othesis of interpolation is encumbered with difficulties of
the same kind, and hardly less considerable. This hypothesis was shaped
and developed by Ritschl [110:1], whose theory has been accepted by some
later writers. He supposes that the greater part of the Epistle is the
genuine production of the person whose name it bears, written however,
not immediately after the death of Ignatius, but in the later years of
Polycarp's long life. The three passages which relate to Ignatius,
together with other parts which he defines, he supposes to have been
interpolated by the same forger who amplified the three genuine letters
of the martyr of Antioch into the seven of the Vossian collection. But
if any one will take the passages which Ritschl has struck out as
interpolated, he will find that the general style is the same; that
individual expressions, more especially theological expressions, are the
same; that the quotations are from the same range of books, as in the
other parts, extending even to coincidences of expression with the
Epistle of Clement of Rome; and that altogether there is nothing to
separate one part from another, except the _a priori_ assumption that
the references to Ignatius must be unhistorical. I do not know whether
these facts have been pointed out before, and I cannot do more here than
hint at lines of investigation which any one may follow up for himself.
But when the phenomena are fully recognized, I venture to think that the
difficulties in Ritschl's theory will be felt to be many times greater
than those which it is framed to remove.

Of the general character of the Epistle, as affecting the question of
its genuineness, the author of _Supernatural Religion_ has said nothing.
But he has reproduced special objections which have been urged by
previous writers; and to these I wish to call attention, because they
are very good, and not unfavourable, illustrations of the style of
criticism which is in vogue with the negative school.

1. Our author writes in the first place:--

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. The Epistle of Polycarp, however, not only refers
to the martyr-journey (c. ix), but to the Ignatian Epistles which
are inauthentic (c. xiii), and the manifest inference is that it
also is sp