diately added at the end of his own; and sent them to the Philippians together with it.

12. And this, perhaps, may have been one great means of preserving this epistle of St. Polycarp from the fate that has attended all the rest of his writings. For being wont to be transcribed together with those of Ignatius, and commonly placed at the front of them, they mutually helped to secure one another: whilst the rest of his writings, for want of being thus collected together, have for a long time been so utterly lost to the world, that neither Photius, nor St. Hierome', nor Eusebius, seem to have had any particular catalogue of them. Nor hath Irenæus, the disciple of St. Polycarp, given us such a one.

13. Indeed, for what concerns the last of these, I mean Irenæus; he tells us that this great man did write several epistles, not only to the neighbouring churches, to confirm them in the faith, but even to particular persons, for their instruction and admonition. But what they were, or to whom they were sent, neither does he say, nor does Eusebius, where he speaks of the writings of St. Polycarp, mention any more than that Epistle to the Philippians of which we are now discoursing. And though a few later authors1 pretend to give us the very titles of some other of his works, yet have we reason to doubt, from this silence of those who lived the nearest to his time, that their authority is but small; nor can we say that even the pieces which they name are any where to be found at this day.

6 Photii Bibl. tmem, cxxyi. p. 305. 7 De Script. Eccles. in Polycarp.

8 Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. iv. c. 15.

9 Iren. Epist. ad Florin. apud Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. v. c. 20. 10 S. Maximus Prolog. in Dionys. Areop. Suidas in Polycarp. &c. Vid. Usserii Dissert. de Script. Ignat. p. 4, 5.

de Polycarp. num. xxxvi, xxxvii.

Tentzel. Exerc. Select.

14. Nor shall I except here those Fragments lately published by Fevardentius', out of Victor Capuanus, and reprinted by Bishop Usher', in his Appendix to Ignatius. In which, as there are some things which neither Father Halloix nor our learned Usher' could approve of, as written by St. Polycarp; so the distance of him who was the first collector of them from the time of that blessed martyr; and the manifest proofs he has, on other occasions, given of his little care and judgment in distinguishing the works of the ancient Fathers who lived any long time before him; not to say any thing of the passages themselves ascribed to St. Polycarp', but little agreeable to the apostolic age; all these considerations have justly restrained learned men from giving any great credit to those Fragments, or from receiving them as belonging in any wise to so ancient an author.

15. But, whatever becomes of these Fragments, certain it is that the epistle which I have here subjoined is the genuine work of this holy man, and worthy of that great character which antiquity has given of it. Even Monsieur Daillé himself confesses, that, excepting only the close of it, against which it was necessary for him to declare himself, there is nothing in it that either ought to offend any, or that may be thought unworthy of Polycarp. But Le Moyne' goes yet farther: he tells us, that he does not see how any one can entertain the least suspicion against it; that

1 Ad lib. iii. c. 3. Irenæi.

2 Lond. 1647. p. 31.

3 Usserii Annot. loc. cit. pp. 72, 73.

4 Victor Capuanus: he lived anno 545.

" Cave Hist. liter. in Polyc. p. 28. Le Moyne Prol. ad Var. Sacr. Tentzel. Exercit. Select. iv. de Polyc. n. xlix. Du Pin. Bibl. Ecel. in Polycarp. &c.

6 De Scriptis Ignatian, cap. xxxii.

7 Prol. ad Var. Sacr. tom. i. in Polycarp.

there is not, perhaps, any work extant that has more certain evidences of its being genuine, than this in short, that if it shall be lawful to doubt of this, there will be no monument of antiquity left which we may not as well call in question, and reject as spurious.

16. Indeed, so general is the reception which learned men, on all sides, have given to this epistle, that I might well omit any farther discourse in confirmation of the credit and authority of it. But yet, seeing there have been two things started by some of late, if not utterly to destroy, yet at least to lessen, the reputation of this piece, I will consider, in short, what may fairly be replied to both their exceptions.

17. Now the first is that of Tentzelius, in his Exercitation upon this epistle; who, though he allows it to be undoubtedly genuine, yet supposes it to have been corrupted by the same hand that we confess1o did corrupt the Epistles of Ignatius, about 600 years after Christ. But to this I reply, First, that it is allowed that there is nothing in this epistle that may give any just grounds for the suspicion of any such fraud as this; it being acknowledged, even by Monsieur Daillé himself, (one of the greatest adversaries of it) to be an epistle in all respects worthy of St. Polycarp, excepting only in the close of it, which I shall more particularly consider by and by. So that either we have this epistle pure and uncorrupted as it was first written, or at least we have it so little prejudiced by any alterations that may have been made in it, that there is nothing in the epistle, as it now is, dangerous, in point either of

8 Vid. apud Tentzel. de Polycarp. Dissert. iv. num. 41. p. 157.

9 Exercit. Select. Exerc. iv. num. 42, &e. 47.

- 10 Usserii Dissert. de Epist. Ignat. cap. vi. p. 33.

A

faith or manners; or that might not have well enough been written by St. Polycarp. But this was not the case with the epistles of St. Ignatius'; which not only laboured under many impertinences unbecoming the character of that great man, but were fraught with many things that were altogether fabulous: nay, if we may credit archbishop Usher', had some passages in them that tended to corrupt the very faith of Christ, in one of the most considerable points of it.

18. But, secondly, that the Epistles of St. Ignatius had been corrupted, was evident from disagreement of the copies which we usually had of them, from the quotations of the ancient Fathers of the first five centuries out of them. Now this was a most unquestionable demonstration of their having been changed from what they were in those first ages in which those Fathers lived: and accordingly proved to be so, when the old Latin version of bishop Usher first, and then the Florentine Greek edition of the learned Isaac Vossius, came to be compared with those editions that had before been extant of them. But neither does this exception appear against the present epistle, which agrees with what is quoted both by Eusebius* and others out of it; and thereby clearly shews our present copy to be sincere and uncorrupted.

19. Seeing then there is nothing but a mere conjecture for the depravation of this epistle, and such just reason to conclude that there is no good foundation for it, (to be sure none that may compare with the arguments we have against it,) I think

1 Vid. Dissert. Usser. c. x, xi. p. 63, &c.

2 Ibid. c. xv. p. 103. This Dr. Grabe has confirmed, proving the interpolator of Ignatius's Epistles to have been an Arian. Spicileg. PP. sec. ii. p. 225, 226.

3 Usserii Dissert. Ignat. cap. iii. p. 12.

* Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. iii. e. 36. Photius Bibl. tmem. cxxvi. p. 305.

we may conclude, that, for any thing yet appearing to the contrary, we not only have the genuine Epistle of St. Polycarp; but that epistle free from any designed corruptions, or depravations of it.

20. Nor is there any more, I do not say that there is much less weight, in the other supposal of Monsieur Daillés, continued and abetted by his learned defender Monsieur Larroque, though without any other or greater proof than what had been before fully answered by our most learned and judicious bishop Pearson; namely, that this epistle originally ended at the doxology which we meet with in chapter the twelfth; and that what follows, concerning the Epistles of St. Ignatius, has been added to it by some latter hand. But now what proof do they offer of this? What authority have they to support such a supposition? This they pretend not to. All they have to say is, that the doxology which we find there, seems to imply that the epistle originally went no farther: and that in what follows there is a flat contradiction to what went before; the close of the epistle speaking of Ignatius as if he were still alive, whom the true Polycarp had before set forth to the Philippians as having "suffered," and "been gone to the place that was prepared for him."

21. As for what concerns the latter of these suggestions, I have already shewn how vain and groundless it is. Nor can we reasonably suppose that any one who designed to serve a turn by corrupting such an epistle as this, would have been either so negligent as not once to read over the piece he was about to make so considerable an addition to; or having read it, would have been so foolish as to have, without any need, subjoined a request to the

5 Vid. Larroque Observ. in Vind. Pears. p. 65, 66.