e Ignatian question is the most perplexing which confronts the student
of earlier Christian history. The literature is voluminous; the
considerations involved are very wide, very varied, and very intricate.
A writer therefore may well be pardoned if he betrays a want of
familiarity with this subject. But in this case the reader naturally
expects that the opinions at which he has arrived will be stated with
some diffidence.

The author of _Supernatural Religion_ has no hesitation on the subject.
'The whole of the Ignatian literature,' he writes, 'is a mass of
falsification and fraud.' [62:1] 'It is not possible,' he says, 'even if
the Epistle [to the Smyrnaeans] were genuine, which it is not, to base
any such conclusion upon these words.' [62:2] And again:--

'We must, however, go much further, and assert that none of the
Epistles have any value as evidence for an earlier period than the
end of the second, or beginning of the third, century, even if they
possess any value at all.' [62:3]

And immediately afterwards:--

'We have just seen that the martyr-journey of Ignatius to Rome is,
for cogent reasons, declared to be wholly fabulous, and the
Epistles purporting to be written during that journey must be held
to be spurious.' [63:1]

The reader is naturally led to think that a writer would not use such
very decided language unless he had obtained a thorough mastery of his
subject; and when he finds the notes thronged with references to the
most recondite sources of information, he at once credits the author
with an 'exhaustive' knowledge of the literature bearing upon it. It
becomes important therefore to inquire whether the writer shows that
accurate acquaintance with the subject, which justifies us in attaching
weight to his dicta, as distinguished from his arguments.

I will take first of all a passage which sweeps the field of the
Ignatian controversy, and therefore will serve well as a test. The
author writes as follows:--

'The strongest internal, as well as other evidence, into which
space forbids our going in detail, has led the majority of critics
to recognise the Syriac Version as the most genuine form of the
letters of Ignatius extant, and this is admitted by most [63:2] of
those who nevertheless deny the authenticity of any of the
Epistles.' [63:3]

No statement could be more erroneous, as a summary of the results of the
Ignatian