'Several of these manuscripts contained notices of the donors, by whom they had been presented to the monks of St. Mary Deipara. Among them were some in the handwriting of Moses of Nisibis, some time superior of the convent; in which he stated, that in the year of the Greeks 1243, or 931 of our era, he had added to the library no less than two hundred and fifty volumes, which he had procured, by donation and purchase, during a recent visit to Bagdad. A few of these, I was aware, had been obtained and transported to the Vatican by Elias Assemani in 1707, and by J. S. Assemani in 1715; but from the accounts given to me by Lord Prudhoe, now Duke of Northumberland, who had visited this convent in 1828, and by the Hon. Robert Curzon*, who had also been a guest of the monks of the Nitrian Desert about nine years later, I had every reason to conclude that there were still lying in obscurity, in the Valley of the Ascetics, at least two hundred volumes, of an antiquity anterior to the close of the ninth century. Encouraged by finding one Syriac Epistle of St. Ignatius to hope for the discovery of others, and extremely desirous of exploring the remainder of those volumes of venerable antiquity, and of rescuing them from the obscurity in which they were lying and from the destruction with which they were threatened, I naturally felt a most intense anxiety that some measures should be speedily taken to obtain for the library of the British Museum the rest of the manuscripts belonging to the Nitrian convent. Archdeacon Tattam, equally zealous with myself in the same cause, voluntarily offered his services to undertake another voyage into Egypt, and to endeavour to negociate for the purchase of them. The present Duke of Northumberland, most cordially approved and effectually aided our endeavours; and in the year 1842, the trustees having applied for and obtained a special grant from the Lords of the Treasury for this purpose, Archdeacon Tattam shortly afterwards started upon his second expedition into Egypt, in quest of manuscripts. This undertaking was crowned with very great success; and on the 1st of March, in the year 1843, between three and four hundred additional volumes from the monastery of the Valley of the Ascetics, arrived in the British Museum. I immediately began to examine their contents, and had the rare satisfaction of having my hopes realised by finding among them not only several additional passages from St. Ignatius, quoted by various authors, but also three entire Epistles, to St. Polycarp, to the Ephesians, and to the Romans, in a volume of very considerable antiquity.'† - Though the good monks of St. Mary Deipara professed to dispose of their entire remaining collection to Archdeacon Tattam, it turned out that they withheld nearly one half of it for their own prospective benefit. These volumes, however, found their In his most agreeable 'Visit to the Monasteries of the East,' Mr. Curzon has since enabled all our readers to understand the difficulty with which these treasures of the tomb' were won. 6 † Corpus Ignatianum, Introduction, pp. xxvi.-xxviii. way to the Museum four years later; through the intervention of M. Pacho, and the liberality of the present Lords of the Treasury. Among them Mr. Cureton had the satisfaction of finding another ancient copy of the same three Ignatian Epistles. He had previously perceived that this Syriac text presented the subject under an entirely new aspect; and he lost no time in preparing an edition of the Three Epistles in a volume of moderate dimensions; in which he assigned strong reasons for regarding these as the only genuine remains of the venerable martyr. The success of this publication, in conjunction with a controversy to which it gave rise, determined the learned editor to lay the entire subject before the public; and thus furnish all, who are disposed to investigate the matter, with the means of judging for themselves. This merit, at least, may be fairly claimed for the Corpus Ignatianum,' and will, we think, be freely allowed to it by all parties. All that has at any time been attributed to the venerable Bishop of Antioch is here exhibited in its various forms and modifications; and the evidence on both sides is fairly and elaborately stated, -especially that furnished by ancient writers, which is clearly the most to the purpose. Our limits forbid us to attempt more than a brief statement of the argument, as it now stands; and indeed the real merits of the case appear to lie in a small compass. The first point, and that not an unimportant one is, that the Three Epistles, as opposed to the larger collection, can lay claim to a very good prescription. The Greek and Latin copies in that collection are notoriously of no antiquity; and all the manuscripts without exception are admitted to contain a certain amount of spurious matter. The Medicean MS., the one chiefly relied upon by the advocates of the Seven Epistles, exhibits several not recognised by Eusebius; and, doubtless, when entire, contained all the twelve acknowledged by the Latin copies of the shorter recension. If, therefore, the authority of those MSS. is worth any thing, it is as good for the Epistles rejected by Usher and his followers as for those admitted by them. But the Three Epistles of the Syriac copies stand on a very different footing. They are found in MSS. some six centuries older than the Greek and Latin ones, closely agreeing in contents and phraseology. There is a sufficient number of orthographical and verbal discrepancies between them to show their independence of each other; and they betray none of those marks of deliberate * *It is but just to observe, that several emendations suggested by Mr. Cureton in his first edition, are confirmed by the MS. procured by M. Pacho. interpolation, so glaringly manifest in the Greek copies. It would violate every fundamental rule of evidence and criticism, to place the authority of the latter so much more recent and so notoriously falsified-on a level with that of the former. The next point in the argument, is the direct evidence in favour of the Three Epistles, furnished by ancient writers. It has been already observed, that writings of this character by Ignatius have been mentioned, or directly cited, by Fathers of the second and third centuries. One of those, Polycarp, was the Saint's contemporary; and two others, Irenæus and Theophilus of Antioch, lived in the middle of the same century. All references made by them, as well as by Origen - the most learned and voluminous author of the following age-apply to the Three Epistles found in the Syriac copies, and to them only; and their citations regularly agree with the Syriac textnever with the passages superadded to it in the Greek and Latin recensions. The four remaining Epistles are never once mentioned by the early Fathers, directly or indirectly; nor, indeed, by any other writer prior to Eusebius; in whose time it is notorious that many spurious writings were current, which he does not always sufficiently discriminate from the genuine ones. But the internal evidence in favour of the Three Epistles is, in our opinion, still more decisive. When the attention of scholars began to be directed to the Ignatian Epistles, in the form under which they appeared in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, impartial and discerning men could not but perceive that they exhibited a great deal of very suspicious matter. It was not very probable, that a man in close custody for the capital offence of being a Christian, and already ordered to Rome for execution, should find time and opportunity for writing so many Epistles; still less that he should digress into such multifarious and extraneous topics. The circumstances, too, under which he is alleged to have communicated with the different churches, are grossly improbable, and beset with chronological and geographical difficulties which it is next to impossible to get rid of. A still more fatal objection, is that neither the language, nor the sentiments, nor the doctrines of the Greek Epistles are those of the period in which Ignatius lived. The style, the terminology", the ex A signal example occurs in the Epistle to the Smyrnæans, c. iii. p. 105. of Mr. Cureton's edition, where Christ is represented as saying Ιδετε ὅτι οὐκ ἐιμὶ δαιμόνιον ἀσώματον.” This passage is quoted by Eusebius, who states at the same time that he does not know where Ignatius got it. It was however known a good many years before to travagant hierarchical pretensions, all savour of the fourth century, and are totally inconsistent with the character of the second. There are, moreover, numerous and direct allusions to heresies, which had never been heard of in the time of Ignatius; specially to those of certain sects of the Docetæ, of Valentinus, and even of Arius. On this point it is worthy of notice that Irenæus, who wrote an elaborate refutation of the Valentinian heresy, and who avails himself of the aid of ancient writers wherever he can do so, does not say a syllable about the censure of the doctrine by Ignatius, though he was well acquainted with his writings. These and many similar objections apply to the Seven Epistles as edited by Vossius and Usher, no less than to the entire collection. In fact the shorter recension exhibits a greater proportion of incongruities and glaring anachronisms than the longer. They are of course ably and powerfully urged by Daillé. The Three Epistles found in the Syriac version are, however, of a very different character. Being translations, they can, of course, furnish no direct criterion of the style and phraseology of the original; but the Syriac diction is pronounced by competent judges to be that of an early and pure age, and to bear the impress of the second century or early part of the third. They are written throughout in a plain unpretending style; and in a devout and affectionate tone; and contain nothing but what Ignatius might very well have said, under the circumstances in which he is known to have been placed. They are comprised within reasonable limits; they are addressed to persons with whom he was in immediate contact; and they dwell on topics which the occasion would naturally suggest. The fabrications of the Greek copies were plainly meant to serve the particular purposes of the authors;-to discountenance certain opinions, and to exalt 6 Origen-not however as being employed or sanctioned by Ignatius, but as occurring in the apocryphal Doctrine of St. Peter.' The learned father, moreover, stigmatises the word 'aouaToç' as one never used by an ancient ecclesiastical author. This proves clearly that the Epistle to the Smyrnæans was fabricated after the time of Origen, and that materials not very orthodox or respectable were made use of in its compilation. Mr. Cureton's labours would have spared Dr. Arnold the commentary on the Epistles of Ignatius, which takes up so large a portion of his 'Fragment on the Church.' The Epistle to the Smyrnæans contains the remarkable passage: 'It is good to acknowledge God and the bishop. He who honours the bishop is 'honoured by God; he who does any thing without the knowledge of the bishop, serves the devil.' Arnold might well feel grateful that God had not permitted any such language to appear in the writings of the apostles. ་ certain orders of men. But to forge compositions like the three under consideration would have been a very gratuitous task; consisting as they do of practical moral and religious exhortations, little calculated to favour the designs or the interests of any party. On these and various other grounds, which we at present abstain from specifying, we feel quite willing to acquiesce in the conclusion of the learned editor, which it is but just to give in his own words: Upon the whole, therefore, the Three Epistles, as they are now restored by the aid of the ancient Syriac version, appear to have as strong and substantial claims to be considered and received as genuine and authentic, as any writings whatever of Christian antiquity. The grounds of their credibility are not at all affected by any of the forcible negative arguments which have been urged against the Ignatian Epistles generally; and they remain uninjured by any of the attacks which have been directed against the two recensions of the Greek. This of itself affords a very strong presumption in their favour. The chain of external evidence likewise dates from the very period at which they were written. * There is also another consideration, which I ought not perhaps to omit in this place, because it affords incidental evidence of no inconsiderable moment to the genuineness of those epistles; which is, that the discovery of this Syriac version fulfils in a manner various predictions, which the acuteness of several critics had announced respecting the genuine Epistles, should they ever be brought to light. Archbishop Usher, as I have stated above, looked forward to the recovery of the Syriac version, as a means in all probability calculated to throw much light upon the very difficult and intricate question of the Ignatian Epistles. Tenzel expressed his conviction, that unless a fresh and genuine copy should be discovered-intimating at the same time his expectation that it must come from Asia-all hope of restoring the Epistles of Ignatius to their original and genuine state must be abandoned. Griesbach pointed out the probability that both the Greek Recensions might be a paraphrase or expansion of the genuine letters of Ignatius, which once existed in a shorter form, made by different sects of Christians for their own peculiar purposes. Semler observed, that the Epistles of Ignatius were certainly known to Irenæus; but that they could not at that period have contained any of those sentences directed against the Valentinian heresy-and that these must have been added subsequently. Ziegler expressed his belief that, when all the spurious and interpolated parts should be removed from the Ignatian Epistles, the original matter remaining would be but small: and Baumgarten-Crusius propounded an opinion, that it was not improbable that another and a different recension from the two hitherto known might yet come to light. How, then, are all these anticipations fulfilled by the discovery of the ancient Syriac version, of which this present volume gives the result? Another recension of the Ignatian Epistles, hitherto unknown, is now brought to light-less both in number and quantity |