Epistles of Ignatius

“ The epistles ascribed to Ignatius have given rise to more controversy than any other documents connected with the primitive Church. As is evident to every reader on the very first glance at these writings, they contain numerous statements which bear on points of ecclesiastical order that have long divided the Christian world; and a strong temptation has thus been felt to allow some amount of prepossession to enter into the discussion of their authenticity or spuriousness. ”

“ It was a considerable time before editors in modern times began to discriminate between the true and the false in the writings attributed to Ignatius. The letters first published under his name were those three which exist only in Latin. These came forth in 1495 at Paris, being appended to a life of Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Some three years later, eleven Epistles, comprising those mentioned by Eusebius, and four others, were published in Latin, and passed through four or five editions. In 1536, the whole of the professedly Ignatian letters were published at Cologne in a Latin version ”

“ Of the three epistles of Ignatius still claimed as genuine, Prof. C. F. Hudson speaks as follows:—
“Ignatius of Antioch was martyred probably A. D. 115. Of the eight epistles ascribed to him, three are genuine; viz., those addressed to Polycarp, the Ephesians, and the Romans.” [491]
It will be observed that the three epistles which are here mentioned as genuine do not include that epistle from which the quotation in behalf of Sunday is taken, and it is a fact also that they contain no allusion to Sunday. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ Had the somewhat sanguine hope thus expressed been realized, it would have been unnecessary for us to present to the English reader more than a translation of these three Syriac Epistles. But the Ignatian controversy is not yet settled. There are still those who hold that the balance of argument is in favour of the shorter Greek, as against these Syriac Epistles. They regard the latter as an epitome of the former, and think the harshness which, according to them, exists in the sequence of thoughts and sentences, clearly shows that this is the case. ”

“ Had not the plan of this series been so exclusively that of a mere revised reprint, the writings of Ignatius themselves would have made me diffident as to the undertaking. It seems impossible for any one to write upon the subject of these precious remains, without provoking controversy. This publication is designed as an Eirenicon, and hence “few words are best,” from one who might be supposed incapable of an unbiased opinion on most of the points which have been raised in connection with these Epistles. ”

“ If we narrow our field and look, not at the whole Church, but at the Churches of Asia Minor and Syria, we may obtain yet another certainty from the obscure period which lies between the age of the Apostles and that of Dionysius and Irenæus. The investigations of Lightfoot, Zahn, and Harnack have placed the genuineness of the short Greek form of the Epistles of Ignatius beyond reasonable dispute. ”

“ Ignatius stands out in history as the ideal of a Catholic martyr, and as the earliest advocate of the hierarchical principle in both its good and its evil points. As a writer, he is remarkable for originality, freshness, and force of ideas, and for terse, sparkling, and sententious style; but in apostolic simplicity and soundness, he is inferior to Clement and Polycarp, and presents a stronger contrast to the epistles of the New Testament. ”

“ Ignatius, from a Greek uninterpolated copy. These are supposed to form
the collection that Polycarp made of the Epistles of Ignatius, mentioned
by Irenaes, Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, Athanasius, Theodoret, and other
ancients: but many learned men have imagined all of them to be
apocryphal. This supposition, the piety of Archbishop Wake, and his
persuasion of their utility to the faith of the church, will not permit
him to entertain: hence he has taken great pains to render the present
translation acceptable, by adding numerous readings and references to the
Canonical Books. ”

“ But if the Epistles tell us little of the life of Ignatius, they give us an excellent picture of the man himself, and are a mirror in which we see reflected certain ideals of the life and thought of the day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the result of this discovery, Cureton published in 1845 a work, entitled, The Ancient Syriac Version of the Epistles of St. Ignatius to Polycarp, the Ephesian, and the Romans, etc., in which he argued that these Epistles represented more accurately than any formerly published what Ignatius had actually written. This, of course, opened up the controversy afresh. While some accepted the views of Cureton, others very strenuously opposed them. ”

“ The Epistles of Ignatius are translated by Archbishop Wake from the text
of Vossius. He says that there were considerable difference in the
editions; the best for a long time extant containing fabrications, and
the genuine being altered and corrupted. Archbishop Usher printed old
Latin translations of them at Oxford, in 1644. At Amsterdam, two years
afterwards, Vossius printed six of them in their ancient and pure Greek ”

“ Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn, Vol. II) ; Bishop Lightfoot’s St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp (The Apostolic Fathers, Part II.) , London, 1885. This edition (in two volumes) is the most complete and exhaustive edition of Ignatius’ epistles which has yet appeared, and contains a very full and able discussion of all questions connected with Ignatius and his writings. It contains the text of the longer Greek recension and of the Syriac version, in addition to that of the seven genuine epistles, and practically supersedes all earlier editions. ”

“ Ignatius, as Schaff says, “is the incarnation of three closely connected ideas: the glory of martyrdom, the omnipotence of episcopacy, and the hatred of heresy and schism.”
1. Zeal for martyrdom in later days became a disease in the Church, but in the case of Ignatius it is the mark of a hero. The heroic note runs through all the Epistles; thus he says:
“I bid all men know that of my own free will I die for God, unless ye should hinder me . . . Let me be given to the wild beasts, for through them I can attain unto God. ”

“ The IGNATIAN EPISTLES deserve to be considered next. The question of their genuineness does not affect the present inquiry; for the seven letters contained in what is commonly called the Short Greek recension, whether spurious or not, were confessedly the same which Eusebius read; and to these I refer. For the sake of convenience I shall call the writer Ignatius, without prejudging the question of authorship. Ignatius then presents some striking coincidences with our Synoptic Gospels (whether taken thence or not, I need not at present stop to inquire) , e.g. ”

“ Finally, at the close of the Olympian games he erected a funeral pile; and when it was all ablaze, he threw himself into it, and perished in the flames. "There is very strong reason for believing" says Dr. Lightfoot, "that Lucian has drawn his picture, at least in part, from the known circumstances of Ignatius' history." [10:1] The bishop returns again and again to the parallelism between Ignatius and Peregrinus, and appears to think it furnishes an argument of singular potency in favour of the disputed Epistles. ”

“ THE MARTYRDOM OF IGNATIUS.
INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
HE following account of the martyrdom of Ignatius professes, in several passages, to have been written by those who accompanied him on his voyage to Rome, and were present on the occasion of his death (chaps. v. vi. vii.) . And if the genuineness of this narrative, as well as of the Ignatian epistles, be admitted, there can be little doubt that the persons in question were Philo and Agathopus, with Crocus perhaps, all of whom are mentioned by Ignatius (Epist. to Smyr. chap. x.; to Philad. chap. xi.; to Rom. chap. x.) ”

“ Take, then, as a specimen, these thrilling injunctions from his letter to Polycarp, to whom he bequeathed his own spirit, and in whom he well knew the Church would recognize a sort of survival of St. John himself. If the reader has any true perception of the rhythm and force of the Greek language, let him learn by heart the originals of the following aphorisms:—
Find time to pray without ceasing. Every wound is not healed with the same remedy. The times demand thee, as pilots the haven. The crown is immortality. [1] Stand like a beaten anvil. ”

“ According to our author, there cannot be a "shadow of doubt" that the seven Vossian Epistles "represent the genuine Ignatius." [6:2] "No Christian writings of the second century," says he, "and very few writings of antiquity, whether Christian or pagan, are so well authenticated." [6:3] He surely cannot imagine that Ussher would have endorsed such statements; for he knows well that the Primate of Armagh condemned the Epistle to Polycarp as a forgery. He has still less reason to claim Bentley as on his side. ”

“ A hierarchical purpose is not to be mistaken." In an earlier part of the work he still more emphatically says that, "in the so-called Ignatian Epistles," he recognises a decided "design" (Absichtlichkeit) , and then he continues: "As the tradition regarding the journey of Ignatius to Rome, there to be cast to the wild beasts, seems to me for the above-mentioned reasons very suspicious, his Epistles, which presuppose the truth of this tradition, can no longer inspire me with faith in their authenticity." [72:1] He goes on to state additional grounds for disbelief. ”

“ Those who desire ample proof that Ignatius was well acquainted with Paul’s Epistles cannot do better than refer to a work, drawn up and published in 1905 by members of the Oxford Society of Historical Theology, entitled The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers. ”

“ 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 EPISTLE OF IGNATIUS TO THE TRALLIANS. CHAPTER 1. 1 Acknowledges the coming of their bishop. 5 Commends them for their subjection to their bishop, priests, and deacons; and exhorts them to continue in it: 15 is afraid even of his over-great desire to suffer, lest it should be prejudicial to him.
IGNATTUS, who is also called Theophorus, to the holy church which is at Tralles in Asia: beloved of God, the Father of Jesus Christ; elect and worthy of God, having peace through the flesh and blood, and passion of Jesus Christ our hope ”

“ It is the part of a good athlete to be bruised and to prevail. Consider the times: look for Him who is above time. Slight not the menservants and the handmaids. Let your stewardship define your work. A Christian is not his own master, but waits upon God. Ignatius so delighted in his name Theophorus (sufficiently expounded in his own words to Trajan or his official representative) , that it is worth noting how deeply the early Christians felt and believed in (2 Cor. vi. 16) the indwelling Spirit.
Ignatius has been censured for his language to the Romans, in which he seems to crave martyrdom. ”

“ The features of distinction between the teaching of the Ignatian letters and the teaching of Polycarp, which have been pointed out by Dr. Lightfoot himself, are sufficiently striking; but his Lordship has not exhibited nearly the full amount of the contrast. Ignatius is described as offering himself voluntarily that he may suffer as a martyr, and as telling those to whom he writes that his supreme desire is to be devoured by the lions at Rome. "I desire," says he, "to fight with wild beasts." ”