rely found an individual passing to Antioch from "the chief city" of a
"part of Macedonia," and travelling to and fro by Smyrna. This
difficulty admits, however, of a very simple and satisfactory solution.
We have no entire copy of the epistle in the original Greek, [407:1] and
the text of the old Latin version in this place is so corrupt that it is
partially unintelligible; [407:2] but as the context often guides us in
the interpretation of a manuscript where it is blotted or torn, so here
it may enable us to spell out the meaning. The insertion of one letter
and the change of another in a single word [407:3] will render the
passage intelligible. If we read _Smyrna_ for Syria, the obscurity
vanishes. Polycarp then says to the Philippians--"Ye have written to me,
both ye and Ignatius, that, when any one goes to Smyrna, he can carry my
letters to you." The postscript, thus understood, refers to the desire
of his correspondents, that he should write frequently, and that, when a
friend went from Philippi to Smyrna, he should not be permitted to
return without letters.

As it can be thus shewn that the letter of Polycarp, when tested by
impartial criticism, refuses to accredit the Epistles ascribed to
Ignatius of Antioch, it follows that, with the single exception of
Origen, no father of the first three centuries has noticed this
correspondence. Had these letters, at the alleged date of their
appearance, attracted such attention as they would themselves lead us to
believe, is it possible that no writer for upwards of a century after
the demise of their reputed author, would have bestowed upon them even a
passing recognition? They convey the impression that, when Ignatius was
on his way to Rome, all Asia Minor was moved at his presence--that
Greece caught the infection of excitement--and that the Western capital
itself awaited, with something like breathless anxiety, the arrival of
the illustrious martyr. Strange, indeed, then that even his letter to
the Romans is mentioned by no Western father until between two and three
hundred years after the time of its assumed publication! Nor were
Western writers wanting who would have sympathised with its spirit. It
would have been quite to the taste of Tertullian, and he could have
quoted it to shew that some of the peculiar principles of Montanism had
been held by a man of the apostolic era. Nor can it be said that had the
letter then been in existence, it was likely to have escaped