apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

2 8 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
in this instance was correctly taken in an active sense. Vincentius of
Beauvais {Spa: Hist. x. 57)
small pieces
relates how 'when his heart was cut into
(minutalim) the name of the Lord Jesus Christ was found
inscribed in golden letters on every single piece, as we read (ut legitur);
for he had said that he had Christ in his heart.' We cannot fail to be
reminded by this of the sad saying of the Enghsh Queen, that when she
was dead the name of Calais would be read engraven
on her heart.
This latter legend of Ignatius however seems never to have gained
any wide currency like the former.
Of the origin, birth, and education of Ignatius we are told absolutely
nothing. The supposition that he was a slave is a very uncertain inference
from his own language (see Jioin. 4, with the note). It may be
conjectured however with probability from expressions in his letters,
that he was not born of Christian parentage ;
that he was brought up a
pagan and converted in mature life to Christianity and that his ; youth
had been stained by those sins of which as a heathen he had made no
account at the time, but which stung his soul with reproaches in the
retrospect, now that it was rendered sensitive by the quickening power
of the Gospel. Thus he, like S. Paul, speaks of himself {lioin. 9) as an
iKTpwfxa, a child untimely born to Christ. There had been something
violent, dangerous, and unusual in his spiritual nativity. Coupled with
this expression is another, which he likewise uses elsewhere {Ephes. 21,
Trail. 13, Smyrn. 1 1).
He speaks of himself as 'the last' (eo-xaros) of the
Antiochene Christians, as unworthy therefore to have a place among them.
It cannot indeed be safely inferred that this expression
'
latest in time ' ;
but the sense of inferiority which it
implies
signifies
in itself
is best
explained by supposing that his conversion was comparatively late in
date. Indeed not a few expressions in his epistles, otherwise hardly
explicable, become full of life and meaning, when read by the light of
this hypothesis. His was one of those ' broken ' natures out of which, as
Zahn has truly said (/.
v. A. p. 404), God's heroes are made. If not a
persecutor of Christ, if not a foe to Christ, as seems probable, he had at
least been for a considerable portion of his life an alien from Christ.
Like S. Paul, like Augustine, like Francis Xavier, like Luther, like John
Bunyan, he could not forget that his had been a dislocated life and the
;
memory of the catastrophe, which had shattered his former self, filled
him with awe and thanksgiving, and fanned the fervour of his devotion
to a white heat.
But, if this be so, what must be said of the tradition which represents
him as ordained, or at least taught, by Apostles What claim has he to
the title of an ' '
apostolic father
The earliest tradition represents Ignatius as the second of the Antio-