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Updated: June 28, 2025
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. "As many as are of God and of Jesus Christ," says he, "they are with the bishop." "It is good to recognise God and the bishop!" The internal evidence furnished by the Ignatian Epistles seals their condemnation.
He was not surely such a dotard that he required to be told how to dispose of these Epistles. If we are to be guided by the statements in the Ignatian Epistles, we must infer that the letters to be sent to Antioch were to be forwarded with the utmost expedition. There are no such signs of haste or urgency indicated in the postscript to Polycarp's Epistle.
Usher had incautiously included the Ignatian epistles among his authorities. This laid the most learned man of the day at the mercy of an adversary of less reading than himself. This rude shock it was which set Usher upon a more careful examination of the Ignatian question.
The two witnesses of the second century who are supposed to uphold the claims of the Ignatian Epistles have now been examined, and it must be apparent that their testimony amounts to nothing. Thus far, then, there is no external evidence whatever in favour of these letters.
Cureton had obviously not been previously aware that Dr. Bentley, the highest authority among British critics, had rejected the Ignatian Epistles. Had he been cognisant of that fact when he wrote the Corpus Ignatianum, he would have candidly announced it to his readers. The manner in which he here attempts to dispose of it is certainly not very satisfactory.
In his early epistle to the Philippians, Paul makes reference to the officers that guided that church. Polycarp, writing to the same church in the next century, addresses the "presbyters and deacons," showing that the apostolic order was still preserved there. In the Ignatian epistles, however, written early in the second century, there appears positional authority of a new order.
The words reported by Irenaeus as uttered by one of the martyrs of Lyons are adroitly appropriated by the pseudo-Ignatius as if spoken by himself; and, in an uncritical age, when the subject-matter of the communication was otherwise so much to the taste of the reader, the quotation helped to establish the credit of the Ignatian correspondence.
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.
The letter of Polycarp to the Philippians is a writing of the second century, and it is by far the most important witness in support of the Ignatian letters; but we must infer, from the words just quoted, that it is not "so well authenticated" as they are. It is difficult to understand by what process of logic his Lordship has arrived at this conclusion.
Any one who studies the two chapters on the Ignatian Epistles in The Ancient Church, must see that what is there urged against them is something more than "presumptive evidence, negative evidence, and the evidence of appropriateness." It is shown that their anachronisms, historical blundering, and false doctrine clearly convict them of forgery.
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