“Again, there is another circumstance which will naturally lead us to look with some suspicion upon the recension of the Epistles of St. Ignatius, as exhibited in the Medicean MS., and in the ancient Latin version corresponding with it, which is, that the Epistles presumed to be the genuine production of that holy Martyr are mixed up with others, which are almost universally allowed to be spurious.  Both in the Greek and Latin MSS. all these are placed upon the same footing, and no distinction is drawn between them; and the only ground which has hitherto been assumed for their separation has been the specification of some of them by Eusebius and his omission of any mention of the others.” [83:3]

“The external evidence from the testimony of manuscripts in favour of the rejected Greek Epistles, with the exception of that to the Philippians, is certainly greater than that in favour of those which have been received.  They are found in all the manuscripts, both Greek and Latin, in the same form; while the others exhibit two distinct and very different recensions, if we except the Epistle to Polycarp, in which the variations are very few.  Of these two recensions the shorter has been most generally received:  the circumstance of its being shorter seems much to have influenced its reception; and the text of the Medicean Codex and of the two copies of the corresponding Latin version belonging to Caius College, Cambridge, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, has been adopted ...  In all these there is no distinction whatever drawn between the former and latter Epistles:  all are placed upon the same basis; and there is no ground whatever to conclude either that the arranger of the Greek recension or the translator of the Latin version esteemed one to be better or more genuine than another.  Nor can any prejudice result to the Epistles to the Tarsians, to the Antiochians, and to Hero, from the circumstance of their being placed after the others in the collection; for they are evidently arranged in chronological order, and rank after the rest as having been written from Philippi, at which place Ignatius is said to have arrived after he had despatched the previous Letters.  So far, therefore, as the evidence of all the existing copies, Latin as well as Greek, of both the recensions is to be considered, it is certainly in favour of the rejected Epistles, rather than of those which have been retained.” [84:1]

Proceeding from counter-statements to actual facts, I will very briefly show the order in which these Epistles have been found in some of the principal MSS.  One of the earliest published was the ancient Latin version of eleven Epistles edited by J. Faber Stapulensis in 1498, which was at least quoted in the ninth century, and which in the subjoined table I shall mark A, [84:2] and which also exhibits the order of Cod.  Vat. 859, assigned to the eleventh century. [84:3] The next (B) is a Greek MS. edited