Of the remaining seven
there are two forms, one called the Long Recension and another shorter,
known as the Vossian Epistles. The former is almost unanimously rejected
as shamefully interpolated and falsified; and a majority of critics
assert that the text of the Vossian Epistles is likewise very impure.
Besides these there is a still shorter version of three Epistles only,
the Curetonian, which many able critics declare to be the only genuine
letters of Ignatius, whilst a still greater number, both from internal
and external reasons, deny the authenticity of the Epistles in any form.
The second and third centuries teem with pseudonymic literature, but I
venture to say that pious fraud has never been more busy and conspicuous
than in dealing with the Martyr of Antioch. The mere statement of the
simple and acknowledged facts regarding the Ignatian Epistles is ample
justification of the assertion, which so mightily offends Dr. Lightfoot,
that "the whole of the Ignatian literature is a mass of falsification
and fraud." Even my indignant critic himself has not ventured to use as
genuine more than the three short Syriac letters [114:1] out of this
mass of forgery, which he rebukes me for holding so cheap. Documents
which lie under such grave and permanent suspicion cannot prove
anything.
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