W. D. Killen

“ It is not easy to understand how Dr. Lightfoot has brought himself to believe that these Ignatian Epistles were written in the beginning of the second century. "Throughout the whole range of Christian literature," says he, "no more uncompromising advocacy of the episcopate can be found than appears in these writings ... It is when asserting the claims of the episcopal office to obedience and respect that the language is strained to the utmost. The bishops established in the farthest part of the world are in the counsels of Jesus Christ." ”

“ Nothing visible is good: for our God, Jesus Christ, now that He is with the Father, is all the more revealed. The work is not of persuasiveness, but of greatness, whensoever it is hated by the world.
"4. I write to all the Churches, and I bid all men know that of my own free will I die for God, unless ye should hinder me. I exhort you not to show an unseasonable good-will towards me. Suffer me to become food for the wild beasts, that through them I shall attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. ”

“ My earthly passion has been crucified, and there is no fire of material longing in me; but there is within me a water that lives and speaks, saying to me inwardly, 'Come to the Father.' I have no delight in the food of corruption, or in the delights of this life. ”

“ May nought of things visible and things invisible envy me, that I may attain unto Jesus Christ. Come fire and cross, and grapplings with wild beasts, 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 to Jesus Christ. ”

“ There is nothing more common among ourselves than to make such a mistake as to a name. How often may we find John put for James, or Robert for Andrew? Quadratus was a patrician name, well known all over the empire; and if Statius Quadratus had, not long before, been proconsul of Asia, it is quite possible that the writer of this postscript may have taken it for granted that the proconsul about the time of Polycarp's death was the same individual. ”

“ All conversant with the history of this controversy must, however, be aware that the question of chronology has entered largely into the discussion. If we defer to the authority of the earliest and best witnesses to whom we can appeal for guidance, it is impossible to remove the cloud of suspicion which at once settles down on these letters. Their advocates are aware of the chronological objection, and they have accordingly expended immense pains in trying to prove that Eusebius, Jerome, and other writers of the highest repute have been mistaken. ”

“ We must seek to arrive at truth, not by quoting names, but by weighing arguments. Not a few, however, whose opinion may be entitled to some respect, will not be prepared to agree with Bishop Lightfoot when he affirms that those who reject these Ignatian letters are, with few exceptions, only to be found in the "list of second and third rate names" in literature. ”

“ If we adopt the reading to be found in the Latin version, and which, from internal evidence, we may judge to be a true rendering of the original, we are, according to the interpretation which must be given to it by the advocates of the Ignatian Epistles, involved in hopeless bewilderment. If by Syria we understand the eastern province, what possibly can be the meaning of the words addressed by Polycarp to the Philippians, "If any one is going to Syria, he might carry thither my letters to you"? ”

“ Many, we apprehend, will feel that the result is not equal to such a vast expenditure of time and labour; and will concur with friends who, as he informs us, have complained to him that he has thus "allowed himself to be diverted from the more congenial task of commenting on S. Paul's Epistles." There is not, we presume, an evangelical minister in Christendom who would not protest against the folly exhibited in these Ignatian letters; and yet it appears that the good Bishop of Durham has spent a large portion of his life in an attempt to accomplish their vindication. ”

“ The words of a man taught by the apostles, occupying one of the highest positions in the Christian Church, and finishing his career by a glorious martyrdom in the very beginning of the second century, would have been by far the weightiest evidence he could have produced, next to the teaching of inspiration. ”

“ Lightfoot has rendered to the Christian Church by his labours as a Commentator on Scripture, and it is therefore all the more important that the serious errors of a writer so distinguished should not be permitted to pass unchallenged. All who love the faith once delivered to the saints, may be expected to regard with deference the letters of a martyr who lived on the borders of the apostolic age ”

“ Pray, then, do not seek to confer any greater favour upon me than that I be poured out a libation to God, while there is still an altar ready; that being gathered together in love ye may sing praise to the Father through Jesus Christ, that God has deemed me, the bishop of Syria, worthy to be sent for from the east to the west. It is good to set from the world to God, that I may rise again to Him. ”

“ To any one who wishes to study the Ignatian controversy, it supplies a large amount of valuable evidence, not otherwise easily accessible. Some, indeed, may think that, without any detriment to ecclesiastical literature, some of the matter which has helped to swell the dimensions of these volumes might have been omitted. Everything in any way associated with the name of Ignatius seems to have a wonderful fascination for the learned prelate. ”

“ You go too far to say that Bentley rejected the Ignatian Epistles—he only rejected them in the form in which they were put forth by Ussher and Vossius, and not in the form of the Syriac. So did Porson, as Bishop Kaye informed me—but he never denied that Ignatius had written letters—indeed, the very forgeries were a proof of true patterns which were falsified.
A great many of the ablest scholars in Europe, who had refused to accept the Greek letters, are convinced of the genuineness of the Syriac. But time will open. ”

“ The Church, instructed by Polycarp, condemns this insane ambition for martyrdom. "We praise not those," say the Smyrnaeans, "who deliver themselves up, since the gospel does not so teach us." [58:5] In these letters Ignatius speaks as a vain babbler, drunken with fanaticism; Polycarp, in his Epistle, expresses himself like an humble-minded Presbyterian minister in his sober senses. Ignatius is made to address Polycarp as if he were a full-blown prelate, and tells the people under his care, "He that honoureth the bishop is honoured of God ”

“ The question of the genuineness of the Epistles attributed to Ignatius of Antioch has continued to awaken interest ever since the period of the Reformation. That great religious revolution gave an immense impetus to the critical spirit; and when brought under the light of its examination, not a few documents, the claims of which had long passed unchallenged, were summarily pronounced spurious. Eusebius, writing in the fourth century, names only seven letters as attributed to Ignatius ”

“ They were apostles, I am a convict; they were free, I am a slave to this very hour. But, when I suffer, I shall be a freed-man of Jesus Christ, and shall rise free in Him. Now I am learning in my bonds to put away every desire.
"5. From Syria even to Rome I fight with wild beasts; by land and sea, by night and by day, being bound amidst ten leopards, even a company of soldiers, who only become worse when they are kindly treated. Howbeit through their wrong-doings I am become more completely a disciple, yet am I not hereby justified. May I have joy of the beasts that have been prepared for me ”

“ It employed the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians as a kind of voucher for its authenticity, inasmuch as it is there stated that Ignatius had written a number of letters; and it contained little or nothing which any one in that age would have been disposed to controvert. The Christians of Rome had long enjoyed the reputation of a community ennobled by the blood of martyrs, and they would be quite willing to believe that Ignatius had contributed to their celebrity by dying for the faith within their borders. ”

“ Through prayer to God I have obtained the privilege of seeing your most worthy faces, and have even been granted more than I requested, for I hope as a prisoner in Jesus Christ to salute you, if indeed it be the will of God that I be thought worthy of attaining unto the end. ”

“ If Bishop Lightfoot thinks that he can convince sensible men of the genuineness of the Ignatian Epistles by bringing forward such witnesses as Lucian and his hero Peregrinus, we believe he is very much mistaken. ”

“ Psyria and Syria are words so akin in sound that a transcriber of Polycarp's letter, copying from dictation, might readily mistake the one for the other; and thus an error creeping into an early manuscript may have led to all this perplexity. Letters in those days could commonly be sent only by special messengers, or friends traveling abroad; and the Philippians had made a suggestion to Polycarp as to the best mode of keeping up their correspondence. They had probably some co-religionists in Psyria ”

“ Callistus also had charge of the Christian cemetery in the Roman Catacombs; and Ignatius here expresses himself as one familiar with graves and funerals. He speaks of a heretic as "being himself a bearer of a corpse," and of those inclined to Judaism "as tombstones and graves of the dead." [75:2] It is rather singular that, in these few short letters, we find so many expressions which point to Callistus as the writer. There are, however, other matters which warrant equally strong suspicions. Hippolytus tells us that Callistus was a Patripassian. ”

“ He would be something almost more than human, were he to hold up the scales of testimony with strict impartiality when weighing the claims of his own order. It strikes us that, in the work before us, his prejudices and predilections reveal their influence more conspicuously than in any of his other publications. He can see support for his views in words and phrases where an ordinary observer can discover nothing of the kind; and he can close his eyes against evidence which others may deem very satisfactory. ”

“ Ignatius, a man of Philippi, has been supposed to be Ignatius, the pastor of Antioch; and Syria, the eastern province of the Roman Empire, has been confounded with Psyria or Syria—either of these names representing an island in the Aegean Sea not far from Smyrna. Ignatius, the confessor of Philippi, when in bonds wrote, as we find, a number of letters which were deemed worthy of preservation, but which have long since perished ”

“ We have seen that Bentley and Porson disagree with him—and he can point to no more eminent critics in the whole range of modern scholarship. If Daillé must be placed in the second rank, surely Pearson may well be relegated to the same position; for there is most respectable proof that his Vindiciae, in reply to the treatise of the French divine, was pronounced by Porson to be a "very unsatisfactory" performance. [8:2] "The most elaborate and ingenious portion of the work" is, as Bishop Lightfoot himself confesses, "the least satisfactory." ”

“ It was in the time of this chief pastor that Polycarp paid his visit to the Imperial city. It is apparent from the foregoing statements that Anicetus could not have entered on his office until at least nineteen, or perhaps twenty years, after Antoninus Pius became emperor, that is, until A.D. 157, or possibly until A.D. 158. This, however, is two or three years after the date assigned by Dr. Lightfoot for the martyrdom. Surely the Bishop of Durham would not have us to believe that Polycarp reappeared in Rome two or three years after he expired on the funeral pile ”

“ When Irenaeus speaks of Polycarp as having "received his appointment in Asia from apostles as bishop in the Church of Smyrna," [65:2] he makes a statement which, literally understood, even Dr. Lightfoot hesitates to endorse. [65:3] The Apostle John may have seen Polycarp in his boyhood, and may have predicted his future eminence as a Christian minister,—just as Timothy was pointed out by prophecy [66:1] as destined to be a champion of the faith. When Episcopacy was introduced, its abettors tried to manufacture a little literary capital out of some such incident ”

“ For I would not have you to be men-pleasers, but to please God, as ye do please Him. For neither shall I ever have such an opportunity of attaining to God, nor can ye, if ye be silent, ever be entitled to the honour of a better work. ”

“ All the extant writings for sixty years after the alleged date of the martyrdom of Ignatius demonstrate the utter falsehood of these letters. It is certain that they employ a terminology, and develop Church principles unknown before the beginning of the third century, and which were not current even then. The forger, whoever he may have been, has displayed no little art and address in their fabrication. From all that we know of Callistus, he was quite equal to the task. ”