[63] See Mr. Lecky's 'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,'
vol. ii, p. 443, &c.
ART. VII.--_The Apostolic Fathers: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp._ Revised
Texts, with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations, and Translations. By J.
B. Lightfoot, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., Bishop of Durham. London, 1885. 2
vols.
This a great book, dealing principally with a great subject--the
'Ignatian Epistles.' The two volumes contain altogether 1849 Pages, 1311
being devoted to St. Ignatius, the remainder to St. Polycarp. It is no
exaggeration to say that they are full of the most valuable information,
dealing with matters of vital ecclesiastical importance, the whole
presented in the most lucid style, and marked by broad, strong,
scholarship. They are the result of 'a keen interest in the Ignatian
controversy conceived long ago' by the Bishop of Durham. 'The subject
has been before me,' he writes in his Preface, 'for nearly thirty years,
and during this period it has engaged my attention off and on in the
intervals of other literary pursuits and official duties.' The
conception, execution, and production of the work had therefore been
protracted. The volumes as they are issued to-day are not in the form
they were originally written. Thus, the 'Appendix Ignatiana' was in type
several years before the commentary on the genuine Epistles of Ignatius,
and the Introduction and texts of the 'Ignatian Acts of Martyrdom'
passed through the press in 1878. In 1879 Cambridge and London
surrendered their great teacher to Durham; and there in the intervals,
few enough, snatched from official duties, the first volume has been
written, and from thence sent forth. It is necessary to bear this in
mind; because it will, on the one hand, explain absence of reference to
some works published since 1878; and on the other hand it increases the
value of the Bishop's results, when reached in entire independence of,
and yet in entire accordance with, those of other scholars in the same
field.
This work testifies to the truth, that it is a mark of true greatness to
be modest. The most superficial examination of these volumes exhibits a
_Corpus Ignatianum_ superior to anything yet published. It is, says Dr.
Harnack,[64] 'without exaggeration the most learned and careful
Patristic monograph which has appeared in the nineteenth century.' It
exhibits 'a diligence and knowledge of the subject which show that Dr.
Lightfoot has made himself master of this department, and placed himself
beyond the reach of any rival.... There is nothing in it that is not up
to date, and the whole treatise forms a well-knit unity.' This is the
willing testimony of one of the ablest of the scholars of Germany who
have handled the great questions connected with Ignatius; the testimony,
moreover, of one who, as we shall see presently, finds himself at
variance with the Bishop upon two points, especially which, more than
any other, materially affect the genuineness of the Epistles and their
date. Such, however, is not the Bishop of Durham's thought. As he looks
back upon the work to which he has consecrated the prime of his life, he
speaks of it in language touching in its modesty--
'I have striven to make the materials for the text as
complete as I could.... Of the use which I have made of the
critical materials I must leave others to judge. Of the
introductions, exegetical notes, and dissertations, I need
say nothing, except that I have spared no pains to make them
adequate, so far as my knowledge and ability permitted. The
translations are intended not only to convey to English
readers the sense of the original, but also (where there was
any difficulty of construction) to serve as commentaries on
the Greek. My anxiety not to evade these difficulties forbad
me in many cases to indulge in a freedom which I should have
claimed, if a literary standard alone had been kept in
view.'
He follows up such words by others, conveying his thanks to those who
have helped him in his work, and the generosity of his recognition of
their services does but enhance the reserveful simplicity with which he
comments upon his own. The 'English reader' and the 'others' whose
judgment he desires, will, at least in England, unite in rendering to
him a respectful and grateful homage. The subject treated by the Bishop
is in a very real sense an Englishman's subject. For three centuries
English critics have not only entered the literary arena, in which the
great historic and ecclesiastical questions connected with his subject
have been discussed, but they have contributed largely to the materials,
offensive and defensive, which the combatants have employed. Ussher,
Pearson, Churton, and Cureton, have been English champions whose merits
all have acknowledged. The Bishop of Durham has now entered the lists to
support what has been proved sound in their conclusions, to remove what
was weak, and do battle for the truth. An impartial English public will
appreciate the gravity of this challenge, and may be trusted to grant or
withhold the victory he puts forth his best powers to win.
The volumes lend themselves by their construction to an easy statement
of their contents, if those contents by their fulness must be of
necessity the despair of critic and reviewer. First there is the life of
the Saint, then the discussion of the manuscripts and versions which
delineate the Saint and his literary remains. These are followed by
exhaustive discussions upon all that tells for or against their
genuineness, the whole being treated both historically and critically.
Such will be found, briefly stated, the mode of discussing the life and
works both of St. Ignatius of Antioch and of St. Polycarp of Smyrna; and
two results will reward a patient persual of these volumes. The Bishop
has indeed limited these results to the study of the Ignatian Epistles,
but--under his guidance--the reader will find what is affirmed of one to
be true of both:--
'The Ignatian Epistles are an exceptionally good
training-ground for the student of early Christian
literature and history. They present in typical and
instructive forms the most varied problems, textual,
exegetical, doctrinal, and historical. One who has
thoroughly grasped these problems will be placed in
possession of a master key which will open to him vast
storehouses of knowledge.
'But' (continues the Bishop) 'I need not say that their
educational value was not the motive which led me to spend
so much time over them. The destructive criticism of the
last half century is, I think, fast spending its force. In
its excessive ambition it has "o'erleapt itself." It has not
indeed been without its use. It has led to a thorough
examination and sifting of ancient documents. It has
exploded not a few errors, and discovered or established not
a few truths. For the rest, it has by its directness and
persistency stimulated investigation and thought on these
subjects to an extent which a less aggressive criticism
would have failed to secure. The immediate effect of the
attack has been to strew the vicinity of the fortress with
heaps of ruins. Some of these were best cleared away without
hesitation or regret; but in other cases the rebuilding is a
measure demanded by truth and prudence alike. I have been
reproached by my friends for allowing myself to be diverted
from the more congenial task of commenting on St. Paul's
Epistles; but the importance of the position seemed to me to
justify the expenditure of much time and labour in
"repairing a breach" not indeed in the "House of the Lord"
itself, but in the immediately outlying buildings.'
St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp (together with St. Clement of Rome) are
the links which connect the Apostolic age proper with the Fathers of the
second and third centuries; and this fact has made them and their scanty
literature the hope and despair, the pride and the scorn, of opposing
factions. In the whirl and confusion of discordant criticisms it is
everything to study and to build up by the help of one who has caught
the spirit of the master-lives he expounds. There breathes throughout
the volumes of the Bishop of Durham the spirit of St. Ignatius's
counsel--
'Speak to each man severally after the manner of God. Bear
the maladies of all, as a perfect athlete. Where there is
much toil, there is much gain. If thou lovest good scholars,
this is not thankworthy in thee. Rather bring the more
pestilent to submission by gentleness.... The season
requireth thee, as pilots require winds, or as a
storm-tossed mariner a haven, that it may attain unto God.
Be sober, as God's athlete. The prize is incorruption and
life eternal, concerning which thou also art
persuaded.'--(Ep. of St. Ignatius to St. Polycarp, I, 2.)
Ignatius of Antioch: Men of old loved to find in his name (or its
Syriace quivalent, Nurono, [Greek: youra = phyr], _fire_) a prescience
of the torch of divine love which blazed in him. The fancy may pass, if
etymologically unsound; for Ignatius, 'the Inflamed,' was a true child
of the fiery East. Contrast him and his letters with St. Clement of Rome
and his Epistle to the Corinthians. Nothing is more notable in the Roman
'than the calm equable temper,' the 'sweet reasonableness.' He is
essentially a _moderator_. On the other hand, impetuosity, fire,
strong-headedness, are impressed on every sentence in the Epistles of
Ignatius. He is by his very nature an _impeller_ of men. Both are
intense, though in different ways. In Clement, the intensity of
moderation dominates and guides his conduct. In Ignatius it is the
intensity of passion--passion for doing and suffering--which drives him
onward. In Clement we listen to the voice of a judge delivering calmly
his sentence from his throne; in Ignatius we
'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 flame with 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 the _imagination_, 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 Oecumenical
councils. The name gave birth to more than one beautiful legend. Was not
Ignatius, according to the Eastern belief, the 'God-borne' [Greek:
theophoros], the very child whom the Lord took into His arms (St. Mark
ix. 36, 37)? Was he not the 'God-bearer' [Greek: theophoros] 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, about A. D. 110, his birth may be placed
about A. D. 40. When 25 years of age, or in A. 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 to A. 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 ages to 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 paean 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 never more 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
of _three_ Epistles 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 Smyrnaeans, 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 reduced to 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 aetate
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,' _naenia_), 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.) _Caiensis_
395 [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 Anglice _anfeld_ [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 of its 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, Daille (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 the
_Vindiciae Ignatianae_ (1846) and _Corpus 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, Pressense, Ewald, Milman, and Boehringer. 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
Tuebingen school (Baur and Hilgenfeld) 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 year A. 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 Daille 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 Irenaeus. (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 Irenaeus; that of the letter of the Smyrnaeans, 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, 'beloved by 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.