his
observation. He had lived for years in Rome, and we have good reason to
believe that he was a presbyter of the Church of the Imperial city. A
man of his inquiring spirit, and literary habits, must have been well
acquainted with the Epistle had it obtained currency in Italy. But in
not one of his numerous treatises does he ever speak of it, or even name
its alleged author. [409:1] Hippolytus of Portus is another writer who
might have been expected to know something of this production. He lived
within a few miles of Rome, and he was conversant with the history of
its Church and with its ecclesiastical memorials. He, as well as
Tertullian, could have sympathised with the rugged and ascetic spirit
pervading the Ignatian correspondence. But, even in his treatise against
all heresies, he has not fortified his arguments by any testimony from
these letters. He had evidently never heard, of the now far famed
documents. [409:2]

The conclusion to be drawn from these facts must be sufficiently
obvious. The Ignatian Epistles began to be fabricated in the time of
Origen; and the first edition of them appeared, not at Troas or Smyrna,
but in Syria or Palestine. At an early period festivals were kept in
honour of the martyrs; and on his natal day, [409:3] why should not the
Church of Antioch have something to tell of her great Ignatius? The Acts
of his Martyrdom were probably written in the former part of the third
century--a time when the work of ecclesiastical forgery was rife
[409:4]--and the Epistle to the Romans, which is inserted in these Acts,
is in all likelihood of earlier date than any of the other letters. The
Epistle to the Ephesians, perhaps, next made its appearance, and then
followed the Epistle to Polycarp. These letters gradually crept into
circulation as "The Three Epistles of Ignatius, Bishop, and Martyr."
There is every reason to believe that, as edited by Dr Cureton, they are
now presented to the public in their original _language_, as well as in
their original form. Copies of these short letters are not known to be
extant in any manuscript either Greek or Latin. Dr Cureton has not
attempted any explanation of this emphatic fact. If the Epistle to the
Romans, in its newly discovered form, is genuine, how does it happen
that there are no previous traces of its existence in the Western
Church? How are we to account for the extraordinary circumstance that
the Church of Rome can produce no copy of it in either Gre