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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. The argument is not original, for it is pressed with great confidence by his predecessor Pearson, and by others more recently. But its weakness is transparent.
Any one who carefully peruses them, and then reads over the Epistle of Clemens Romanus, the Teaching of the Apostles, the writings of Justin Martyr, and the Epistle of Polycarp, may see that the works just named are the productions of quite another period. The Ignatian letters describe a state of things which they totally ignore. Dr.
Lightfoot has brought himself to believe that these Ignatian Epistles were written in the beginning of the second century.
If, as there is every reason to believe, the Ignatian Epistles are forgeries from beginning to end, various questions arise as to the time of their appearance, and the circumstances which prompted their fabrication.
As we read these Ignatian letters, it may occur to us that the real author sometimes betrays his identity. There are, however, other matters which warrant equally strong suspicions. Hippolytus tells us that Callistus was a Patripassian.
At a subsequent stage of our discussion, this visit of Polycarp to Rome must again occupy our attention. The facts brought under the notice of the reader in this chapter may help him to understand how it has happened that so many have been befooled by the claims of these Ignatian Epistles.
Lightfoot has established, not only by a careful examination of the language of Eusebius, but also by comparing his statements with the actual facts in regard to writings that are still extant, and where we are able to verify his procedure. After thus testing the references in Eusebius to Clement of Rome, the Ignatian Epistles, Polycarp, Justin, Theophilus of Antioch, and Irenaeus, Dr.
The communication is rather such an outpouring of friendly counsel as befitted an aged patriarch. There are other indications in this letter that it cannot have been written at the date ascribed to it by the advocates of the Ignatian Epistles.
"It is plain that one or other of these exhibits a corrupt text; and scholars have, for the most part, agreed to accept the shorter form as representing the genuine letters of Ignatius.... But although the shorter form of the Ignatian letters had been generally accepted in preference to the longer, there was still a pretty prevalent opinion among scholars that even it could not be regarded as absolutely free from interpolations, or as of undoubted authenticity.... Upon the whole, however, the shorter recension was, until recently, accepted without much opposition ... as exhibiting the genuine form of the epistles of Ignatius.
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.
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