If leaders are found equal to the occasion to do this work in a bold patriotic spirit, with the wisdom to secure the full freedom of the Holy See, in a reconstructed Italy, while still ensuring for their country a place among the nations, such a change will be the beginning of a brighter time. Everything points to some form of Federalism as the probable solvent of the many difficulties of the Italian question; but before the solution is accomplished it may perhaps be the destiny of Rome and of Italy to pass through darker days than they have yet seen.

A. HILLIARD ATTERIDGE.

ART. VIII.-LIGHTFOOT'S ST. IGNATIUS AND THE ROMAN PRIMACY.

The Apostolic Fathers. Part II.: "St. Ignatius;" "St. Polycarp." By J. B. LIGHTFOOT, D.D., D.C.L., Bishop of Durham. Two Volumes. London: Macmillan & Co. 1885.

THE HE least observant student must be forcibly struck, in passing from the New Testament to the works of the Apostolic Fathers, with the contrast between the inspired and the uninspired writings. Even if we try to consider both from their merely human side, the difference in clearness of expression and literary power is so enormous, that it is impossible to believe it undesigned by Providence. The pathetic simplicity of the Gospels, and the eloquent pen of St. Paul, were indeed divine instruments of great power in the conversion of the world. But, to show that God had chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise, the Apostles were succeeded by at least two generations, more profoundly indifferent to literary fame than any that have come after them. The husbandmen were so few, and the harvest so great, that they had no leisure to write, and would have made St. Cyprian's words their own: "Non magna loquimur, sed vivimus." Moreover, as one of their number has told us, they were happy in hearing those speak who had been taught by the Divine Master himself by the Sea of Galilee or in the Holy City, and rightly thought that "the knowledge gained from books could not be of such service as that which flowed from the living and enduring voice." Yet, however natural their silence, and however providential as estab

lishing the divine origin of Christianity, it is none the less a serious loss to their heirs. And, even of the scanty literature of those times that has come down to us, so much is anonymous, of doubtful authenticity, or clearly supposititious, that all the known writings of the immediate successors of the Apostles could be readily contained in one small volume. It will be seen at once how this scantiness makes it difficult and unsafe to appeal to their testimony. Above all, it encourages the "fallacy of silence"-the assumption that whatever is not mentioned in these works was then not believed, or non-existent. This opinion is patent as soon as pointed out, and is recognized by all; but it is so tempting to all who are concerned in denying the Apostolic origin of Catholic doctrine and practices, that it is worth while to give a popular illustration; others will occur in the course of this article. Protestants and Catholics alike know that our three great English Cardinals have been constant defenders of the faith, and that there is perhaps no Catholic teaching which could not be found in their pages. Yet it would be very easy to extract at random fragments from their works which would make a volume larger than the "Opera Patrum Apostolicorum," and yet leave whole provinces of Catholic dogma and discipline unmentioned. The result is, that the first ages of Christianity are a debateable area, and as it were a hunting-ground, in which each one finds what he has gone to seek. To the Anglican they reflect the ideal of the Church of England as he understands it; to the Presbyterian, a congregational system; while to French and German Rationalists it is the home of figments, strange and monstrous as those which people the outer regions of mediæval charts and travels. We may be glad these last admit that, when the darkness lifts, and Origen, Tertullian and Cyprian give us light enough to recognize Christianity, it already has the distinctive features of the Catholic Church. Harnack, to whose works we shall have repeated occasion to refer, for instance, says:

Renan has clearly seen that the history of dogma has only two periods, and that the alterations which Christianity has lived through since the formation of the Catholic Church bear no appreciable ratio to the changes which it experienced before that Church was established. He only puts the date of that establishment too early in the following passage: "Si nous comparons le Christianisme, tel qu'il existait vers l'an 180, au Christianisme du IV me et Vme siècles, au Christianisme du moyen âge, au Christianisme de nos jours, nous trouvons qu'en réalité il s'est augmenté de très peu de chose dans les siècles qui ont suivis."

The admission is important enough-indeed, in any other department of history it would probably suffice to command

general assent. But it only limits the province of the Catholic apologist, and directs his attention to the ecclesiastical history of the first two centuries as the central position in the battle-field. Happily, we can recognize most fully the learning, diligence, and desire for perfect fairness of all our chief opponents, even where, alas! they are led furthest astray by some antecedent fallacy, or some misconception of the very nature of revealed truth.

Among such honoured opponents Dr. Lightfoot has long held one of the highest places. His commentaries on several of St. Paul's Epistles, and his answer to the author of "Supernatural Religion," are well known to all students. He has also published a critical edition of St. Clement of Rome. In the present work he gives us the result of many years' study, all the more valuable because he has modified the opinions with which he started. If, as we have heard, it has delayed the publication of his commentary on the Ephesians, our gain is not unmixed, though this latter volume, we hope, may now soon be accessible to us. A great part of his present work was written before the end of 1878. He was then appointed to the bishopric of Durham, and his leisure has been too scanty to allow of rapid progress. Every student will sympathize with his regret that "for weeks, and sometimes for months together, I have not found time to write a single line;" all do not know at the cost of how great self-denial his work has been at last accomplished. It has no doubt gained by the opportunities of reconsideration and revision which this delay has given, though we doubt whether the general arrangement has not suffered from such constant interruption. A very competent judge has said that it "is the most learned and careful patristic monograph which has appeared in the present century;" and all will agree that it exhausts its subject, and scarcely allows of the possibility of a future editor. Catholics in particular owe him a debt of gratitude for so abundantly vindicating a Father, whose letters, as we shall presently show, are one of their most precious inheritances. Independently of their matter, the history of St. Ignatius' Epistles is of sufficient general interest to call for a short account of them.

When literature first began to dawn in the Middle Ages, seventeen epistles, attributed to St. Ignatius, were in circulation in Western Europe. Four of these, purporting to be a correspondence between our saint and the Blessed Virgin and St. John, were soon recognized to be clumsy forgeries. Dr. Lightfoot is careful to clear St. Bernard of the charge of having thought them genuine. The remaining thirteen were at first naturally accepted, but by degrees it was discovered that Eusebius knew only seven letters; that the quotations in that author and Theodoret diverged greatly from the text, and that many of the

references to early Christian history were gross anachronisms and blunders. At the time of the Reformation another influence came into play; the support given by the Epistles, as then known, to the supremacy of the Holy See and to episcopacy, led writers to support or deny them, according to their theological doctrines. Catholics generally (with the notable exception of Petarius) accepted them; Protestants did not deny a nucleus, but excised whatever did not suit their several views. The way in which the shorter text was next discovered is peculiarly interesting to the English reader. Ussher, the learned Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, observed that the quotations from St. Ignatius in three English writers (Robert Grossteste, the Bishop of Lincoln, and two Franciscans, John Tyssington and William Wodeforde), while agreeing exactly with the quotations in Eusebius and Theodoret, differed considerably from the "Long Recension" hitherto known. He therefore looked for a more correct text in the English libraries; and his search was rewarded by the discovery of two Latin MSS., which he published in 1644. The original Greek was published two years later by Isaac Voss, except the Epistle to the Romans, which was first brought out by Ruinart in 1689. The discovery of the Vossian text brought no relief to the Presbyterian divines, who had always admitted a genuine nucleus, but excised all the passages testifying to episcopacy. The most learned of these objectors (Daillé) was answered by Pearson, as it was generally agreed finally, and the controversy slept for near two hundred years. But in 1845 Cureton published a Syriac version, which contained only three epistles and a fragment of a fourth, all in a shorter form than the Vossian recension. He contended that he had now discovered the primitive text, of which the Vossian letters were an expansion; and he was at once answered by his brother canon of Westminster, Wordsworth, who characteristically asserted that the Syriac was "a miserable epitome made by an Eutychian heretic." At first the current of opinion turned in favour of Cureton's view, the Catholic critics, Hefele and Denzinger, being in a minority in opposing it; but it has gradually come to be seen that there existed an early Syriac version of the whole thirteen letters (both Vossian and spurious), and that the quotations in early writers are from the Vossian recension; and it is now generally admitted that Cureton's text is merely an abbreviation. Hefele, Alzog, and others considered it was drawn up with an ascetical aim by some Syrian monk; Lightfoot is more probably correct in supposing the selections made due to no fixed principle, but to be mainly accidental. It is not so easy to know who composed the additional letters and interpolations of the "Long Recension," and with what object. But a number of

circumstances converge in pointing to the middle of the fourth century as their date, Cardinal Newman's critical sagacity having anticipated the results of later inquiry. He considers the writer to have been an Arian, an opinion which Lightfoot endorses so far as to suppose his policy was intended to reconcile Arianism and Catholicism. Funk, the latest Catholic editor, argues (not we think quite satisfactorily) that he was an Apollinarian. The forger must have been greatly indebted to the "Apostolic Constitutions," if he was not indeed the author or editor of that work, as Ussher and Harnack suppose.

We may, then, take it for granted that the Vossian recension is the original form of the Ignatian letters; and the next question is, have we sufficient proof of their authenticity? The chief evidence is the epistle of St. Polycarp to the Philippians, which refers to them by name, and this is in turn vouched for by St. Irenæus, and further identified by Eusebius and other witnesses. This is so adequate, that Prof. Harnack, whose competence is undoubted, and whose religious system makes it inconvenient for him to receive the letters, admits it to be " testimony as strong to the genuineness of the epistles as any that can be conceived of."* We need not, therefore, weary our readers with an analysis of the mass of corroborative proof which Bishop Lightfoot's great learning has enabled him to collect, though cumulatively it is strong confirmation. He also shows that the circumstances of his condemnation, his journey to Rome, and death, are not difficulties (as has often been objected), but support the genuineness of his account. A prisoner of no public importance, but merely one of the many provincial convicts sent to Rome for the wild-beast shows, would be contemptuously allowed just such freedom of intercourse with those who chose to bribe his guards, as the saint was. Lucian's account of Peregrinus would prove this, even if he did not intend a caricature of St. Ignatius, as Lightfoot, with Baur and Renan, suppose.

Our saint's appeal to the Romans, not to prevent his martyrdom, is a strong argument for the genuineness, and even for the date, of his epistles. In the early part of Trajan's reign there were Christians enough in high place in Rome to have obtained his pardon; twenty years earlier, or twenty years later, such could not have been found. We cannot enter upon the other reasons which induce Dr. Lightfoot to follow Eusebius and St. Jerome in assigning the martyrdom to some time in the reign of Trajan (100-118). Harnack argues for a date later than 130, but without any external probability that we can discover, merely because of the difficulties he finds in reconciling the earlier time

*The Expositor, sec. 3, vol. iii. p. 11.