many
things are wanting to us that we be not separated from God. I
conjure you, not I, but the charity of Jesus Christ, to use
Christian food, and to refrain from foreign weed, which is heresy.
Heretics join Jesus Christ with what is defiled, giving a deadly
poison in a mixture of wine and honey which they who take, drink
with pleasure their own death without knowing it. Refrain from such,
which you will do if you remain united to God, Jesus Christ, and the
bishop, and the precepts of the apostles. He who is within the altar
is clean, but he who is without it, that is, without the bishop,
priests, and deacons, is not clean." He adds his usual exhortations
to union, and begs their prayers for himself and his church, of
which he is not worthy to be called one, being the last of them, and
yet fighting is danger. "May my spirit sanctify you, not only now,
but also when I shall enjoy God."
6. 1 Cor. iv. 4.
7. Not that he would really incite the beasts to dispatch him, without
a special inspiration, because that would have been self-murder; but
this expresses the courage and desire of his soul.
8. [Greek: Ho hemos eros estanrotai.]
9. See an account of these two last in the life of St. Polycarp. Orsi
draws a proof in favor of the supremacy of the see of Rome, from the
title which St. Ignatius gives it at the head of his epistle. In
directing his other letters, and saluting other churches, he only
writes: "To the blessed church which is at Ephesus:" [Greek: Te ese
en Epheso] "at Magnesia near the Maeander: at Tralles: at
Philadelphia: at Smyrna:" but in that to the Romans he changes his
style, and addresses his letter: "To the beloved church which is
enlightened, (by the will of Him who ordaineth all things which are
according to the charity of Jesus Christ our God,) which presides in
the country of the Romans, [Greek: etis prokathetai en topo chores
Romaion], worthy of God, most adorned, justly happy, most commended,
fitly regulated and governed, most chaste, and presiding in charity,
&c."
10. According to the common opinion, St. Ignatius was crowned with
martyrdom in the year 107. The Greek copies of a homily of the sixth
age, On the False Prophets, among the works of St. Chrysostom, say
on the 20th; but Bede, in his Martyrology, on the 17th of December.
Antoni Pagi, convinced by the letter