In the Laughlan islands—a small group—the Germans are also to be found. Indeed, they are spreading rapidly, over the Pacific Isles. As the spirit of adventure is dying out among Englishmen, it appears to be increasing in other nations. The genius for colonization appears to have fled from us to Germany. Certain it is that Germans are everywhere displaying that daring and enterprise in which we once shone above all other people in the world. They will probably end by becoming masters of the larger part of the Western Pacific. As for the Laughlan Islands, it cannot be said that any one whose lot takes him there need be regarded as an object of pity. The climate is good; food is abundant; life is tolerably easy. True, there are no newspapers and no Parliament; but existence has often been found supportable in the absence of these things. The natives are friendly; and there are no animals anywhere, not even rats. The men are decently clad, and the women wear a very voluminous kilt, sometimes two or three of them, over each other. These garments are made of grass, leaves, or fibre, stained various colours. 'In wearing two or three, care is taken to produce an aesthetic mixture of colours—a little vanity which is met with sometimes at home amongst ladies who like to display petticoats of many colours. It is considered just as essential here to walk well as it is at home, but the two styles are not quite the same. The Laughlan lady, in walking, at each step gives a little twist to the hips, which has the effect of making the kilts fly out right and left, in what is considered a highly fashionable and beautiful manner. Though a somewhat similar effect to this may, I am informed, occasionally be seen in petticoats at home, still I fear that the firm stride of the Laughlan lady could hardly be reproduced in English boots. To see ten or twelve of these ladies walking in the unsociable formation of single file, which they adopt, with their many-coloured kilts flying out on either side, is a very pretty sight.' Evidently, a judicious traveller and observer might do worse than take a tour to the Laughlans.

Two other interesting spots to visit are Thursday Island and Norfolk Island, both British possessions, and the first a place of some importance, as the centre of the Torres Straits pearl-shell fishery. This trade has demoralized the natives, who now seem to spend a great part of their time in getting drunk, the Europeans too often setting the example, 'It is a common thing,' says Mr. Romilly, 'for a diver to go down three-parts drunk. The dress is supposed to have a very sobering effect.' Here is a little story which will produce a pang of regret in the minds of the jewellers of Bond Street:—

'The best pearl I ever saw was in the possession of a celebrated diver who was a shipmate of mine from Thursday Island to Brisbane. He was offered on board the ship two hundred pounds for it, which could not have been a third of its value. But he refused every offer, as he had just been paid off, and had plenty of money. I felt sure it would go the way of all pearls when his money was finished, and accordingly I informed a Sydney jeweller of it, and where he could see it. When I was in Sydney a few weeks later I made inquiries about it, and the jeweller told me that it was the finest pear-shaped pearl he had ever seen, but that it was unsaleable at its proper value in Australia, and he had therefore made no attempt to buy it.'

But the pearl fishery on these coasts is becoming less lucrative every year, and it is now falling almost entirely into the hands of natives, who can stay under water longer than men of our own race, and seem to be endowed with greater powers of endurance. As for the 'labour trade' of which we all have heard so much, Mr. Romilly gives us to understand that it is dying out. It arose under the stimulus which the American war gave to cotton growing, and to the sudden necessity for procuring assistance for the planters. At first, the natives were found ready enough to volunteer for the service, but the treatment they received was not calculated to encourage the spirit of volunteering. Then all sorts of artifices were tried to deceive them. Sometimes the labour-hunters pretended to be missionaries. 'On the usual question being asked, "Where shippy come?" they would reply, "Missionary." Perhaps they would all pretend to sing a hymn very slowly, while the hatches would be left open, and several tins of biscuits would be put into the hold.' Curiosity would gradually draw the natives aboard, and then the hatches would be clapped on, and the man-stealers made off for Queensland or Fiji. It is to be hoped that Mr. Romilly is right in stating that these practices have ceased, but unless we are mistaken, accounts have appeared in colonial journals, within a very recent period, of organized raids upon these coasts for the purpose of carrying off the natives. It is needless to say, that a sentiment of hostility to all white men is likely to remain as the permanent result of this abominable system.

The fact is, that the white men who had the run of these islands down to a few years ago were chiefly the off-scourings of other countries. They found among the savages far fewer vices than they brought with them from the civilized world. Some of them had run away to escape from the vengeance of the laws which they had outraged; others were attracted by the freedom which an entirely new life opened up to them. From them have sprung a brood of half-castes who are the curse of the islands—like many other half-castes, they manage to combine the evil qualities of both races. The chief traders along the Pacific are now becoming much more respectable. Some of them, indeed, appear to emulate the style and condition of the prosperous English merchant. Mr. Romilly knows such a man, living 'within a day's march' of the wildest cannibals in the Pacific, who keeps up an establishment of forty or fifty men, with a French chef. 'In a hitherto almost unknown island, he will give you a dinner, every night, which could not be equalled at any private house or club in Australia.' He keeps a yacht for private exploring expeditions, and is to-day the principal 'trader and pioneer in the Pacific.' A narrative of his observations and experiences would be of very unusual interest, but like the Russian settler before referred to, he reserves for his own benefit the knowledge he has acquired. The Germans are pushing us hard, and in many respects they are better fitted for their work than English traders. There seems a fair prospect of a gradual elevation of social as well as of commercial life throughout the Pacific. Already, lawlessness is discouraged. Not so very many years ago, piracy was carried on openly in these seas. Mr. Romilly gives a very interesting and curious account of one of the last pirates, a desperado known as 'Bully Hayes,' once a boatman on the Mississippi. This man began life by robbing his father, and soon afterwards made his appearance on the Pacific coast the proud proprietor of a fifty-ton schooner. 'How he had obtained possession of this schooner,' says Mr. Romilly, 'was a matter of surmise, but he had been seen at Singapore not long before this time, and a fifty-ton schooner had mysteriously disappeared from that port without the knowledge of her captain and owner.' He carried on a bold career of plunder for many years, and only came to grief at last by an accident which he could not have foreseen. He had stolen another vessel, and was making for some of his favourite haunts along the coast, when the cook, who was steering, happened to give him some offence. At that time, Hayes was accustomed to settle all disputes off-handed with his revolver, and in accordance with this plan he ran below to get his 'shooting irons.' Mr. Romilly thus relates the sequel:—

'The cook objected, and, catching up the first piece of wood he saw, got on to the top of the little deck-house over the ladder, and, the moment Hayes showed his head above deck, gave him a blow which killed him on the spot. This cook seems to have been some what doubtful as to whether Hayes was even now dead, so he fetched the largest anchor the cutter possessed, and bound the body to it, after which he hove anchor and body overboard, remarking, "For sure Massa Hayes dead this time."'

Mr. Romilly, in the course of his wanderings, made a journey to New Guinea, a portion of which has now been placed under British protection. Little is known of the resources of this country, trading operations having hitherto been almost entirely confined to the south coast. Mr. Romilly's visit was brief, and he was not enabled to add much to our previous stock of information. He does not seem to be aware of the progress which the Germans are making in this island, or of the results of the energetic support which Prince Bismarck invariably extends to his adventurous countrymen.

Here, then, are three works which ought to have the effect of reviving the interest of the English people in their possessions abroad, if they have not sunk into a hopeless state of indifference and apathy on the subject. We do not for a moment believe that the working men are indifferent to the present and future welfare of our Colonies, but they need to be instructed as to the true value of their great inheritance, and therefore it is that we earnestly wish such books as these could be made readily accessible to them. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of convincing them that it is our duty as a nation to hold fast to all that we have added, from time to time, to the dominions of the Crown. The foreign policy of the country, no less than the domestic policy, must henceforth be directed mainly in accordance with their opinions; and if those opinions are left to be influenced and guided by the hereditary dislike of the Colonies which infects all Radicalism, our position in the world will soon be reduced to one of comparative insignificance. Baron Huebner concludes his volumes with these words: 'Had I to sum up the impressions derived from my travels, I should say, "British rule is firmly seated in India; England has only one enemy to fear—herself."' That is the whole truth of the matter. We have to fear our own party divisions, the want of true public spirit among too many of our 'politicians,' the tendency of Radical leaders to teach the doctrine that England ought to shut herself within her own island boundaries, and cast off all outside responsibilities. Sentiments of this kind may be, and are, loudly cheered in the House of Commons, but very few Liberals are daring enough to advocate them in the country. Lancashire knows how valuable India is to her, and the manufacturing districts generally see the growing importance to them, merely from a commercial point of view, of the Australian Colonies. The anti-Colonial policy is growing less and less popular among the people. To discredit it altogether, it is only necessary to distribute, far and wide among the working men, facts and considerations of the kind furnished in the works to which we have endeavoured to call attention.

FOOTNOTES:

[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.

2. The Theological Polemics.

3. The Ecclesiastical Conditions. To these we shall return immediately, after a few words on—

4. The Literary Obligations, 5, The Personality of the Writer, and 6, The Style and Diction of the Letters. As regards the Literary Obligations, the Bishop lays down the following maxim: 'A primary test of age in any early Christian writing is the relation which the notices of the words and deeds of Christ and His Apostles bear to the Canonical writings;' and he adds, 'Tried by this test, the Ignatian Epistles proclaim their early date. There is no sign whatever in them of a Canon or authoritative collection of Books of the New Testament.' There are frequent references to the facts of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, and Gospel sayings are given; but there is 'not a single reference to written evangelical records, such as the "Memoirs of the Apostles," which occupy so large a place in Justin Martyr.' The same holds good of the Apostolic Epistles.

'I would ask,' the Bishop concludes, 'any reader who desires to apprehend the full force of these (facts with reference to Ignatius) to read a book or two of Irenaeus continually, and mark the contrast in the manner of dealing with the Evangelical narratives and the Apostolic letters. He will probably allow that an interval of two generations or more is not too long a period to account for the difference of treatment.'

The personality of the writer is no doubt unusual. A power of communication with angels,[75] 'extravagant' humility and self-depreciation;[76] and a not less 'extravagant' desire for martyrdom (confined, however, to the Epistle to the Romans), are not certainly what a later age commended or found in the Martyrs; but due allowance being made for the temperament of the Saint and the circumstances of the case, 'it is a picture much more explicable as the autotype of a real person than as the invention of a forger.'

Once more, the Style and Diction of the Letters may be, as Daille and his followers have thought, 'forced and unnatural' in the use of images, 'confused' as to language, and 'bombastic' as to diction. But what then? asks the Bishop:—

'What security did his position as an Apostolic Father give that he should write simply and plainly, that he should avoid solecisms, that his language should never he disfigured by bad taste or faulty rhetoric?'

'It may not,' he continues, 'be considered very good taste to draw out the metaphor of a hauling engine (Ephes. 9)—to compare the Holy Spirit to the rope, the faith of the believers to the windlass, &c. But on what grounds, prior to experience, have we any more right to expect either a faultless taste or a pure diction in a genuine writer at the beginning of the second century, than in a spurious writer at the end of the same?'

Elaborate compounds, Latinisms, reiterations, are no proof of spuriousness.

It is not, however, so much on these as on so-called anachronisms that assailants have attacked the letters. In every instance a supposed success has ended in a reverse. Thus the term 'leopard,' applied to the soldiers who conveyed Ignatius,[77] was said to have been unknown before the age of Constantine; and it was argued that the forger of these letters had antedated the word by two centuries. Pearson pointed out an example of the word about A. D. 202; but the Bishop of Durham has found it in a rescript of the Emperors Marcus and Commodus (A. D. 177-80), and in an early treatise written by Galen, which carries it back within about half a century of Ignatius. Evidently it was then a familiar term. Another alleged anachronism is the use of the term 'Catholic Church.'[78] Cureton and others have urged, that a period of full fifty years must have intervened between the time when Ignatius wrote and the first trace we find of the term 'Catholic Church.' This, says Bishop Lightfoot, 'is founded on the confusion of two wholly different things'—Catholic as a technical, and Catholic as a general term. Centuries before the Christian era, the word Catholic [Greek: katholikos] is found in the sense of 'universal'; both before and after the age of Ignatius it is common in writers, classical and ecclesiastical. 'In this sense the word might have been used at any time, and by any writer, from the first moment that the Church began to spread, while yet the conception of its unity was present to the mind.' It was only later that the term 'Catholic' acquired a technical meaning—orthodoxy as opposed to heresy, conformity as opposed to dissent. In Smyrn. 8, 'where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church,' the word is used in its sense of 'universal,' as contrasted with the Smyrnaean or local Church over which Polycarp presided. Not only is its use here not indicative of a later date, but this archaic sense emphasizes an early one. After the word 'Catholic' had acquired its later and technical use, it could not have been employed in its earliest meaning without the risk of considerable confusion.

We must refer our readers to a similarly thorough refutation of the charge of anachronism brought against these letters on account of their use of the term 'Christian,' and suggest to them an examination of the interesting proofs of the position next secured,[79] that certain characteristics of style and diction tell largely in favour of their genuineness.

We turn, after noting the summary of the internal evidences attesting the genuineness of these letters, to the headings omitted (2, 3) on the Theological Polemics and the Ecclesiastical Conditions. That summary is as follows (i. 407):—

'The external testimony to the Ignatian Epistles being so strong, only the most decisive marks of spuriousness in the Epistles themselves, as, for instance, proved anachronism, would justify us in suspecting them as interpolated, or rejecting them as spurious.—But so far is this from being the case, that one after another the anachronisms urged against these letters have vanished in the light of further knowledge.—As regards the argument which Daille calls "palmary"—the prevalence of episcopacy as a recognized institution—we may say boldly that all the facts point the other way. If the writer of these letters had represented the churches of Asia Minor as under presbyterial government, he would have contradicted all the evidence which, without one dissentient voice, points to episcopacy as the established form of Church government in these districts from the close of the first century.—The circumstances of the condemnation, captivity, and journey of Ignatius, which have been a stumbling-block to some modern critics, did not present any difficulty to those who lived near the time, and therefore knew best what might be expected under the circumstances; and they are sufficiently borne out by example, more or less analogous, to establish their credibility.—The objections to the style and language are beside the purpose.—A like answer holds with regard to any extravagances in sentiment, or opinion, or character.—While the investigation of the contents of these Epistles has yielded this negative result in dissipating the objections, it has at the same time had a high positive value, as revealing indications of a very early date, and therefore presumably of genuineness, in the surrounding circumstances, more especially in the types of false doctrine which it combats, in the ecclesiastical status which it presents, and in the manner in which it deals with the evangelical and apostolic documents.—Moreover, we discover in the personal environments of the assumed writer, and more especially in the notices of his route, many subtle coincidences which we are constrained to regard as undesigned, and which seem altogether beyond the reach of a forger.—So likewise the peculiarities in style and diction of the Epistles, as also in the representation of the writer's character, are much more capable of explanation in a genuine writing than in a forgery.—While external and internal evidence thus combine to assert the genuineness of these writings, no satisfactory account has been or apparently can be given of them as a forgery of a later date than Ignatius. They would be quite purposeless as such; for they entirely omit all topics which would especially interest any subsequent age.'

The Section upon 'Ecclesiastical Conditions' deals with the ministry of men, the ministry of women, and the liturgy of the Church. Interesting though the two last points are of necessity to any student of Church organization and ritual, we pass them by to consider the 'Ecclesiastical Polemics.' The Bishop of Durham's view of the ministry of men—especially of episcopacy—as furnished by the Seven Epistles is briefly as follows. The name of Ignatius is inseparably connected with the championship of episcopacy. Such extracts as the following sufficiently attest the prominence and authority he assigns to the office: 'We ought to regard the bishop as the Lord Himself; 'Vindicate' (O Polycarp) 'thine office in things, temporal as well as spiritual. Let nothing be done without thy consent, and do thou nothing without the consent of God;' 'Give heed (ye Smyrnaeans) to your bishop, that God also may give heed to you;' 'Let no man do anything pertaining to the Church without the bishop.' Further, the extension of the episcopate in the time of Ignatius is quite clear. He is himself the bishop 'belonging to Syria.' He salutes and names the Bishops of Ephesus, of Magnesia, and Tralles. In those parts of Asia Minor and Syria, with which he is brought into contact, the episcopate properly so called is an established and recognized institution. This is in accordance with what the Bishop of Durham traces elsewhere in the history of the origin and development of episcopacy;[80] but it is not in accordance with Dr. Harnack's view. 'The evidence,' says the Bishop, 'points to episcopacy as the established form of Church government in these districts from the close of the first century.' Not so, says Dr. Harnack:—

'Ignatius' conception of the position and significance of the bishop has its earliest parallel in the original conception of the author of the Apostolic Constitutions (i. e. the end of the 3d cent.); and the Epistles show that the Monarchical Episcopate in Asia Minor was so firmly rooted, so highly elevated above all other offices, so completely beyond dispute, that on the ground of what we know from other sources of early Church history, no single investigator would assign the statements under consideration to the second, but at the earliest to the third century.'

Let the reader, however, look up the references under the head of "Apostolical Constitutions" in the Index to vol. i. of the Bishop's work, and we shall be very much surprised if he agree with Dr. Harnack's first conclusion. Will there not be even a lurking apprehension that Dr. Harnack, in arguing from the 'original conception of the author of the Apostolic Constitutions,' is confounding the 'long' and the 'middle' Recensions of the letters? Possibly the anxiety of determination to fix upon the third century rather than the close of the first as the date of the establishment of Episcopacy may have been tolerable in the time of Daille, but is it tolerable or should it be repeated now when the means of a far more critical study of the question is open to all? In fact, Dr. Harnack is evidently disturbed by the parti pris of his position; and he may be said to abandon it immediately for a more negative one: but even so, how can a critic with the authorities placed before him come even to his second and modified conclusion:—'The statements of Ignatius regarding the rank to which the Episcopate has attained, occupy, so far as our knowledge goes, an altogether isolated position in the second century.' Isolated! This can be examined upon evidence. The point is this: Are there, or are there not, witnesses to show that monarchical Episcopacy had been developed in the later years of the Apostolic Age? Irenaeus (born c. 130, according to Lipsius) was a scholar of Polycarp, and Polycarp was a scholar of St. John. He delighted to recal the reminiscences of his teacher, as did Polycarp those of St. John. He was a travelled scholar; if born in Asia Minor, he lived at Rome during middle life, and was Bishop of Lyons in Gaul in his later years. He was probably the most learned Christian of his time. 'The appreciation of the position of the man,' urges Bishop Lightfoot, 'is a first requisite to an estimate of his evidence.' And what is his evidence? Just that which is marked by such development as the man, his time, and circumstances, would lead us to expect, when compared with the Ignatius, from whom he is separated by about two generations. To Ignatius, the bishop is the centre of ecclesiastical unity; so Irenaeus, the depositary of Apostolic tradition. Irenaeus overlooks the identity of 'bishop' and 'presbyter' in the New Testament, and speaks of 'bishops and presbyters from Ephesus and the other cities adjoining' coming to St. Paul at Miletus. It is to him an undisputed fact, that the bishops of his own age traced their succession back in an unbroken line to men appointed to the episcopate by the Apostles themselves. Thus he points out the sequence of the bishops of the Church of Rome 'founded by the blessed Apostles,' St. Peter and St. Paul, up to his own day; and in the case of the Church in Smyrna, he finds in Polycarp not only one 'instructed by Apostles and who had conversed with many who had seen Christ,' but also 'one who was appointed bishop in the Church of Smyrna by Apostles in Asia.'[81] Similar opinions are reflected in many passages, and they lead up to this conclusion:—

'After every reasonable allowance made for the possibility of mistakes in details, the language (of Irenaeus) from a man standing in his position with respect to the previous and contemporary history of the Church leaves no room for doubt as to the early and general diffusion of episcopacy in the regions with which he was acquainted.'

Yet it is by fastening upon alleged 'mistakes in details,' and through counter-conclusions with respect to some of the passages quoted, that Dr. Harnack affirms that 'from the words of Irenaeus there is absolutely nothing gained in regard to the origin of the episcopate and its spread during the period between A. D. 90 and 140.' His method is somewhat vexatious. He takes, for example, the list of the Bishops of Rome, and he says, 'Irenaeus communicates this list, and declares that the Apostles had ordained Linus as Bishop of Rome;' and he adds, 'that this is false can be proved, and is not denied even by Lightfoot.' The marvellous part of this statement is, that Irenaeus says nothing of the kind. The word 'ordination' does not occur in the passage in question. The sentence is far from faithfully translated by the Bishop of Durham:[82] Linus 'was entrusted with the office of the bishopric' by the Apostles. Again, what is 'false'? the whole list, or the statement as regards Linus individually? Neither is false when rightly understood, and no denial is therefore forthcoming from the Bishop of Durham, or required for what is not questioned. But Dr. Harnack—not satisfied with having refuted an imaginary foe—next proceeds to ask, 'What reliance then can we have in the statement of Irenaeus, that Polycarp was ordained a bishop by the Apostles'? It might be answered, 'Your first premiss was wrong, and until that be mended, further argument is unnecessary.' But examine the question on its own merits—viz. that due to 'an appreciation of the position' of Irenaeus—and its veracity is beyond question.

The Bishop of Durham supports the language of Irenaeus by the testimony of Polycrates, of Ephesus, his contemporary, if junior; but without dwelling upon that and other passages of more general reference, we can come nearer to the time of Ignatius by reference to his contemporary, Polycarp. We assume, with Bishop Lightfoot, that the testimony of Irenaeus to Polycarp is of the highest value; but that assumption is no rash one. Every one can verify the value of the testimony by perusing the Bishop's interesting pages on the subject. The relation of Polycarp to the Apostles has been given above. It is to his language about episcopacy that we wish to refer. In Polycarp's letter to the Philippians, the Bishop of Smyrna speaks at length about the duties of presbyters, deacons, widows, &c., but he makes no mention either of the bishop, or—in other parts where it might have been expected—of obedience due to him. This is naturally explained on the supposition that the see was then vacant, or that ecclesiastical organization was not fully developed at Philippi. How rash, however, it would be to affirm the non-existence of episcopacy, or to raise objections to it such as would render incredible the statements of Ignatius, may be inferred from the 'Letter of the Smyrnaeans,' which, speaking of 'the glorious martyr Polycarp, who was found an Apostolic and prophetic teacher in our own time, a bishop of the Holy Church which is in Smyrna,' attests at once the respect paid to the office by the writer of the Letter and to the title by which Polycarp himself was usually called.

Other contemporaries of Polycarp's were Clement of Rome and Papias. Do they give no testimony to the development of monarchical episcopacy in the later years of the Apostolic Age? Polycarp, if not acquainted with Clement personally, was yet intimately acquainted with his genuine letter, the first Epistle to the Corinthians. In this letter there is no mention of episcopacy properly so-called. With St. Clement, as in the New Testament, bishop and presbyter are convertible terms. He even drops all mention of his own name though bishop of the Church in Rome. There is not even the 'I' of Polycarp, but a 'we,' which defines that the letter is written in the name of the Church and speaks with the authority of the Church. The name and personality of the individual are absorbed in the Church of which he is the spokesman.[83] The same phenomena are observed in the letter written by Ignatius to the very Church—Rome—in which alone they are noticed as occurring. The Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans—save for the mention of his own rank—contains no indication of the existence of the episcopal office, inculcates no obedience to bishops, and says not a word about a bishop of Rome. A like phenomenon is to be noticed in the next (chronologically speaking) document, emanating from the Church of Rome—viz. the Shepherd of Hermas. What does this contrast throughout mean, but that where—as in Asia Minor—false doctrine and schismatical teachers prevailed, there episcopacy was a safeguard; where these were absent—as in Rome—there the episcopate had not yet assumed the same sharp and well-defined monarchical character as in the Eastern churches: and what does this contrast tend to disprove but the opinion of Dr. Harnack?—'Apart from the Epistles of Ignatius we do not possess a single witness to the existence of the monarchical episcopate in the churches of Asia Minor so early as the times of Trajan or Hadrian' (i. e. A. D. 98-138).

Turning to the other point—the Theological Polemics—disputed by Harnack, Bishop Lightfoot has dealt with the subject on its positive and negative sides respectively. The positive side yields results of real importance in attestation of the date of the letters. The heresy combated by Ignatius is a type of Gnostic Judaism, the Gnostic element manifesting itself in a sharp form of Docetism. This marked type of Docetism, far from being a difficulty, is an indication of early date, since the tendency of Docetism was to mitigation, as time went on. The negative side is educed by cross-questioning the writer's silence. There were certain controversies which rent the Church in the middle and latter half of the second century. These were such as, first, the Paschal controversy (the proper day and mode of celebrating the Paschal festival); secondly, the controversy about Montanism, the theatre of which was the very region with which these Epistles are concerned. Yet, not a word, not a hint is there, that the writer felt any interest in, or was disturbed by, anxieties about either. A similar silence points to the same conclusion, when we consider the absence of allusion to the three great heresiarchs, Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinus. Give to the first a period of notoriety conterminous with the reign of Hadrian (A. D. 117-38), yet there is not the slightest allusion in Ignatius to the tenets of the leader or his followers. Place Marcion some years before the middle of the second century. Remember that he was a native of Asia Minor and taught at Rome that there he was denounced by Polycarp as the 'first born of Satan;'[84] and that he enjoyed a world-wide reputation for evil (according to some), for good (according to others). Yet in the Ignatian letters there is not the faintest aquaintance with the man or his teaching. Valentinus also taught at Rome (c. A. D. 140-60), and his strange theories about AEons and Ogdoads, about spiritual, psychical, and material men, or any other fantasy of his speculative mythology, were not thought beneath the criticism of an Irenaeus, a Clement of Alexandria and a Tertullian. Yet no hint is there in the Seven Epistles that these thoughts were familiar to the writer. At one time an exultant Daille found in his reading of 'Magn.' 8 an attack on Valentinianism, and consequently a welcome anachronism which proved the writer of the letters a forger. The discovery of the true reading has been followed not only by the collapse of the objection, but also by the adhesion to the belief, that the writer's use of certain expressions is a testimony to his existence in a pre-Valentinian epoch, when language had not been abused to heretical ends.

Dr. Harnack has little to say against the Bishop of Durham's conclusions from the negative side of the investigation of these theological polemics; but he has much to say against the Bishop's deductions from the positive aspect of them. Though, says Bishop Lightfoot,

'in the Trallian and Smyrnaean letters the writer deals chiefly with Docetism, while in the Magnesian and Philadelphian letters he seems to be attacking Judaism, yet a nearer examination shows the two to be so closely interwoven that they can only be regarded as different sides of one and the same heresy.'

Not so Dr. Harnack. To him

'the identification of the Judaists and Gnostics in the Ingnatian Epistles is quite inadmissible. Ignatius combats the Doketists in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the Trallians, and the Smyrnaeans, while in the Epistles to the Magnesians and Philadelphians he warns against the Ebionistic danger. In the last-named Epistle he warns against other tendencies which threatened the unity of the Church.'

In fact, it is this Epistle to the Philadelphians which, in his opinion, has led scholars astray. No one he thinks would have misunderstood 'the fact—that the Judaists in the Epistle to the Magnesians were certainly not Doketists, and the Doketists described in the Epistles to the Ephesians, Trallians, and Smyrnaeans were not Judaists—had the Epistles of Ignatius come to us without the Epistle to the Philadelphians.' It would be beyond the province of this Review to enter into an examination of the arguments adduced on each side; it would also be an injustice to the disputants to infer that each selects or presses what tells most of his view, but certainly a calm and dispassionate inspection of these arguments will lead most men to think Uhlhorn, Lipsius, and Lightfoot more correct in their unanimous verdict, that but one heresy is attacked in the Ignatian letters, than Hilgenfeld and Harnack in their preference of two distinct heresies—Ebionism and Docetism. This latter conclusion can only be reached by treating the Letters of Ignatius as Hilgenfeld has treated St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians; the former is attained by critical methods defining the Judaism and Gnosticism observable to be but web and woof of one and the same fabric.

The very early date, and the consequent genuineness of these Epistles are thus the legitimate conclusion from the study of the internal as well as external evidences. That date is placed by the Bishop of Durham between A. D. 100-118 in the time of Trajan. Wieseler had placed the date of the martyrdom (upon which depends the date of the letters) as early as A. D. 107, Harnack as late as A. D. 138; and the latter still prefers to place them and the Epistle of Polycarp after the year A. D. 130. The earlier date reached by the Bishop of Durham is to him 'a mere possibility which is highly improbable, because it is not supported by any word in the Epistle, and because it rests only upon a late and very problematic witness (Eusebius).' Dr. Harnack's present view is, in all essentials, the same as that which he previously held. He has had the advantage—which he courteously acknowledges—of examining Bishop Lightfoot's 'painstaking consideration' of his views held in 1878; but nevertheless he considers that the Bishop's method of considering the whole question is 'not the proper' one—that his 'admittedly profound learning has contributed little or nothing to the main question,' and that 'he has not rightly comprehended the problem.'[85] Yet the ordinary reader, who examines Dr. Harnack's re-statement of some of his views, will feel that to ask the Bishop of Durham to re-examine them will be but to ask him to slay afresh the slain. Dr. Harnack still clings, for example, to his view, that Polycarp is attacking the Docetism of Marcion; a view which, if sound, would convince the writer of an anachronism; because in pretending to write between A. D. 100 and 118 he has introduced a heresiarch not then notorious. But his view has been shown by Bishop Lightfoot to be fallacious; and all that Dr. Harnack can now answer is to repeat his preference for his own interpretation of two passages adduced in the argument.

From the amenities of this battlefield of friendly criticism we turn for a few concluding remarks to the second and shorter life—that of Polycarp—which these monumental volumes discuss.

In point of method and treatment, the consideration of the history and writings of this saint of the early Church follows the same lines, as those followed in the case of St. Ignatius. First, the biography proper. Next, one of those collections of passages and documents which render these volumes so remarkable. In seventy pages the student will find a corpus of original extracts embellished with notes explanatory and critical—Such as Imperial acts and ordinances relating to or affecting Christianity; Acts and notices of martyrdoms. Passages from heathen writers, containing notices of the Christians; Passages from Christian writers illustrating the points at issue—most helpful to him in apprehending not only the history of the persecutions, but also the relations between the Church and the Empire, in the reigns of Hadrian (A. D. 117-38), Antoninus Pius (A. D. 138-61), and Marcus Aurelius (A. D. 161-80). Then come in successive order the examination of the MSS and Versions, a collection of quotations and references, the consideration of the genuineness of the 'Epistle of Polycarp' and of the 'Letter to the Smyrnaeans,' closed by a discussion upon the date of the Martyrdom.

The Church of Christ owes a great debt to Polycarp:—

'In him one single link connected the earthly life of Christ with the close of the second century, though five or six generations had intervened. St. John, Polycarp, Irenaeus—this was the succession which guaranteed the continuity of the evangelical record and of the Apostolic teaching. The long life of St. John, followed by the long life of Polycarp, had secured this result. What the Church towards the close of the second century was—how full was its teaching—how complete its canon—how adequate its organization—how wise its extension—we know well enough from Irenaeus' extant work. But the intervening period had been disturbed by feverish speculation and grave anxieties on all sides. Polycarp saw teacher after teacher spring up, each introducing some fresh system, and each professing to teach the true Gospel. Menander, Cerinthus, Carpocrates, Saturninus, Basilides, Cerdon, Valentinus, Marcion—all these flourished during his lifetime, and all taught after he had grown up to manhood. Against all such innovations of doctrine and practice there lay the appeal to Polycarp's personal knowledge. With what feelings he regarded such teachers we may learn not only from his own epistle (Sec. 7), but from the sayings recorded by Irenaeus, "O good God, for what times hast Thou kept me, I recognize the firstborn of Satan." He was eminently fitted, too, by his personal qualities to fulfil this function as a depositary of tradition.... Polycarp's mind was essentially unoriginative. It had no creative power. His Epistle is largely made up of quotations from the Evangelical and Apostolic writings, from Clement of Rome, from the Epistles of Ignatius.... A stedfast, stubborn adherence to the lessons of his youth and early manhood, an unrelaxing, unwavering hold of "the word that was delivered to him from the beginning"—this, so far as we can read the man from his own utterances or from the notices of others, was the characteristic of Polycarp. His religious convictions were seen to be "founded," as Ignatius had said long before (Polyc. 1) "on an immovable rock." He was not dismayed by the plausibilities of false teachers, but "stood firm as an anvil under the hammer's stroke." (ib. 3).'

The Church has ever claimed for her Saint not so much the reverence paid to the martyr, or the deference due to the ruler, or the teachableness powerful in the writer, as the attention obligatory to an 'elder.' Why? We may give the reason in the Bishop's words:

'While the oral tradition of the Lord's life and of the Apostolic teaching was still fresh, the believers of succeeding generations not unnaturally appealed to it for confirmation against the many counterfeits of the Gospel which offered themselves for acceptance. The authorities for this tradition were "the Elders." To the testimony of these Elders appeal was made by Papias in the first, and by Irenaeus in the second generation after the Apostles. With Papias the Elders were those who themselves had seen the Lord, or had been eye-witnesses of the Apostolic history: with Irenaeus the term included likewise persons who, like Papias himself, had been acquainted with these eye-witnesses. And among these Polycarp held the foremost place.'

The existing letter to the Philippians is now recognized as a genuine work of the Saint; and this on the testimony of internal evidence, quite as much as on the direct testimony of Irenaeus, his own disciple. The arbitrary method of a Daille, the interpolation-theory of Ritschl, and the wholesale rejection of the Epistle by Schwegler, Zeller, and Hilgenfeld, have ceased to command attention or demand refutation. The Epistle is too closely confined to the letters and martyrdom of Ignatius to warrant our looking for much refutation in it of existing error; but the spirit and counsel of the 'elder' is truly there warning against false and hypocritical brethren, and impelling his readers to turn unto the word delivered unto them from the beginning.

Never was Christian counsel and sturdy faith more needed than in the period covered by the lifetime of Polycarp. The Bishop of Durham describes it as 'the most tumultuous period in the religious history of the world'; and in connection with the Bishop of Smyrna he notes that 'a chief arena of the struggle between creeds and cults was Asia Minor.' If in the earlier part of the second century (A. D. 112) Pliny, in his celebrated letter to Trajan,[86] deplored what Polycarp may have witnessed—on the one hand, heathen temples deserted and heathen sacrifices starved as to their victims; on the other, young and old, man and woman, patrician and peasant, bond and free, attracted to and mastered by a 'superstition' which affected alike the city and the village, the nobleman's mansion and the herdsman's hut, yet the splendid successes of Christianity did not blind either saint or philosopher. 'A veritable Pagan propaganda,' as Renan calls it, also set in in the second century; and when Polycarp died, it was at its height. Everywhere was it supported by the reigning emperors. 'The political and truly Roman instincts of Trajan were not more friendly to it than the archaeological tastes, the cosmopolitan interests, and the theological levity of Hadrian. From their immediate successors, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, it received even more solid and efficient support.'

Smyrna, the see of Bishop Polycarp, was fully exposed to the influences of this reviving Paganism. The rhetorician, Aristides—true type of the Pagan charlatan who summoned to his aid in subjugating a superstitious people the mysterious and occult powers with which astrology and dreams, auguries and witchcrafts, invested their possessors—was himself a frequent dweller in Smyrna. Often must he have heard of and despised the man branded by the titles, 'the teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians, the puller-down of our gods, who teacheth numbers not to sacrifice nor worship'[87] which—like the inscription over his crucified Lord—did unconsciously proclaim the very and only truth. Twice did the city of Smyrna, during Polycarp's prime, receive fresh honours and privileges for her devotion to the worship of Imperial deities. The religious guild of the temples of the Augusti celebrated here their festivals with exceptional splendour; the 'theologians' and 'choristers,' who owed their existence and affluence to the magnificence of a Hadrian, not only saluted him as their 'god,' their 'saviour and founder,' but by senatorial decree established games—the Olympia Hadrianea—grotesquely pompous in titular magnificence. Naturally this affected the well-being of the infant Church of Christ in Smyrna; but that Church was assailed from another quarter, and by the sharpened weapons, not of a scornful superiority, but of fanatical hatred. The Jews were both numerous and powerful in Smyrna, and two cruel episodes in their late national history accentuated their fury against the Christians wherever they met with them. The first was the destruction of Jerusalem (A. D. 70). The fugitives from Palestine, who found refuge in Smyrna with their fellow-countrymen already settled there, found sympathy also—save from one class, the Christians. Compassion these last could feel for men whose best blood had welled over the courts of the Temple, whose dearest and nearest had perhaps perished in Jerusalem, that 'cage of furious madmen, a city of howling wild beasts and of cannibals—a hell' (Renan); but they knew to be true what a Titus had acknowledged, that 'the hand of God' was in the victory of Rome. They saw in the downfall of the Holy City the retribution of the Heavenly Father for the crucifixion of the Messiah; and sorrow with the sorrow of the weeping patriots of Israel they could not and would not. Their refusal was the signal for a determination to seize every opportunity of revenge; and the second episode, to which we have alluded, is connected with a specially furious outburst of maddened passion against Christians on the part of the Jews. Hadrian, fifty years after the fall of Jerusalem, had resolved upon rearing on its ruins the city of AElia Capitolina. Then flashed forth the rebellion of the Jew Bar-cochba (A. D. 132-4). The 'Son of the Star,' supported by his standard-bearer, Akiba, the greatest of the Rabbins, measured his strength with Rome. With mouth breathing forth flames,[88] he inspired his partisans with confidence, and his enemies with terror. Flung back, disappointed, and slain at Bither, the 'Son of a Lie,' as his disappointed countrymen had found him to their cost and re-named him, had yet found opportunities of inflicting terrible tortures and agonizing deaths upon those Christians in Palestine, who had dared to reject his Messianic claims, and refused to blaspheme Christ. And the spirit of vengeance spread from the Holy Land to the provinces. Twenty years after the death of the rebel leader, the Jews of Smyrna—probably to Polycarp 'a synagogue of Satan,' as in earlier times St. John his master had described

them (Rev. ii. 9)—found their opportunity. Their vengeance then was only slaked by the blood of the Christian Bishop.

The Saint's martyrdom was the crowning consummation of the Saint's life. With the Bishop of Durham's help we can now collect all that we shall probably ever know of both; and to this we turn in conclusion.[89]

The date of his martyrdom may be accepted as about 155 A. D.[90] If Polycarp was then 86 years of age, his birth may be placed in A. D. 60 or 70, at a time nearly coincident with the date of the destruction of Jerusalem. That event was the cause which drove St. John to fix his abode ultimately at Ephesus, the traditional home of St. Andrew, and near to the Phrygian Hierapolis, where St. Philip the Apostle died and was buried. The proximity of Smyrna to Ephesus, and the reputation accorded to both in the flattering designation of 'the two eyes' of proconsular Asia, would make intercourse between the cities familiar and frequent. In the Christian advantages consequent upon such intercourse Polycarp had his full share, if it be impossible to assert positively that he was a Smyrnaean by birth, and of Christian parentage. But the legends at the close of the fourth century, as embodied in the story of Pionius, sought and found for his origin a more romantic, if sad, beginning. One night, God's Angel appeared to a widow of Smyrna named Callisto, rich in worldly wealth, but still more rich in good work. 'Go,' he bade her, 'to the Ephesian gate. There you will find two men. They have with them a young lad for sale. Give them their price, and take and keep the child. He is by birth an Eastern.' The child was Polycarp. She did as she was bid. She bought and reared him, and eventually left to him all her substance. The fact implied in the last words, that Polycarp was a comparatively well-to-do man, is the one fact out of the above story supported by more authentic documents. Perhaps also the picture of the man, so pleasing and natural, drawn by Pionius, may present traits faithful to the original:—

'The love of knowledge and the fondness of the Scriptures, which distinguishes the people of the East, bore rich fruit in him. He offered himself a whole offering to God, by prayer and study of the Scriptures, by spareness of diet and simplicity of clothing, by liberal almsgiving. He was bashful and retiring, shunning the busy throngs of men, and consorting only with those who needed his assistance. When he met an aged wood-carrier outside the walls, he would purchase his burden, would carry it himself to the city, and would give it to the widows living near the gate. The Bishop Bucolus cherished him as a son, and he in turn requited his love with filial care and devotion.'

But we may catch from real and genuine sources three glimpses of the man: in youth as the disciple of St. John, in middle age as the champion of Ignatius, in closing life as the teacher of Irenaeus. Of the circle of disciples who gathered round St. John, Polycarp is indubitably the most famous. He delighted, in his declining years, to tell his younger friends what he had himself heard from eye-witnesses of the Lord's life on earth; and he would dwell especially on his intercourse with the Apostle of Love. There is nothing improbable in the belief, that he was ordained to the episcopate by the venerable Apostle. Among his contemporaries were Clement, Papias, and Ignatius. Polycarp knew, as has been stated, the letter of the great Bishop of Rome, and Papias—his 'companion,' as Irenaeus[91] calls him—became his neighbour at Hierapolis. But it is with Ignatius that the younger man is inseparably linked. They met, probably for the first (and only) time, at Smyrna when the great Bishop of Antioch was on his way to martyrdom at Rome. Touching in their affectionateness are the remarks which each passes upon each. Polycarp inspires Ignatius with 'love.' The younger man is to the older 'most blessed,' 'clothed with grace,' marked by 'fervid sincerity,' a man 'whose godly mind is grounded on an immovable rock' (Letter to Polycarp). To Polycarp, Ignatius 'the blessed' is the pattern of men, 'obedient unto the word of righteousness and practising all endurance,' 'encircled in saintly bonds which are the diadems of them that be truly chosen of God and our Lord.' The two men parted, never again to meet on earth, yet to be linked together by 'martyrdom comformable to the Gospel' But ere that 'birthday' arrived, Polycarp had to live for nearly half a century; and potent was his influence upon the men of a younger generation. Melito, Claudius Apollinaris, and Polycrates, famous among the Fathers of Asia, must have known him well; Justin Martyr visited him from Ephesus; but mightiest and dearest of all was his pupil Irenaeus, the champion of orthodoxy against Gnosticism.

'When I was still a boy,' wrote Irenaeus, '(I was) in company with Polycarp in Asia Minor.... I can tell the very place in which the blessed Polycarp used to sit when he discoursed, his goings out and comings in, his manner of life and his personal appearance, his discourses which he gave to the people, and his description of his intercourse with John, and the rest of those who had seen the Lord.'[92]

Those were reminiscences and lessons never forgotten by the future Bishop of Lyons. To him, as to 'all the churches of Asia and to the successors of Polycarp' himself, the pupil of St. John was 'a much more trustworthy and safe witness of the truth than Valentinus and Marcion, and all such wrong-minded men.'[93]

The end came at last. A persecution was raging; how or why we know not. All that can be known is told in the 'Letter of the Smyrnaeans.'[94] The simplicity and pathos of the story, as told by this ancient document, so moved the great Scaliger, that he felt hardly master of himself. We cannot tell the tale of triumph in better words than in those of that exquisite piece of ecclesiastical antiquity. The great annual festival was being held at Smyrna, presided over by the Asiarch and 'high priest'[95] Philip, a wealthy citizen of the wealthy Tralles, and graced by the presence of the Proconsul Statius Quadratus. The persecutor had asked for blood, and blood had been granted him. Already several victims, Philadelphians, 'so torn by lashes that the mechanism of their flesh was visible even as far as the inward veins and arteries,' had 'endured patiently;' showing to the weeping bystanders such bravery that the explanation became current—'(these) martyrs of Christ being tortured, were absent from the flesh, or rather the Lord was standing by and conversing with them.' Others 'condemned to the wild beasts, endured fearful punishments, being made to lie on sharp shells and buffeted with other forms of manifold tortures, that the devil might, if possible, by the persistence of the punishment bring them to a denial; for he tried many wiles against them.' Men remembered afterwards how 'the right noble Germanicus,' scorning the pity the Proconsul would have extended to his youth, 'used violence, and dragged the wild beast towards him.' Such bravery, 'the bravery of the God-fearing and God-beloved people of the Christians,' only whetted the pagan thirst for blood. There rang out the shout, 'Away with the atheists![96] Let search be made for Polycarp!' He had gone against his will into the country, probably to one of his own farms; and he was found without much difficulty. He placed before his captors food and drink, and asked but a single boon of them—'one hour that he might pray unmolested.' Those mounted soldiers, 'wondering why there should be such eagerness for the apprehension of an old man like him,' gave their consent. 'He stood up and prayed; and being full of the grace of God, for two hours he could not hold his peace, so that they who heard him were amazed, and many repented that they had come against such a venerable old man.' They brought him to the city, seated on an ass. Steadily did he refuse the real and sincere endeavours of compassionate heathen to 'save himself.' 'What harm,' they asked, 'is there in saying, Caesar is Lord, and offering incense?' He would only answer, 'I am not going to do what you counsel me.' As he entered the stadium, the human roar, fiercer and more cruel than that of wild beasts, rose above every other sound. Polycarp did not heed it; a voice came to him from heaven, 'Be strong, Polycarp, and play the man;' and, nerved by what other Christians had also heard, he stood at last before Statius. Words, at first pitiful, greeted him: 'Have respect to thine age!—Swear by the genius of Caesar! Say, "Away with the atheists."' The Saint caught up the last word. He 'looked with solemn countenance upon that vast multitude of lawless heathen; and groaning and looking up to heaven, he said, 'Away with the atheists.' Was he then yielding? The Proconsul had misunderstood him, but he pressed him hard and said 'Swear the oath, and I will release thee. Revile the Christ!' Polycarp looked him in the face, and gave him the answer which can never die. 'Fourscore and six years have I been His servant, and He hath done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King Who saved me?' The words of pity changed into threats. 'I have wild beasts here,' said Statius, 'and I will throw thee to them except thou change thy mind.' 'Call them,' was the unflinching answer. 'If thou despisest the wild beasts, I will cause thee to be consumed by fire.' Polycarp remembered a dream of three days before in which he had seen his pillow burning with fire, and which he had interpreted to those with him as signifying that he would be burnt alive. He answered now, 'Thou threatenest that fire which burneth for a season and after a little while is quenched. For thou art ignorant of the fire of the future judgment and eternal punishment, which is reserved for the ungodly:' and then he added—in his impatience to be 'made a partaker with Christ'—'But why delayest thou? Come, do what thou wilt.' Saying this, 'he was inspired with courage and joy, and his countenance was filled with grace.'

The herald's proclamation was soon heard announcing three times, 'Polycarp hath confessed himself to be a Christian;' and again the human yell broke forth from Gentile and Jew, this time fashioning itself into distinct speech: 'This is the teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians, the puller down of our gods, who teacheth numbers not to sacrifice nor worship.... Let the lion loose upon him!' 'That is impossible' was the answer of the Asiarch, 'for the sports have closed.' They shouted out 'with one accord, "Burn him alive!" Quicker than words could tell, the crowds collected timber and faggots from workshops and baths, and the Jews especially assisted in this with zeal, as was their wont.' They placed around him the 'instruments prepared for the pile,' and were going to nail him to the stake. He interposed with his last request of men, 'Leave me as I am. He that hath granted me to endure the fire, will grant me also to remain at the pile unmoved, without the security you seek from nails.' They 'tied him to the stake.' He stood up 'like a noble ram out of a great flock for an offering, a burnt-sacrifice made ready and acceptable to God;' and looking up to heaven, made his last request of God in one of the noblest prayers preserved in ancient or modern literature. His Amen said, 'the firemen lighted the fire. The mighty flame flashed forth,' and men saw then, what in later days they saw repeated at the martyrdom of a Savonarola and of a Hooper,[97] the fire, 'like the sail of a vessel filled with wind, surrounding as with a wall the body of the martyr. It was there in the midst, not like flesh burning, but like gold and silver refined in a furnace.' Could he not die?

'Lawless men, seeing that his body could not be consumed by the fire, ordered an executioner to go up to him and stab him with a dagger. And when he had done this, there came forth a quantity of blood,[98] so that it extinguished the fire; and all the multitude marvelled that there should be so great a difference between the unbelievers and the elect.'

The Christians hoped to have taken away the 'poor body,' but 'the jealous and envious Evil One, the adversary of the family of the righteous,' instigated the Jews to urge upon the magistrate not to give up his body, lest they (the Christians) should abandon the crucified One and begin to worship this man,... 'not knowing' (add the narrators) 'how impossible it would be for them to forsake at any time the Christ Who suffered for the salvation of the whole world of those who are saved—suffered, though sinless, for sinners—not to worship any other.' The body was placed again on the pile and consumed. Then 'the bones, more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold,' were taken up and laid in a suitable place.

So died a Polycarp as had died an Ignatius, both martyred, and both memorable for 'nobleness, patient endurance, and loyalty to their Master.' The motto of their deaths was the motto of their lives, condensed into the saying of the martyr of Antioch to the martyr of Smyrna:—

'[Greek: hopou pleion kopos, poly kerdos.]

'The greater the pain, the greater the gain.'

We know nothing certain of the tombs which tradition or affection have pointed out as the last resting-place of the calcined remains of either Saint, but we need no longer such perishable monuments. The English-speaking and English-reading race have in the volumes of the Bishop of Durham a fitting shrine for those literary remains which survive destruction. Scholarship and piety, study and prayer, have here combined to shed light upon the writings, and to raise a monument to the lives, of those champions of early Christianity, who in their day wrought a good work, and still speak, though dead.

FOOTNOTES:

[64] Bishop Lightfoot's 'Ignatius and Polycarp,' by Prof. A. Harnack, Ph.D, in 'Expositor' for December, 1885, p. 401.

[65] 'The Apostolic Fathers,' p. 116. By Canon Scott Holland.

[66] [Greek: hechtroma], 'Ep. to the Romans,' 9, with Bp. Lightfoot's note. Compare 1 Corinth. xv. 8.

[67] Herod, vii. 31, 187.

[68] 'Ep. to the Rom.' 5, 'to the Ephes.' II, with note

[69] See the useful Table in i. 222, and the excursus on 'Spurious and Interpolated Epistles' in i. 223-266. Cf. also the 'Appendix Ignatiana,' ii. 587, &c.