ring to a different recension, probably more authentic
and certainly far more satisfactory than the book which lies before me?

2. And the difficulty of the popular identification will be found to
increase as the investigation proceeds. There is a second point, also,
on which our critics are unanimous. Our first reviewer describes the
author as 'scrupulously exact in stating the arguments of adversaries.'
Our fourth reviewer uses still stronger language: 'The author with
excellent candour places before us the materials on which a judgment
must rest, with great fulness and perfect impartiality.' The testimony
of the other two, though not quite so explicit, tends in the same
direction. 'An earnest seeker after truth,' says the second reviewer,
'looking around at all particulars pertaining to his inquiries.' 'The
account given in the volume we are noticing,' writes the third, 'is a
perfect mine of information on this subject, alloyed indeed with no
small prejudice, yet so wonderfully faithful and comprehensive that an
error may be detected by the light of the writer's own searching and
scholarly criticism.'

Now this is not the characteristic of the book before me. The author
does indeed single out from time to time the weaker arguments of
'apologetic' writers, and on these he dwells at great length; but their
weightier facts and lines of reasoning are altogether ignored by him,
though they often occur in the same books and even in the same contexts
which he quotes. This charge will, I believe, be abundantly
substantiated as I proceed. At present I shall do no more than give a
few samples.

Our author charges the Epistle ascribed to Polycarp with an anachronism
[11:1], because, though in an earlier passage St Ignatius is assumed to
be dead, 'in chap. xiii he is spoken of as living, and information is
requested regarding him "and those who are with him."' Why then does he
not notice the answer which he might have found in any common source of
information, that when the Latin version (the Greek is wanting here) 'de
his qui cum eo sunt' is retranslated into the original language, [Greek:
tois sun auto], the 'anachronism' altogether disappears? [11:2] Again,
when he devotes more than forty pages to the discussion of Papias
[11:3], why does he not even mention the view maintained by Dr Westcott
and others (and certainly suggested by a strict interpretation of
Papias' own words), that this father's object in his 'Exposition' w