real significance from the devil and from the unbelieving. The terms Son and Λόγος are not applied to express the relations of the Divine Persons. Ignatius is content to maintain on the one hand the unity of God, on the other the eternal personality of Christ.
XI. The question what special heresies are denounced in the epistles possesses, in relation to their date, an importance scarcely below that of episcopacy. All, except Romans, contain warnings against heresy, and the exhortations to unity and submission to authority derive their urgency from this danger. It was long a question whether two forms of heresy, Judaic and Docetic, or only one, Judaeo-docetic, were aimed at. But already in 1856, despite the arguments of Hilgenfeld (i. 230), it appeared to Lipsius (i. 31) that the question was decided in the latter sense. The heretics were wandering teachers, ever seeking proselytes (Eph. 7), and all the denunciations of heresy are directed against that mixture of Judaism with Gnosticism, represented by some whom Ignatius met in his journey (Mgn. 8, 10, 11; Tr. 9; Sm. 1). The idea of Ritschl (Entst. der altk. Kirche, p. 580) that they were Montanist teachers met with little favour.
Cureton and others have thought to find direct allusions to the teaching of Valentinus in the epistles (but see Pearson II. vi.). But the allusion Λόγος ἀπὸ Σιγῆς προελθών (Mgn. 8) is not applicable to Valentinus.
Basilides is probably early enough, and disciples of his might have been wandering in Asia Minor; Cerinthus too was of this age. I. and II. John contain warnings against Docetism, which Polycarp (Ep. 7) applies to the heretics of his own time, which was also that of Ignatius. Of all the heretics whom Bunsen and others have supposed the epistles to denounce, Saturninus alone can be proved to have held the doctrines they condemn.
XII. From the epistles, as Hilgenfeld (i. 225–226) truly remarks, different critics, according to their bias, have derived in some cases the very highest, and in some the very poorest, notion of the writer's character. The letters are indeed more characteristic than any we have between St. Paul and the great Fathers of the 4th cent.; but they give no record of the writer's surroundings or of his ways in his diocese when the times were quiet. His name is Latin; his style very Semitic. He had not seen the Lord or the apostles, and was not, as MS. Colb. makes him, a fellow-pupil with Polycarp of St. John. It is perhaps somewhat precarious to infer with Zahn, from his strong terms of self-reproach (Eph. 21; Mgn. 14), that he had led an un-Christian or anti-Christian life in early years. His longing for death is extreme, but is really for life under another and better form. We do not know that he courted martyrdom before his judges, since we only meet him after he has been condemned and is well used to the idea. All his exhortations have the one burden and object, closer union with Christ. He bids others seek, and seeks himself, that union in permanence and perfection which the Holy Eucharist gives here in part. He does not imagine death in itself to have any value (Rom. 4; Tr. 3, 4; Eph. 12; Sm. 4). The prayers he asks are not for his death, but for his due preparation (Eph. 21; Mgn. 14; Tr. 12, 13). For an interesting summary of the moral aspect of the Ignatian epistles in respect to the personality of the writer and to the ideal which his teaching presents, see Sprintzl, pp. 244 sqq.
XIII. The great majority of critics, whether adverse to the genuineness of the epistles or not, have recognized that the seven epistles professing to be of Ignatius, as shewn by the individuality of the author there displayed, and the one of Polycarp, form an indivisible whole. Romans, indeed, is the brightest and most interesting of the letters. This is because its chief subject is his personal eagerness for martyrdom; he is writing to the place where he expects to suffer, and to people who can help or hinder his object.
The Ep. of Polycarp contains a witness for the whole body of epistles, which (if it be genuine) renders almost all others superfluous; since it mentions letters written to Smyrna by Ignatius, and by Polycarp collected and sent to Philippi; and intimates the existence of others. Thus those who believe the Ignatian letters to be a production late in the 2nd cent. are forced to consider the Ep. of Polycarp a fraud also, in whole or in part. For its satisfactory defence see Lightfoot, Cont. Rev. 1875. With it we may consider the genuineness of the Ignatian epistles proved. For a forger late in the 2nd cent., it would have been impossible to avoid mentioning Polycarp's connexion with the apostles, or alluding to the epistles to the seven Asiatic churches in Revelation; they are never mentioned. In all historical fictions of antiquity, reiterated pains are taken to make the facts to be maintained understood. In Ignatius they are hard to reach; the writer is not thinking of readers who have all to learn from him. Lastly, no ancient fiction has succeeded in individualizing character to the degree here displayed; e.g. in the picture of the false teachers. The improbabilities on which the author of Supernatural Religion, and even, though less decidedly, Hilgenfeld (17), rely to prove the whole story an undoubted fabrication, are recognized by M. Renan as established facts, even though he does not believe that the epistles we possess are those to which the story refers. Finally, by the great work of Bp. Lightfoot the genuineness of the seven Vossian epistles may be regarded as completely established. The Epp. of Ignatius in the longer and shorter recensions and the Syr. version were in Patr. Apost. ed. G. Jacobson (Clar. Press); and a trans. of the Epp. together with the Martyrdom and spurious Epp. are in the Ante-Nic. Lib.
Authorities.—Ussher, Dissertatio de Ig. et Pol. (1644), in Works by Elrington, vii. 87–295; Joannis Dallaei, de Scriptis quae sub Dion. Areop. et Ig. Ant. nominibus circumferuntur, lib. ii. (Genev. 1666); Pearson, Vindiciae Ignatianae (ed. nov. Oxf. 1852); Zahn, i. Ignatius von Antiochien, p. 629 (Gotha, 1873), ii. Patrum Apostolicorum Opera, fasc. ii. (Lips. 1876); Hilgenfeld, i. Die apostolischen Väter (Halle, 1853), ii. in his Zeitsch. 1874, pp. 96 seq.; Lightfoot, i. in Phil. pp. 208–210, ii. in Cont. Rev. (Feb. 1875); Petermann, S. Ign. Ep. (Lips. 1849); Harnack, Die Zeit des Ignatius (Leipz. 1878); Cureton, Corpus Ignatianum (Lond.
