his Epistle to the Corinthians. Nothing is more notable in the Roman
'than the calm equable temper,' the 'sweet reasonableness.' He is
essentially a _moderator_. On the other hand, impetuosity, fire,
strong-headedness, are impressed on every sentence in the Epistles of
Ignatius. He is by his very nature an _impeller_ of men. Both are
intense, though in different ways. In Clement, the intensity of
moderation dominates and guides his conduct. In Ignatius it is the
intensity of passion--passion for doing and suffering--which drives him
onward. In Clement we listen to the voice of a judge delivering calmly
his sentence from his throne; in Ignatius we

'are startled by the ringing cry of the trumpet-call--sharp,
stirring, penetrating--sounding for the battle. The fire of
the hot East bursts in, like a sun, strong and impassioned;
a vivid personality, in flame with love, flashes in upon
the world, quivering as a sword of the cherubim; a rhetoric
in which the rapid, electric thought breaks out of the
strained and formless chaos of the _imagination_, as
lightning out of the rolling and dark thunder-cloud; a
theology, which, by the intense passion of metaphor, forces
an almost violent entrance into the secrets of the Most
High; a morality which can carry forward into the heights of
holiness the madness of faith, the extravagance of zeal, the
recklessness of enthusiasm, the audacity of love, dragging
them into the service of Christ at the chariot-wheels of
God's triumph--such are the characteristics of Ignatius of
Antioch.'[65]

The Roman name of Ignatius (or Egnatius) tells nothing as to his birth
or origin. It was not unknown in Syria and Palestine, and was sometimes
borne by Jews. But another and a second name--Theophorus--of regular
recurrence in the seven genuine Epistles records at least his spiritual
birth. Ignatius probably assumed the name of 'the God-bearer' at the
time of his conversion or his baptism; the precedent lay before him of a
Saul commemorating a critical incident in his career (Acts xiii. 9) by a
similar adoption of a name; and that assumed by Ignatius became in its
turn an epithet freely applied to the Fathers at the Oecumenical
councils. The name gave birth to more than one beautiful legend. Was not
Ignatius, according to the Eastern belief, the 'God-borne' [Greek:
theophoros], the very child whom the Lord took into His arms