express a
conviction that these have no real force against even the slightest
external testimony, and to undertake to meet them if they are
reproduced. Thus all the supposed anachronisms have failed. Bochart, for
instance, was bold enough to maintain that the Ignatian Epistle to the
Romans could not have been written before the time of Constantine the
Great, because 'leopards' are mentioned in it, and the word was not
known until this late age. In reply to Bochart, Pearson and others
showed conclusively, by appealing (among other documents) to the
contemporary Acts of Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas (who suffered
when Geta was Caesar, about A.D. 202), that 'leopards' were so called
more than a century at least before Constantine, while they gave good
reasons for believing that the word was in use much earlier. I am able
to carry the direct evidence half a century farther back. The word
occurs in an early treatise of Galen (written about the middle of the
second century), without any indication that it was then a new or
unusual term. This passage, which (so far as I am aware) has been
hitherto overlooked, carries the use back to within some forty years, or
less, of the professed date of the Ignatian letters; and it must be
regarded as a mere accident that no earlier occurrence has been noticed
in the scanty remains of Greek and Roman literature which bridge over
the interval. Of the institution of episcopacy again, it is sufficient
to say that its prevalence in Asia Minor at this time, whatever may have
been the case elsewhere, can only be denied by rejecting a large amount
of direct and indirect evidence on this side of the question, and by
substituting in its place a mere hypothesis which rests on no basis of
historical fact.

On the other hand, the Epistles themselves are stamped with an
individuality of character which is a strong testimony to their
genuineness. The intensity of feeling and the ruggedness of expression
seem to bespeak a real living man. On this point however it is
impossible to dwell here; anyone who will take the pains to read these
Epistles continuously will be in a better position to form a judgment on
this evidence of style, than if he had been plied with many arguments.

But if the Curetonian letters are the genuine work of Ignatius, what
must we say of the Vossian? Were the additional portions, which are
contained in the latter but wanting in the former, also written by the
saint, or are