apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

THE GENUINENESS. 329
they had discovered, in the Ignatian Epistles, still remained. This was
inevitable. Where there are good grounds for suspecting a man's
character, even his most innocent actions are scanned with misgiving
and interpreted to his disadvantage. So it was with these Ignatian
writings. Suspicion had been justly excited against the only Ignatian
letters hitherto known ; and, when excited, it unjustly sought a handle
in any matter that came to hand. Thus the uninterpolated passages
suffered from their companionship with the interpolations. Not more
righteous than Jupiter of old, outraged criticism
'incesto addidit integrum.'
Even when Ussher's discovery had severed the companionship between
the false and true, the taint of the old suspicion remained.
The smirch of the mud previously thrown still
clung to the innocent
victim, and it has never been altogether effaced.
Yet on the whole Ussher's discovery was felt to have furnished the
true key to the solution of the Ignatian question. He had acted the
part of the Good Samaritan, wrote Bishop Hall, and had bound up
the wounds of the poor traveller who had fallen into the hands of
thieves and been shamefully handled by them'. Adversaries indeed
have paraded the names of those who, notwithstanding the fresh light
thrown on the subject by this discovery,
continued to condemn or to
suspect these letters wholly or in part. It is not difficult, where the
search ranges over a sufficient period, to draw up a considerable list
of second and third-rate names, with here and there an author of higher
repute, who took the adverse side. Meanwhile the very far larger
number of critics and theologians, who have accepted the Seven
Epistles as genuine, is altogether forgotten. Nor, if we regard the
weight, rather than the numbers, of the names ranged on either side
in the immediately succeeding generations, can we hesitate to say
where the preponderance lies. No such list of names can be produced
on the other side, as Ussher and Voss and Grotius and Pearson and Bull
^
'
Ussher's Works xvi. p. 92 Inciderat
nempe bonus iste viator Hierosolymitanus
in latrones quosdam Hierochuntinos, qui
ilium non spoliarant
modo sed misere
etiam peneque ad mortem vulnerarant ;
praeterierant saucium ac fere moribundum
nescio quot Parkeri, Coci, Salmasii, aliique
nuperae sectae coryphaei... vestra unius
pietatis [pietas ], optimi instar Samaritae,
vinum oleumque infudit tarn patentibus
vulneribus, abstersit saniem, foedeque
hiulca plagarum ora manu tenera fasciavit;
fereque exanimem vestro typorum jumento
imposuit ac communi denique ecclesiae
;
hospitio, non sine maximis impensis, commendavit.'
Later on in the same letter
(p. 93) Hall writes, 'Bis martyrium passus
Ignatius noster; tua demum opera, praesul
honoratissime, reviviscit.'