slightest allusion to any superior presbyter or bishop, who (as in after-times) was the official head and ruler of the other functionaries, as well as of the people. Yet it is evident that his authority would, in the given case, have been outraged more than that of any other person; and one would suppose that he could not have failed of being noticed in some way, had such an individual then existed. Again, had the Corinthian church been regarded by Clement, and the church at Rome, as deficient in the theory of its constitution, from not having conformed to an exclusive, apostolical form of church-government, or from having departed from that form, would not this faithful man have exhorted the church to the duty of complying with the divine ordinance?

What so natural as that he should propose this, as a cure divinely adapted to heal those dissensions, which now, and not for the first time, unhappily, existed in this church?-that he should inform the Corinthian Christians, that they could not expect the spirit of peace, till they obeyed the order appointed by Christ? How unaccountable, on the principle of Episcopacy being of divine right, that while Clement drew arguments from the power with which the presbyters themselves were invested, he should wholly overlook the one supreme authority, if such there were; or, if there were no such authority, that he should fail to insist

on the importance of its being immediately constituted! Whatever were the footing on which Clement himself stood with respect to the Roman church, certain it is, Episcopacy derives no support from his epistle to the Corinthians. Nor do we read of this church having become episcopal, till beyond the middle of the second century. 1

The question relating to the genuineness of the epistles ascribed to Ignatius, which are assigned to an early date in the second century,' has been

1 Till the date of St. Clement's epistle (ch. 47) its government (that of the church at Corinth) had been clearly presbyterial; and we do not learn the exact moment of the change. See Hinds's Early Church, Vol. ii. p. 163; and Bingham, b. ii. c. 1.' History of the Church, by the Rev. G. Waddington, M.A. Prebendary of Chichester, p. 21.

'The episcopal form of government was clearly not yet here established, probably as being adverse to the republican spirit of Greece. About seventy years after these dissensions, we find them (the converts of Corinth) flourishing under the direction of a pious and learned bishop, Dionysius.' Ibid. p. 12.

2 Basnage considers the time of Ignatius's martyrdom, as among the obscurities of chronology.'-(Hist. Polit. Eccles. ann. 107. Sect. 6.)-Tillemont, Du Pin, Cave, Lardner, and Waddington, fix this event in the year 107. The Encyc. Metrop. places it in 108. Le Clerc, Pearson, Page, Fabricius, and Gieseler, say 116. 'Le savant Guill. Lloyd a démontré que cet évènement ne peut avoir eu lieu bien avant l'an 116.' Biog. Univers. Tom. 21ème.

UNIVERSITY

BRARY

CALIFOR

EPISTLES OF IGNATIUS.

much blended with the controversy on churchgovernment. Even the smaller forms' of these letters, published nearly two centuries ago, from a manuscript in the Medicean library at Florence, and which are regarded as the more genuine, have so perplexed the learned, in consequence of the singularity of their tone and phraseology, that men of various opinions as to ecclesiastical discipline, have, on the one hand, concurred in receiving them, and, on the other, in regarding them as furnishing very questionable evidence. Lardner

1

2

First published, by Is. Vossius, Amstel. 1646. Usher's edition is dated 1647.

2 Though the shorter epistles are on many accounts preferable, (to the larger forms,) yet I will not affirm that they have undergone no alteration at all.'-Jortin's Remarks on Eccles. Hist. vol. i. p. 361.

'I cannot help looking on the authenticity of the epistle (of Ignatius) to Polycarp, as extremely dubious; and indeed the whole question relating to the epistles of St. Ignatius in general, seems to me to be embarrassed with many difficulties.'-Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. vol. i. ch. ii. 20.

'We may discover the animated piety of the author, through the interpolations with which the party zealots of after times have disfigured them.-Learned and candid critics, who have distinguished and rejected these (interpolations and corruptions) still leave us much behind of undisputed origin,'-Waddington's Hist. pp. 7. 72.

'It would not be easy to say how we could with safety found a decision on an author with whose works transcri

supposes the smaller forms to be, in the main, genuine;' while Whiston meets with little support among the moderns, in contending that the larger forms, or those which are usually termed the interpolated epistles, are the true originals. The style of both forms is certainly very different from that which prevails in the apostolical epistles. In the latter, the term 'church' is never used in reference to a province; while Ignatius repeatedly bers, in the judgment of both sides, have made so free.'Campbell, Lect. vi.

Milner, speaking of the epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians, intimates that it labours 'under all the disadvantages of a style bloated with Asiatic tumour, and still more perhaps of a text very corrupt :—the author, however, must mean originally corrupt, as he, elsewhere, is of opinion that Vossius and Usher have so distinguished the genuine from the false,' that these Epistles are now 'superior to all exceptions.'-Milner's Hist. revised by Dean Milner, 1812. vol. i. pp. 156. 159.

'It is by no means clear,' says an Episcopalian writer, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, 'that the imposture practised on what we call the Interpolated Epistles, was not an after attempt to carry too far, what had been more sparingly, and more successfully effected in the Shorter Epistles, and that the genuine epistles themselves have been tampered with. The temptation to such a proceeding was strong, and there are certainly not a few internal marks that it was practised.'-Encyc. Metrop. vol. x. p. 764.

1 Lardner's Works, vol. ii. p. 68.

2 Whiston's Dissertation upon Ignatius, p. 1.

speaks of the church which is in Syria., But if there be one feature of these epistles more strikingly obvious than another, it is the aim to uphold ecclesiastical authority, by perpetually enforcing implicit submission to the bishop, the presbyters, and the deacons."

In the larger forms, the language is sometimes that of downright Romanism. Let governors be obedient to Cæsar; soldiers to governors; dea

cons to presbyters, as to priests;

and let presbyters, and deacons, and the rest of the clergy, together with all the people, and the soldiers, and Cæsar himself, be obedient to the bishop.' In the smaller and more genuine forms, are such exhortations as the following: 'Give heed to the bishop,

1 This expression, which is quite different from the phraseology of the New Testament, and from the general usage of the first three centuries, occurs five times in the 'Smaller' epistles of Ignatius. Cyprian once employs the word church in the same way; (In provincia, Africa et Numidia ecclesiam Domini. Epist. 71. § 4:)' else' says King, I do not remember that ever I met with it in this sense.' Enquiry, Part i. ch. i.

? It is remarkable, that in his epistle to the Romans, alone, Ignatius does not make a single allusion, in either the larger, or the smaller forms, to the bishop, or to any other church-officer. He once in this epistle speaks of himself as bishop of Syria.'

3 s lepevσw, (as some MSS. read,) is preferred by Usher and Whiston, to apxiepeûow. Ignat. Epist. ad Philadelph. 4 ὁ λοιπὸς κλῆρος. Ibid.