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SPURIOUS AND INTERPOLATED EPISTLES. 245
Florence, which promised to supply the deficiency {Polyc. et Ign. Ep. p.
xxvi, App. Ign. praef.), but had not succeeded in getting a transcript.
The discovery however was not long delayed. Two years after the
appearance of Ussher's work, Isaac Voss (Amstel. 1646) published six
out of the seven epistles of the Middle Recension from this Florentine
MS; while the absence of the seventh— the Epistle to the Romans—
was easily accounted for by the fact that the MS was imperfect
at the end, so that this epistle (as in the corresponding Latin) must
have been incorporated in the Acts of Martyrdom of the saint, with
which the volume would close, and both together must have disappeared
with the missing sheets. About half a century later the missing
Greek Acts of Ignatius with the incorporated Epistle to the Romans
were discovered in a ms belonging to the Colbert collection {see above,
p. 75), and published by Ruinart (Paris a.d. 1689) in his Ada Martyriwi
Sincera. Thus the Greek text of the seven epistles of the
Middle Recension was completed.
By Ussher's labours the question between the Long and the Middle
Recension was— or ought
— to have been set at rest for ever'. Yet
notwithstanding the cogency of the evidence critics have boldly stepped
forward from time to time and endeavoured to reinstate the shattered
idol. Whiston early in the last century (a. d. 171 i),
Meier" towards the
middle of the present (a.d. 1836), have led this more than forlorn hope,
and probably the succession will be kept up at long intervals till the end
of time. Such critical eccentricities form a curious study in Hterary
history, but do not need any serious refutation.
But before we finally dismiss the Long Recension two points deserve
consideration. First. The question has been treated hitherto almost
entirely in reference to the Seven Epistles which occur in both the Long
and the Middle Recension. Little has been said, except incidentally, of
the five or (including the letter of Mary of Cassobola to Ignatius) the six
Ign. Mar. 4. Though Turrianus praises was not a professional critic however,
the Medicean ms for its correctness, he there is no reason to suppose that he did
failed to see that it contained the key to so from deliberate preference. About the
the solution of the Ignatian question. same time Morinus [Comment, de Sacr.
^
It took some little time however £cc/. 6>ra'm. Par. iii. p. 45 sq, Paris 1655,
before the results of Ussher's labours quoted by Cureton C. I p. xiv) defends
were generally accepted. Thus Jeremy the Long
Recension. In Suicer's The-
Taylor in his Doctrine and Practice of saurus (ed. i, 1682; ed. 2, 1728)
it is
Repentance [Works ix. p. 94), published still
quoted as if authentic,
ten years after the appearance of ^
Ussher's
Theolog. Stztdien u. Kritiken 1836,
edition, still quotes the Epistle to the Mag- p. 340.
nesians from the Long Recension. As he