thout any special danger of detection. The Treatise against Heresies
obtained extensive circulation; and as it animadverted on errors which
had been promulgated in Antioch, [401:1] it, no doubt, soon found its
way into the Syrian capital. [401:2] But who can believe that Irenaeus
describes Ignatius, when he speaks of "_one of our people_?" The martyr
was not such an insignificant personage that he could be thus ignored.
He was one of the most eminent Christians of his age--the companion of
apostles--and the presiding minister of one of the most influential
Churches in the world. Irenaeus is obviously alluding to some disciple
who occupied a very different position. He is speaking, not of what the
martyr _wrote_, but of what he _said_--not of his letters, but of his
words. Any reader who considers the situation of Irenaeus a few years
before he published this treatise, can have no difficulty in
understanding the reference. He had witnessed at Lyons one of the most
terrible persecutions the disciples ever had endured; and, in the letter
to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia, he had graphically described its
horrors. [401:3] He there tells how his brethren had been condemned to
be thrown to wild beasts, and he records with simplicity and pathos the
constancy with which they suffered. But in such an epistle he could not
notice every case which had come under his observation, and he here
mentions a new instance of the Christian courage of some believer
unknown to fame, when he states--"one of our people when condemned to
the beasts, said, 'As I am the wheat of God, I am also ground by the
teeth of beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of God.'"

The Treatise against Heresies supplies the clearest evidence that
Irenaeus was quite ignorant of the existence of the Ignatian epistles.
These letters contain pointed references to the errorists of the early
Church, and had they been known to the pastor of Lyons, he could have
brought them to bear with most damaging effect against the heretics he
assailed. Ignatius was no ordinary witness, for he had heard the truth
from the lips of the apostles; he had spent a long life in the society
of the primitive disciples; and he filled one of the most responsible
stations that a Christian minister could occupy. The heretics boldly
affirmed that they had tradition on their side, [402:1] and therefore
the testimony of Ignatius, as of an individual who had received
tradition at the fountain-he