The words which we have last quoted deserve an attentive consideration.  Were a citizen of New York, in the postscript of a letter to a citizen of London, to suggest that his correspondent should take an opportunity of writing to him, when any common friend went to Jerusalem, the Englishman might well feel perplexed by such a communication.  Why should a letter from London to New York travel round by Palestine?  Such an arrangement would not, however, be a whit more absurd than that seemingly pointed out in this postscript.  Philippi and Smyrna were not far distant, and there was considerable intercourse between them; but Syria was in another quarter of the Empire, and Polycarp could have rarely found an individual passing to Antioch from “the chief city” of a “part of Macedonia,” and travelling to and fro by Smyrna.  This difficulty admits, however, of a very simple and satisfactory solution.  We have no entire copy of the epistle in the original Greek, [407:1] and the text of the old Latin version in this place is so corrupt that it is partially unintelligible; [407:2] but as the context often guides us in the interpretation of a manuscript where it is blotted or torn, so here it may enable us to spell out the meaning.  The insertion of one letter and the change of another in a single word [407:3] will render the passage intelligible.  If we read Smyrna for Syria, the obscurity vanishes.  Polycarp then says to the Philippians—­“Ye have written to me, both ye and Ignatius, that, when any one goes to Smyrna, he can carry my letters to you.”  The postscript, thus understood, refers to the desire of his correspondents, that he should write frequently, and that, when a friend went from Philippi to Smyrna, he should not be permitted to return without letters.

As it can be thus shewn that the letter of Polycarp, when tested by impartial criticism, refuses to accredit the Epistles ascribed to Ignatius of Antioch, it follows that, with the single exception of Origen, no father of the first three centuries has noticed this correspondence.  Had these letters, at the alleged date of their appearance, attracted such attention as they would themselves lead us to believe, is it possible that no writer for upwards of a century after the demise of their reputed author, would have bestowed upon them even a passing recognition?  They convey the impression that, when Ignatius was on his way to Rome, all Asia Minor was moved at his presence—­that Greece caught the infection of excitement—­and that the Western capital itself awaited, with something like breathless anxiety, the arrival of the illustrious martyr.  Strange, indeed, then that even his letter to the Romans is mentioned by no Western father until between two and three hundred years after the time of its assumed publication!  Nor were Western writers wanting who would have sympathised with its spirit.  It would have been quite to the taste of Tertullian, and he could have quoted it to shew that some of the peculiar