apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

THE GENUINENESS. 331
1645, quoted by Pearson Vind. Ign. p. 42). He was followed immediately
(a. D. 1646) by Blondel {Apologia pro Sejitentia Hieronyvii
de Episcopis et Pnsbytcris praef. p. 39 sq). These writers now saw no
course open to them but to reject the Ignatian Epistles, altogether.
Apparently it did not occur to them to ask whether Ussher's discovery
did not require them to reconsider their fundamental position as regards
episcopacy.
With the French Protestants were ranged the English Puritans.
The treatise of Blondel had been answered by Hammond Dissertatmies
Qiiafuor, quibus Episcopatus Jura ex S. Scripturis
et Prhnaei'a Antiquitate
adstruuntur etc. (Lond. 165 1).
Hammond's work provoked a
reply from the London Ministers entitled Jus Divinum Ministerii
Evangelici 'published by the Provincial Assembly of London' 1654.
An individual minister also, Dr J. Owen, in a preface to The Saints'
Persaierance (1654) replied to Hammond. This elicited a rejoinder
from Hammond, An Atiswer to the Animadversions on the Dissertations
toiichijig Ignatius' s Epistles etc., London, 1654. The weapons of these
English Puritans were taken from the French armoury, and their
writings do not need any further notice.
A few years later appeared the famous work of Daille De Scriptis
quae sub Dionysii Arcopagitae et Ignatii Antiocheni nominibus circumferuntur
libri duo (Genevae, 1666). As this work created much stir at
the time, and has been highly extolled by some later writers on the
Ignatian question, it may be worth our while to endeavour to appraise
its true value. As regards the spuriousness of the writings attributed
to Dionysius the Areopagite, the verdict of Daille had already been
anticipated by sound critics, and has been endorsed since by almost
all reasonable men. But his treatment of the Ignatian writings does
not deserve the same praise. It is marked indeed by very considerable
learning and great vivacity of style but ; something more than knowledge
and vigour is required to constitute genuine criticism. The
critical spirit is essentially judicial. Its main function is, as the word
itself implies, to discriminate. The spirit of Daille's work is the reverse
of this. It is characterized throughout by deliberate confusion. Though
at the outset he states the facts with regard to the different recensions
of the Ignatian letters, as brought to light by Ussher's discovery, yet he
literature as if it
proceeds at once to treat the whole body of Ignatian
were the product of one author'. In this way the Vossian letters are
^
Thus for instance he writes (c. xxiii); man to whom they are fictitiously ascribed,
'
There are also some things in these letters as for instance his charging wives not to
foreign to the gravity and wisdom of the salute their husbands by their own names;