'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 καθολικος 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 Smyrnæan 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 Daillé 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 Smyrnæans) 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 Daillé, 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? Irenæus (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 Irenæus, the depositary of Apostolic tradition. Irenæus 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:—