In the year 1845 a new turn was given to this controversy by the publication of a Syriac version of three of the Ignatian letters.  They were printed from a manuscript deposited in 1843 in the British Museum, and obtained, shortly before, from a monastery in the desert of Nitria in Egypt.  The work was dedicated by permission to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the views propounded in it were understood to have the sanction of the English metropolitan. [395:2] Dr Cureton, the editor, has since entered more fully into the discussion of the subject in his “Corpus Ignatianum” [395:3]—­a volume dedicated to His Royal Highness the Prince Albert, in which the various texts of all the epistles are exhibited, and in which the claims of the three recently discovered letters, as the only genuine productions of Ignatius, are ingeniously maintained.  In the Syriac copies, [396:1] these letters are styled “The Three Epistles of Ignatius, Bishop, and Martyr,” and thus the inference is suggested that, at one time, they were the only three epistles in existence.  Dr Cureton’s statements have obviously made a great impression upon the mind of the literary public, and there seems at present to be a pretty general disposition in certain quarters [396:2] to discard all the other epistles as forgeries, and to accept those preserved in the Syriac version as the veritable compositions of the pastor of Antioch.

It must be obvious from the foregoing explanations that increasing light has wonderfully diminished the amount of literature which once obtained credit under the name of the venerable Ignatius.  In the sixteenth century he was reputed by many as the author of fifteen letters:  it was subsequently discovered that eight of them must be set aside as apocryphal:  farther investigation convinced critics that considerable portions of the remaining seven must be rejected:  and when the short text of these epistles was published, [396:3] about the middle of the seventeenth century, candid scholars confessed that it still betrayed unequivocal indications of corruption. [396:4] But even some Protestant writers of the highest rank stoutly upheld their claims, and the learned Pearson devoted years to the preparation of a defence of their authority. [397:1] His “Vindiciae Ignatianae” has long been considered by a certain party as unanswerable; and, though the publication has been read by very few, [397:2] the advocates of what are called “High-Church principles” have been reposing for nearly two centuries under the shadow of its reputation.  The critical labours of Dr Cureton have somewhat disturbed their dream of security, as that distinguished scholar has adduced very good evidence to shew that about three-fourths of the matter [397:3] which the Bishop of Chester spent a considerable portion of his mature age in attempting to prove genuine, is the work of an impostor.  It is now admitted by the highest authorities that four of the seven short letters must be given