apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

282 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
additional portions of these three, were forgeries. He was at once
attacked by a writer in the English Review (no. viii, July 1845), since
known to be Dr Chr. Wordsworth, afterwards bishop of Lincoln, but at
that time a fellow Canon with Cureton at Westminster. Wordsworth
maintained (p. 348) that this Syriac version was 'a miserable epitome
made by an Eutychian heretic,' and that ' so far from invalidating the
claim of the Greek text to be received as the genuine language of
Ignatius, it does in fact... greatly corroborate and confirm it.' The
gauntlet thus thrown down was taken up at once by Cureton. In
his
Vindiciae Ignatianae (London 1846) he defended his position against
his anonymous assailant, and more especially vindicated the Syriac
epistles 'from the charge of heresy'; and, having meanv/hile discovered
a third MS, likewise in the British Museum, he published three years later
his most complete work on the subject, the Corpus Ignatia7itim (London
1849), in which he discusses the whole question at length and gives,
'
in the words of the title-page, a complete collection of the Ignatian
Epistles, genuine, interpolated, and spurious, together with numerous
extracts from them, as quoted by
tenth century in Syriac, Greek, and Latin ;
ecclesiastical writers down to the
an English translation of the
Syriac text, copious notes, and introduction.'
Meanwhile the subject had been taken up by other combatants on
both sides, and the fray became general. Among the earliest and
staunchest allies of Cureton, was the Chevalier (afterwards Baron)
Bunsen, who defended his position in two several works published at
the same time (Hamburg 1847), Die drei dchten u. die vier tmdchten
Brief e dcs Ignatius von Antiochien and Ignatius von Antiochien u. seine
Zeit. The former work contains the text of the epistles in the
several recensions and is dedicated to Lachmann ;
the later discusses
the main question in seven letters addressed to Neander. On the same
side also were ranged A. Ritschl {Enistehung der altkatholischen Kirche
ed. I, 1850; ed. 2, 1857), Weiss (Reuter's Repertorium 1852, p. 169
sq), R. h. Lipsius in two several tracts [Ueber die Aechtheit der
syrischen Recension der ignatianischen Briefe in the Zeitschrift f. die
historische Thcologie 1856, i. p. 3 sq; Ueber das Verhdltniss des Textes
der drei syrischen Briefe des Ignatios zu den Ubrigen
Recensionei der
ig7iatianischen Literatur in Abhandlungen fiir die Kunde des Morgenlandes
1859, 1. p. i sq), Pressens^ {Trois Premiers Siecles 11. p. 392 sq,
1858), Ewald {Gesch. d. Volkes Israel vii. p. 281 sq, 1859), Milman
{Hist, of Christianity 11. p. 102, ed. 2, 1863), Bohringer {Kirchengesch.
in Biographieen i. p. 16 sq, ed. 2, 1864) and (though less definitely)
Bleek {Ei)il. in das Neue Test. 1862, p. 142), with others. The opposition