' attests at once the respect paid to the office by the writer of the Letter and to the title by which Polycarp himself was usually called.

Other contemporaries of Polycarp's were Clement of Rome and Papias. Do they give no testimony to the development of monarchical episcopacy in the later years of the Apostolic Age? Polycarp, if not acquainted with Clement personally, was yet intimately acquainted with his genuine letter, the first Epistle to the Corinthians. In this letter there is no mention of episcopacy properly so-called. With St. Clement, as in the New Testament, bishop and presbyter are convertible terms. He even drops all mention of his own name though bishop of the Church in Rome. There is not even the 'I' of Polycarp, but a 'we,' which defines that the letter is written in the name of the Church and speaks with the authority of the Church. The name and personality of the individual are absorbed in the Church of which he is the spokesman.[83]The same phenomenaare observed in the letter written by Ignatius to the very Church—Rome—in which alone they are noticed as occurring. The Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans—save for the mention of his own rank—contains no indication of the existence of the episcopal office, inculcates no obedience to bishops, and says not a word about a bishop of Rome. A like phenomenon is to be noticed in the next (chronologically speaking) document, emanating from the Church of Rome—viz. the Shepherd of Hermas. What does this contrast throughout mean, but that where—as in Asia Minor—false doctrine and schismatical teachers prevailed, there episcopacy was a safeguard; where these were absent—as in Rome—there the episcopate had not yet assumed the same sharp and well-defined monarchical character as in the Eastern churches: and what does this contrast tend to disprove but the opinion of Dr. Harnack?—'Apart from the Epistles of Ignatius we do not possess a single witness to the existence of the monarchical episcopate in the churches of Asia Minor so early as the times of Trajan or Hadrian' (i. e.a. d.98-138).

Turning to the other point—the Theological Polemics—disputed by Harnack, Bishop Lightfoot has dealt with the subject on its positive and negative sides respectively. The positive side yields results of real importance in attestation of the date of the letters. The heresy combated by Ignatius is a type of Gnostic Judaism, the Gnostic element manifesting itself in a sharp form of Docetism. This marked type of Docetism, far from being a difficulty, is an indication of early date, since the tendency of Docetism was to mitigation, as time went on. The negative side is educed by cross-questioning the writer's silence. There were certain controversies which rent the Church in the middle and latter half of the second century. These were such as, first, the Paschal controversy (the proper day and mode of celebrating the Paschal festival); secondly, the controversy about Montanism, the theatre of which was the very region with which these Epistles are concerned. Yet, not a word, not a hint is there, that the writer felt any interest in, or was disturbed by, anxieties about either. A similar silence points to the same conclusion, when we consider the absence of allusion to the three great heresiarchs, Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinus. Give to the first a period of notoriety conterminous with the reign of Hadrian (a. d.117-38), yet there is not the slightest allusion in Ignatius to the tenets of the leader or his followers. Place Marcion some years before the middle of the second century. Remember that he was a native of Asia Minor and taught at Rome that there he was denounced byPolycarp as the 'first born of Satan;'[84]and that he enjoyed a world-wide reputation for evil (according to some), for good (according to others). Yet in the Ignatian letters there is not the faintest aquaintance with the man or his teaching. Valentinus also taught at Rome (c.a. d.140-60), and his strange theories aboutÆonsand Ogdoads, about spiritual, psychical, and material men, or any other fantasy of his speculative mythology, were not thought beneath the criticism of an Irenæus, a Clement of Alexandria and a Tertullian. Yet no hint is there in the Seven Epistles that these thoughts were familiar to the writer. At one time an exultant Daillé found in his reading of 'Magn.' 8 an attack on Valentinianism, and consequently a welcome anachronism which proved the writer of the letters a forger. The discovery of the true reading has been followed not only by the collapse of the objection, but also by the adhesion to the belief, that the writer's use of certain expressions is a testimony to his existence in a pre-Valentinian epoch, when language had not been abused to heretical ends.

Dr. Harnack has little to say against the Bishop of Durham's conclusions from the negative side of the investigation of these theological polemics; but he has much to say against the Bishop's deductions from the positive aspect of them. Though, says Bishop Lightfoot,

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