apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

314 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
five times as extensive. If this fact is borne in mind, the amount of
coincidence is surprising ;
and one who maintains that the Seven
Epistles of the Middle Form were produced by interpolation from the
Curetonian letters, postulates in his pseudo-Ignatius a prodigy of minute
observation, of subtle insight, of imitative skill, of laborious care, which
is
probably without a parallel in the history of literary forgeries and
which assuredly was an utter impossibility among the Christians in the
second and third centuries.
It will have been observed also that the coincidences extend over
all the letters. Thus our examination supplies a refutation alike of
Ussher who accepted six out of the seven and rejected the Epistle to
Polycarp alone, and of Renan who rejects six out of the seven and
accepts the Epistle to the Romans alone. If indeed we had taken the
Epistle to Polycarp or the Epistle to the Romans as our starting point
and set ourselves to show by the evidence of diction that the epistle in
question was the work of the same author as the other six, a very much
larger body of proof might have been gathered together bearing on the
question at issue. But though our main object
has been somewhat
different, sufficient evidence has been forthcoming incidentally to establish
these points also. The Seven Epistles as they stand in the Middle
Recension are evidently the work of one hand.
2. Another highly important consideration is the connexion of
thought. Where whole clauses, sentences, and paragraphs are absent
from the one recension and present in the other, the greater or less
coherence in the consecutive parts may be expected to furnish a criterion
of the highest value. The recension in which thoughts succeed each
other naturally and easily claims the palm of priority over the recension
in which abruptness and inconsequence prevail. The transitions indeed
are often rapid in either form, and this must therefore be regarded as a
characteristic of the author (whichever may be the original form of the
letters) ;
but we have a right to expect
that there shall be no incongruity.
On this point it is well that the advocates of the three Short Epistles
should be allowed to state the case themselves, and I therefore give
Cureton's own words (C /. p. xlii) ;
'In the Epistle to the Ephesians at least two- thirds of the matter has
been omitted. Now had these passages so omitted belonged to the original
epistle, it seems hardly possible that they could have been taken away in
the manner in which they have been, sometimes entire chapters, at others
considerable parts, sometimes whole sentences, and at others
half sentences
or single words, without interrupting the general tenor of the epistle or