The word bishop is another term found in these Epistles, and employed in a sense which it did not possess at the alleged date of their publication.  Every one knows that, in the New Testament, it does not signify the chief pastor of a Church; but, about the middle of the second century, as will subsequently appear, [421:1] it began to have this acceptation.  Clement of Rome, writing a few years before the time of the martyrdom of Ignatius, uses the words bishop and presbyter interchangeably. [421:2] Polycarp, in his own Epistle, dictated, perhaps, forty years after the death of the Syrian pastor, still adheres to the same phraseology.  In the Peshito version of the New Testament, executed probably in the former half of the second century, [421:3] the same terminology prevails. [421:4] Ignatius, however, is far in advance of his generation.  When new terms are introduced, or when new meanings are attached to designations already current, it seldom happens that an old man changes his style of speaking.  He is apt to persevere, in spite of fashion, in the use of the phraseology to which he has been accustomed from his childhood.  But Ignatius is an exception to all such experience, for he repeats the new nomenclature with as much flippancy as if he had never heard any other. [421:5] Surely this minister of Antioch must be worthy of all the celebrity he has attained, for he can not only carry on a written correspondence with the dead, but also anticipate by half a century even the progress of language!

V. The puerilities, vapouring, and mysticism of these letters proclaim their forgery.  We would expect an aged apostolic minister, on his way to martyrdom, to speak as a man in earnest, to express himself with some degree of dignity, and to eschew trivial and ridiculous comparisons.  But, when treating of a grave subject, what can be more silly or indecorous than such language as the following—­“Ye are raised on high by the engine of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, and ye are drawn by the rope, which is the Holy Ghost, and your pulley is your faith.” [422:1] Well may the Christian reader exclaim, with indignation, as he peruses these words, Is the Holy Ghost then a mere rope?  Is that glorious Being who worketh in us to will and to do according to His own good pleasure, a mere piece of tackling pertaining to the ecclesiastical machinery, to be moved and managed according to the dictation of Bishop Ignatius? [422:2] But the frivolity of this impostor is equalled by his gasconade.  He thus tantalises the Romans with an account of his attainments—­“I am able to write to you heavenly things, but I fear lest I should do you an injury.” .....