joiced exceedingly at their hurry,
desiring impatiently to enjoy God by martyrdom. They sailed to Troas,
where he was informed that God had restored peace to his church at
Antioch: which freed him from the anxiety he had been under, fearing
lest there should be some weak ones in his flock. At Troas he wrote
three other letters, one to the church of Philadelphia, and a second to
the Smyrnaeans, in which he calls the heretics who denied Christ to have
assumed true flesh, and the Eucharist to be his flesh, wild beasts in
human shape; and forbids all communication with them, only allowing them
to be prayed for, that they may be brought to repentance, which is very
difficult. His last letter is addressed to St. Polycarp, whom he exhorts
to labor for Christ without sparing himself; for the measure of his
labor will be that of his reward.[9] The style of the martyr everywhere
follows the impulses of a burning charity, rather than the rules of
grammar, and his pen is never able to express the sublimity of his
thoughts. In every word there is a fire and a beauty not to be
paralleled: every thing is full of a deep sense. He everywhere breathes
the most profound humility and contempt of himself as an abortive, and
the last of men; a great zeal for the church, and abhorrence of schisms:
the most ardent love of God and his neighbor, and tenderness for his own
flock: begging the prayers of all the churches in its behalf to whom he
wrote, and entreating of several that they would send an embassy to his
church at Antioch, to comfort and exhort them. The {331} seven epistles
of this apostolic father, the same which were quoted by St. Irenaeus,
Origen, Eusebius, St. Athanasius, St. Chrysostom, Theodoret, Gildas,
&c., are published genuine by Usher, Vossius, Cotelier, &c., and in
English by archbishop Wake, in 1710.

St. Ignatius, not being allowed time to write to the other churches of
Asia, commissioned St. Polycarp to do it for him. From Troas they sailed
to Neapolis in Macedonia, and went thence to Philippi, from which place
they crossed Macedonia and Epirus on foot; but took shipping again at
Epidamnum in Dalmatia, and sailing by Rhegium and Puteoli, were carried
by a strong gale into the Roman port, the great station of the navy near
Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, sixteen miles from Rome. He would
gladly have landed at Puteoli, to have traced St. Paul's steps, by going
on foot from that place to Rome, but the wind rendered it impr