it has necessarily been tenfold more
irksome to myself. Ordinary errors, such as must occur in any writer,
might well have been passed over; but the character of the notes in
_Supernatural Religion_ is quite unique, so far as my experience goes,
in works of any critical pretensions.

In the remainder of the discussion our author seems to depend almost
entirely on Cureton's preface to his _Ancient Syriac Version_, to which
indeed he makes due acknowledgment from time to time. Notwithstanding
the references to other later writers which crowd the notes already
mentioned, they appear (with the single exception of Volkmar) to have
exercised no influence on his discussion of the main question. One
highly important omission is significant. There is no mention, from
first to last, of the Armenian version. Now it happens that this version
(so far as regards the documentary evidence) has been felt to be the key
to the position, and around it the battle has raged fiercely since its
publication. One who (like our author) maintains the priority of the
Curetonian letters, was especially bound to give it some consideration,
for it furnishes the most formidable argument to his opponents. This
version was given to the world by Petermann in 1849, the same year in
which Cureton's later work, the _Corpus Ignatianum_, appeared, and
therefore was unknown to him [71:1]. Its bearing occupies a more or less
prominent place in all, or nearly all, the writers who have specially
discussed the Ignatian question during the last quarter of a century.
This is true of Lipsius and Weiss and Hilgenfeld and Uhlhorn, whom he
cites, not less than of Merx and Denzinger and Zahn, whom he neglects to
cite. The facts established by Petermann and others are these;--(1) This
Armenian Version, which contains the seven Vossian Epistles together
with other confessedly spurious letters, was translated from a previous
Syriac version. Indeed fragments of this version were published by
Cureton himself, as a sort of appendix to the Curetonian letters, in the
_Corpus Ignatianum_, though he failed to see their significance. (2)
This Syriac Version conformed so closely to the Syriac of the Curetonian
letters that they cannot have been independent. Either therefore the
Curetonian letters were excerpts from this complete version, or this
version was founded upon and enlarged from the pre-existing Curetonian
letters by translating and adding the supplementary letters and parts