I have little doubt that the strong expressions of humility that are found from time to time in Ignatius are wrung from him by the recollection of the life that he led before he became a Christian. They are doubtless suggested by St. Paul, and they spring from a feeling not less intense than his.
The humility of St. John is a different matter. But as very shallow and obtuse criticisms are sometimes passed upon it, the Ignatian parallel may serve as a wholesome warning. I shall have occasion to return to this point later.
The main arguments against the Ignatian authorship of the letters were drawn from the seemingly advanced condition of things which they implied in the way of heretical teaching on the one hand, and church organization on the other. The objections on these grounds have been quite cleared up; and now the letters supply some of the most important data that the historian has to go upon.
It will be remembered that Bishop Lightfoot began by converting himself before he converted others. He had been inclined to think at one time that the shorter Syriac version represented the true Ignatius. He tells us himself how he came to give up this opinion. He says:
‘I found that to maintain the priority of the Curetonian letters I was obliged from time to time to ascribe to the supposed Ignatian forger feats of ingenuity, knowledge, intuition, skill, and self-restraint, which transcended all bounds of probability’ (Preface to the First Edition).
This is another bit of experience that it may be worth while to bear in mind.
My second example is perhaps in this sense not quite so clear a case, that there is not as yet as complete a consensus in regard to it as there is in regard to the Ignatian Letters. It is taken from the discussions which have been going on at various times in the last twenty-five years as to the genuineness of the treatise De Vita Contemplativa which has come down to us among the works of Philo.
A marked impression was made on the side of the attack by a monograph by Lucius, Die Therapeuten u. ihre Stellung in d. Gesch. der Askese, published in 1879. This, together with the acceptance at least of the negative part of its result by Schürer, inaugurated a period during which opinion was on the whole rather unfavourable to the treatise. A reaction began with two articles by Massebieau in 1888, followed by the important and valuable work of Mr. F. C. Conybeare, Philo about the Contemplative Life, Oxford, 1895. The success of this defence may be regarded as clenched by the accession of such excellent and impartial authorities as Cohn and Wendland, who are bringing out the great new edition of Philo, and of Dr. James Drummond. It is true that Schürer reviewed Mr. Conybeare in an adverse sense so far as his main conclusion was concerned, and that he still maintains his opinion in the third edition of his Geschichte d. Jüdischen Volkes (1898); but I must needs think that his arguments were satisfactorily and decisively answered by Dr. Drummond in the Jewish Quarterly Review for 1896.
One or two points in this reply of Dr. Drummond have a general bearing, relevant to our present subject.