¹ Other references in the notes (which are merely occasional, not complete) are to some editors and translators of the text, from Voss (1646) and Cotelier (1672), Pearson and Smith (1709), Whiston (in his Primitive Christianity, 1711), Frey (1742) and Russell (1746), to Temple Chevallier (1833), Bunsen (1847), Petermann (1849), Hefele (4th ed. 1855), Dressel (1857), Jacobson (4th ed. 1863), H. Scholz (1865), Mayer (1869), Zahn (1876), C. H. Hoole (1885), Lightfoot (2nd ed. 1889), Bruston (in his Ignace d'Antioche, 1897), Funk (2nd ed. 1901), Hilgenfeld (1902), Krueger (in Hennecke's Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, 1904), Lake (1912), Franz Zeller (1918), J. H. Srawley (3rd ed. 1919), Walter Bauer (1920), Bihlmeyer (1924), Delafosse (1927), and Lelong (2nd ed. 1927).

² Some reflect the Syriac temperament as expressed in the Odes of Solomon, for example. But this is not to be pressed. Thus the madical metaphor in (vi) undoubtedly recalls the Syriac identification of healing with life-giving power (see Baudissian's Adonis und Esmun, 258, 341, 396 f.); yet a writer like Menander happens to use it as freely as Ignatius, and it extends from the cult of Isis to another Egyptian source in the Hermetica. Trallians, however, supplies two specimens of the edged paradox which Ignatius particularty loved, both in connection with ( iv, and iii). It is a feature of his style. ‘Ignatius elocutione utitur artificiosa et quaesita, aspera et concisa,’ H.Reinhold remarks, in his De Graecitate Patrum Apostoloum (p. 19), although this is not fully just to the bishop.

³ Not ‘as appointed by Jesus Christ’ but ‘as Jesus Christ's Command or law,’ authoritative for maintaining Christian unity. With characteristic freedom Ignatius applies this term to the bishop himself (Trall, xiii). By in this connexion he means whatever regulates and determines the divine fellowship of the Church; even the presbyters get a similar title (Magn. ii ).

⁴ Sitzungsberichte der kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien (vol. 172, part iv).

⁵ If Theophorus carried the sense of Deo plenus or God-inspired (see C. H. Turner in Studies in Early Church History, 27), this would tally with such an interpretation, especially in the light of v below, and of the Coptic version (‘in the fulness of the apostolic manner’).

⁶ This is the point of ix and of in vi (‘claiming credence,’ as in Polybius xii. 17, 11). It is confirmed by the paraphrase of the Coptic version, , which is prefixed to .

⁷ There is a partial parallel in the seventeenth Ode of Solomon, where the Redeemer cries, ‘I sowed my fruit in hearts of men … who were gathered to me and saved, because they were to me as my own members, and I was their Head.’ But this collocation of and the confession of Jesus Christ as incarnate, in Ignatius (Smyrn. i), is not derived from the Odes.

⁸ It is the only place where Ignatius alludes to God ‘promising.’ Usually this does carry with it a reference to the future life (as in Clem. Rom. 26 and 2 Clem. 10 and 11). Here the association of it with the Passion implies the Resurrection, as in Smyrn. i, where unity is similarly presented. What Ignatius carried across Asia was the ‘pageant of Christ's bleeding heart,’ not of his own; he may be suggesting that the divine call to Christians is not only bound up with the Passion but guaranteed thereby and ratified already, for might denote this (‘announcing’) rather than ‘promising.’ Or, in modern phrasing, the union of Christians who have no cross-purposes is ‘implicit’ in the union of Christ to the Father, i.e., in God's full nature and purpose manifested through the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection.

⁹ Abstract terms like , and become curiously alive and glowing in Ignatius, who fuses them with his dominating conviction of God's personal will and love (e.g. in Smyrn. xii, Philad. vii, Ephes. iv and xviii). Thus the union of Christians with God is realized realistically through participation in the personality (flesh and blood) of Christ, as mediated by the eucharist. The new context re-sets such gnostic terms.

¹⁰ Which Harnack pronounced to be ‘a very happy conjecture’ (Expositor, third series, ii, 407).

¹¹ So deeply does he feel brotherly love to be the essential expression of life within the catholic Church that he calls eucharistic worship (Smyrn. viii). Love in the Trallian letter is the distinctive feature of churches (iii, xiii) and of individuals (vi, xii). See note below on viii.

¹² This is the point of the subsequent allusion to ‘adhering inseparably to Jesus Christ’ (vii, ). Except the Armenian version, the authorities prefix , which, with Von der Goltz (Texte und Untersuchungen, 1894, iii. 25) and Krüger, I regard as a pious gloss. Ignatius might well have written it (‘from our God, Jesus Christ,’ Wake), but not here.

¹³ It has been argued that Ignatius here draws upon the 38th of the Odes of Solomon (see the edition by Harris and Mingana ii, 42 f., and De Zwaan in the American Journal of Theology, 1911, 617 f.), where wrong teaching mingled with truth is compared to drugs in sweetened wine. But the translation of the Ode is too precarious to support any such rendering. The metaphor is coined by Ignatius, and its first echo is in Irenaeus (i. 27.4).

¹⁴ This is the force of what he says as he goes on to call faith () and love () in viii. The latter is brotherly love, what others (though never Ignatius) called . These were the two supreme factors of the Christian fellowship, as is already noted in the Pastoral Epistles, and Ignatius insists that they were only possible for those who adhered to the worship of the Incarnation as enshrined in the eucharist or love-feast, under the regular bishop.

¹⁵ was the enclosure in which an altar stood, as distinct from the outer court. Ignatius never calls the eucharistic rite sacrificial, but he probably meant that the redemptive death of Jesus Christ, which he sometimes calls ‘his blood’ (Philad. inscription), was the central truth of the gospel, and was somehow commemorated in the eucharist — very much as the writer to the Hebrews could say that we Christians (13, 10) of our own.

¹⁶ Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua (chapter ii) provides a modern illustration. After explaining that when he began his Tracts for the Times, the epistles of Ignatius were one of his main inspirations, he adds, ‘I loved to act as feeling myself in my Bishop's sight, as if it were the sight of God. … What to me was jure divino was the voice of my Bishop in his own person. … My duty to him was my point of honour; his disapprobation was the one thing which I could not bear.’

¹⁷ Polykarp, in writing to the Philippians (v, vi) copies this, but adds specific directions for the presbyters.

¹⁸ So e.g. Bruston (op. cit., 30 f.).

¹⁹ Streeter (op. cit., 170).

²⁰ The phrase (in Smyrn. vi) implies that rank or position in the church was one qualification of those who were conducting separatist conventicles. I cannot overhear, as Bauer does (op. cit., 73 f.), an allusion to a gnostic anti-bishop here, but rather a reference to presbyters who were developing on lines of their own, as in the inscription of Polykarp's letter to the Philippians the bishop speaks in the name of himself ‘and of his presbyters’ at Smyrna, , where (like the Latin mecum, as Professor Mackail observes on Aeneid i. 675) means ‘on his side,’ not ‘beside him’ (as though all the local presbyters could be reckoned true to the bishop). The anticipations of evil in the last days, according to the contemporary Ascensio Isaiae (iii. 23), include an appearance of ‘those who love office, though they lack wisdom’ and of ‘lawless presbyters.’

²¹ He never speaks of an individual presbyter as he does of individual deacons, but always of the or collectively as a unity and authority. The contents of the Epistle of the Apostles are a ‘revelation for’ them as something similar (i) to the or of Trall. iii; Wajnberg renders the Ethiopic noun by collegium (Texte und Untersuchungen, 1919, 25).

²² The background is not simply that of passages like Rom. 5, 1 f. ( or Col. 1, 20 (), but of Clem. Roman. ii ().

²³ The Ascensio Isaiae (iv. 13) also has, ‘many believers saw him, their Hope, even Jesus the Lord Christ.’ Among the Ignatian touches in the later Asiatic document, The Epistle of the Apostles, there is the Lord's saying (xxi), ‘I am the Hope of the despairing’ (that is, of those who despair of any resurrection from the dead).

²⁴ The cohesive function of intercessory prayer is a favourite theme of Ignatius; he is always pressing such prayer, for himself (Ephes. xi, xx, Magn. xiv, Rom. ix, Philad. v, viii, Smyrn. xi), for other churches (Ephes. xxi, Magn. xiv, Rom. ix, Philad. x, Smyrn. xi), for outsiders (Ephes. x), and even for heretics (Smyrn. iv).

²⁵ This extension of in Hellenistic Greek is reflected in the Ascensio Isaiae (viii. 12); ‘it is allowed you in sorte domini to come hither,’ meaning, as Charles points out, ‘though you share in the lot of your Lord.’ (Trall. xii), as (Philad. vi), amounts to ‘my letter to you’ (literally, what I have written to you, or, in your case).

²⁶ See Holl's Fragmente vornicänischen Kirchenväter aus den Sacra Parallela in Texte und Untersuchungen (1899) ii. 2, 22. Were this what Ignatius wrote, it would show how freely he could use a word which had associations alien to his creed, for denoted in the cults one in ecstatic rapture, who believed that this divine possession heralded immortality as freedom from bodily trammels.

²⁷ I have discussed this in The Journal of Religion (April, 1930), 174.

²⁸ Nehem. 13, 13 () is not an exact parallel.

²⁹ Or rather ‘the Father,’ i.e., as commonly in Ignatius, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom He works on and for Christians from first to last, as a God of love and mercy. The bishop's theology is practically that of the Apostles' Creed; if there was any item in it which he took over without developing it, belief in the Spirit might be adduced (see Loofs, op. cit., 194–205), but certainly not ‘I believe in God the Father.’ For Ignatius this is far from being a theological abstraction. The Father raised the Son (Trall. ix, Smyrn. xi), in him Christ now lives (Rom. iii, Smyrn. ii) and speaks (Rom. viii); to him Christians are called to come (Rom. vii, Fhilad. ix); he listens to their praise and notes their loyalty (Rom. ii, Ephes. iv) and he is the invisible ‘bishop’ of all Christians (Magn. iii), caring personally for their interests.

³⁰ E.g., the ironical, double sense of (vi), the play upon (vi), and assonances or alliterations like (iii), … (vi), and (viii).

³¹ Excerpta ex Theodoto lxi; see Dr.Casey, R. P. edition (81, 150) in Studies and Documents i (1934)Google Scholar.

³² Ignatius only mentions once (Smyrn. v), and then of Christians suffering. In the rhythmical confession of faith (Trall, ix) he has the unusual but this was a Johannine term (John 15, 20 already, and it recurs in the Christian strata of the Ascensio Isaiae (iii. 13), where the prophet predicts ‘the coming of the Beloved from the seventh heaven … his human form () and also his persecution or tortures at the crucifixion (), one of the passages which suggest echoes or affinities on the part of Ignatius with this apocalypse.

³³ After owning the value of the Old Testament revelation (Philad. ix), he adds, ‘But the Gospel has something special and supreme — the advent of the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, his passion, and the resurrection,’ the Gospel thus being the consummation of . Which is his way of saying that in the gospel God had brought life and to light (2 Tim. 1, 10). The distinctive feature for him in the cult of Jesus the Incarnate was that it effected the experience of immortality as no other cult of the period had done or could do; even the Old Testament revelation was but an anticipation.

³⁴ The reference to ‘mere babes’ () never used elsewhere, is an echo of 1 Cor. 3, 1–2, just as the language used to describe the heavenly mysteries recalls (as in Smyrn. vi) the words of Col. 1, 16 and Ephes. 3, 1.

³⁵ Stahl (Patristische Untersuchungen i, 159 f.) sees in the references to echoes of the Matthew-logion, , as if this quality belonged to the imitatio Christi which Ignatius enjoins on Christians. There are allusions to the humble obedience of Christ on earth in the service of God (e.g. Magn. viii, xiii), but I cannot see that the words of Matth. 11, 29 are required to explain the of Philad. viii, which is too general a term to require any such definite root.

³⁶ The Church in the Roman Empire, 815.

³⁷ The word is not simply conventional with Ignatius; it retains something of its original sense. When he said ‘Fare ye well,’ he was thinking of their religious welfare, as is plain from his use of the imperatival infinitive in his letter to Polykarp (viii ) and of the verb in Smyrn. xiii (), where the sense is ‘Strength to you’ or ‘Be strong.’

³⁸ It may be accidental that while Ignatius calls the Ephesians, the Romans, and the Philadelphians his outright, and hails the Smyrniotes and the Magnesians as his he never addresses the Trallians thus. He does describe them, however, as (viii).

³⁹ carries the sense of disposition or purpose here; sound or flawless () loyalty to convictions is an innate quality of their being. ‘Yours by nature, not by acquirement’ is a side-stroke at the gnostic claim to be spiritual by nature () whereas ordinary church-members, on a lower level, merely received the grace of God by acquiring it through a proper exercise of freewill (), or for a time. This was specially held by the Valentinians (Irenaeus i. 6 and vi. 4). Your Christianity, Ignatius assures the Trallians, has been implanted by God; it is not an extra, or a passing phase of endowment for life, which God may withdraw from you at any time. Of course, as elsewhere he indicates (e.g. in viii as in Ephes. i), this divine nature had to be carefully trained and exercised by Christians. In his own way he says what the writer of the Epistle of James had said, (1, 21); this underlies the collocation of in the inscription, since the Trallian church had shown itself deserving of God's choice, living up to the nature which He had implanted within them. But here his point is that the catholic faith is not a mere product of training, much less a second-rate degree of favour from God. As he had explicitly said, in the inscription, catholics, not gnostics, are the ‘elect,’ the recipients of ‘full blessing.’

⁴⁰ Instead of holding aloof, Polybius had entered fully into the joy of Ignatius in his bondage, assuring him of the sympathy felt for him by the church which he represented, and also of their undeviating loyalty to Church faith and order. This loyalty, vividly exhibited to him by the bishop, convinced Ignatius that the Trallian Christians must indeed be ‘followers’ (literally ‘imitators,’ ) of God, as they were reproducing the divine plan of life revealed in the hierarchical polity. (Ephes. iii, iv).

⁴¹ The unity of thought in i–ii and the first sentence of iii is the idea that the being as well as the well-being of the Church depends upon submission to the authorities. The link between i and ii, in , is illustrated by Philad. vii, where from a slightly different angle the welfare of the Church is connected with a conscience for reproducing the principle of the divine order. Here the inscription strikes the first note of the Church, viz. loyalty to the Incarnation; the second note is struck in i–iiia, viz. loyalty to the hierarchy, since apart from this no Christians can be genuine ‘followers of God.’ In i–iiia Ignatius commends the church as a whole; it is only in what follows that he hints at another side of the matter, and in thus dealing with the local situation the letter, in musical parlance, passes from legato to agitato. As usual, however, even in telling them what they are, he means to remind them of what they should be.

⁴² Literally ‘be found at death,’ as in Philippians 3, 9. So below in xii and xiii.

⁴³ Again, as in the inscription (), Ignatius goes off into an eager rapture at the mention of Jesus Christ, though implies indirectly deference to the bishop and the presbytery, since to live ‘in’ or ‘after’ () Jesus Christ means more than any individual piety. The insertion of , by the Curetonian Syriac (followed by Lightfoot), might suggest explicitly that by thus ‘living in (subjection to) the bishop, we shall be found within Christ at death’; but the shorter text is sufficient and more idiomatic. The same thought recurs in Magn. vi.

⁴⁴ ‘Above reproach’ () like the deacons in I Tim. 3, 10 ().

⁴⁵ This opening sentence of iii carries on and completes the theme of i–ii. (so in I Peter 3, 1 and 7, with 5, 5) introduces the reciprocal aspect; for some reason Ignatius speaks about the at length, and upon their responsibilities, before insisting on the laity showing them respect.

⁴⁶ Or, ‘no church deserves the name of Church,’ if it does not acknowledge the threefold order of the ministry. Surely the sentence bears more than what Zahn allows, in his Ignatius von Antiochen (1873, 300); the reference is more radical than to ‘any meeting or service of the church, held without the sanction or the presence of the bishop.’ When Ignatius intended to say that only, he said it, as he did in Smyrn. viii. The climax of the argument in the first paragraph comes in this (‘apart from’). In the following sentence Ignatius closes by catching up the reference to Polybius in i, and making it more personal.

⁴⁷ Possibly means the heretics or dissenters of x (as Bruston holds), but more likely non-Christians, who are impressed by gentleness in a bishop as well as in ordinary Christians (Ephes. x).

⁴⁸ Here begins the second paragraph, which ends naturally with v. Ignatius, it now appears, had a reason for stressing the personal qualities of the bishop at the end of the first paragraph; it is hinted that some of the Trallians were not too respectful to Polybius. In fact, Ignatius explains, it was only his affection for the church that kept him from speaking severely to them (severius, Funk; ernster, Zeller) on the subject of insubordination. This leads him to explain at once his own authority as a spiritual counsellor and his reluctance to exercise it.

⁴⁹ The MSS. and versions differ so definitely here that some break in the text is indicated; G and L actually read before with instead of . At any rate alludes to the theme of the preceding paragraph, and should be rendered ‘on this matter’ rather than ‘on his behalf,’ whether ‘his’ refers to Christ or to Polybius. The text rendered above (Bunsen, Funk, Zahn, Lightfoot, Bihlmeyer) seems sound, though Lightfoot supplies and Bruston (‘en quelque sort’) before (‘spare’), whilst Zahn reads (‘though I very well might,’ Chevallier, after Wake). It is not till the very end, in xii (), that Ignatius hints at the truth; the local presbyters were not all supporting the bishop as they should.

⁵⁰ Another Pauline reminiscence (2 Corinth. 10, 13; 12, 1–7).

⁵¹ Perhaps what his praisers (Smyrn. v) actually said has dropped out of the text, something like ‘you are a real Theophoros’ or ‘you will be a true martyr.’ The longer recension reads the easy .

⁵² I.e. a perfected Christian. In Ignatius the term is on the way to become almost an equivalent for ‘martyr,’ probably inspired by the saying ‘Whosoever does not carry his cross and come after me, he cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14, 37).

⁵³ This third paragraph (vi, vii, and the first sentence of viii as the climax) swings from the thought, arising out of the previous paragraph, that surely the Trallians will be able to understand a general warning against such as Ignatius feels both obliged and competent to issue, as well as an admonition upon the proper way to avoid such errors, viz., by adhering to the apostolic ministry. He thus comes round to the idea underlying i–iii, and the first sentence of viii is one of his kindly assurances (see Magn. xi, Smyrn. iv) that he is not blaming them so much as putting them upon their guard. The dominant note in here, as the context indicates, is sectarianism or indifference to the hierarchy; though (as in Ephes. vi) this connotes a break-away from the truth of the Incarnation, which, according to Ignatius, is bound up with the sacraments as administered by the bishop, still the emphasis at present is on the anti-episcopal side of the movement. Not until the next paragraph (ix, x) does he touch directly the ‘heretical’ teaching of these separatists.

⁵⁴ ‘I am overflowing with love for you … yet not I but Jesus Christ’ (Philad. v). The genitive here is subjective, not ‘love for Jesus Christ.’

⁵⁵ Here, as in Philad. iii, the weedy anti-episcopal propaganda; i.e. dissent or schism rather than heresy (in the modern sense of the term). Hence the warning (in vii) against being ‘puffed up’ by a dissenting, pretentious movement that makes its adherents despise the bishop and his sacraments, as if these were not absolutely valid.

⁵⁶ I.e. as though you felt yourselves independent of the apostolic faith, guaranteed by the bishop. The opposite of being ‘puffed up’ is (as in Magn. xi and xiii) a humble readiness to follow the apostolic faith taught by the Church through the three orders of the ministry, since that alone means the presence and possession of Jesus Christ.

⁵⁷ Neither these nor the of Magn. xiii necessarily denote anything like the Apostles' Creed in a primitive form, much less a Johannine institution of the episcopate in Asia Minor. Some objective authority may be in the writer's mind, but how it was supposed to be embodied or transmitted, we cannot say. Phrases like this simply show how Ignatius was convinced that the apostles ‘had impressed certain features on the Church's life, they had started its career on certain lines, its development could only move within certain limits’ (C. H. Turner, The Early History of the Church and Ministry, 114).

⁵⁸ The devil is behind dissent (so Philad. vi), which is one of his crafty ‘ambushes.’ But probably here and certainly in (‘opportunity’) below, Ignatius was not conscious of the military tinge in the metaphor, though he did see in docetism and anti-episcopacy manoeuvres of and in another connexion speaks of defeating or deposing him, in ordinary militant language ( iv, as in Philostratus, Vita Apoll. v. 35 ).

⁵⁹ In this fresh paragraph, lightly reiterates the warning (of vii) against divisive self-conceit, but it is now applied to the general behaviour of the Trallian Christians, in view of the outside world. is a special application of but since Christian love is bound up with faith (as right belief in the gospel of the Incarnation), Ignatius proceeds (ix–xi) to explain in detail what he had meant by the , that is, the specious, spurious teaching of docetists. There is no break in the brief discussion, for x is merely an aside, suggested as usual by his recollection of the apostle Paul, and xi sums up the argument of ix.

⁶⁰ Cotelier was the first to suspect that had been changed into the of the traditional text. Both terms, and are employed together by Epictetus (iii. 25, 4 ) in the same sense. Ignatius hints at the need for fresh attention to the exercise of spiritual qualities (see above on i). The force of the repeated may be brought out by using ‘new’ and ‘once more’; the general idea of both terms in this combination is that of pulling oneself together, as the papyri indicate.

⁶¹ A free citation, from memory, of Isaiah 52, 5, which had been introduced into Christian usage by Paul (Rom. 2, 24). But, like the author of Second Clement (13, 2) and Polykarp (Phil, x), Ignatius quotes it in connexion with the bad impression made upon pagans by any quarrelsome Christians — , who defied or ignored the law of brotherly love, insensible to the living truth of their religion (so Ephes. 5, 17). In Smyrn. vi Ignatius definitely accuses the gnostic errorists of being indifferent to charitable behaviour.

⁶² I translate thus, to bring out the emphatic tone of the term as Ignatius often employed it; a deliberate antithesis haunts his mind, whether he is speaking of people who broke away from the bishop or from the genuine Christ. The word occurs in this letter as often as in all the others put together.

⁶³ Docetists (vi) might indeed talk of Jesus Christ, but not of the ‘really’ incarnate Lord. The confession of faith takes a rhythmical form, as in I Tim. 3, 16, with as the catchword of Ignatius against docetists. It is the prophet becoming lyrical, conscious that a confession of faith is to be sung.

⁶⁴ Zahn corrects to followed by editors like Krüger and Bauer, in preference to the Coptic, Syriac, and Armenian ὡς (Whiston, Frey, Russell, Bruston, and Hilgenfeld). The general sense is unaffected, however.

⁶⁵ In this tense aside he has 1 Corinth. 15, 12 and 15 and 32 in mind. ‘My martyrdom means that I am following a Lord who did die. If he did not really die, then I am misrepresenting him to the world.’ Here (as in Smyrn. ii and v) he seems to regard the docetists as almost on the level of pagans, since to deny the real humanity of the Lord was to invalidate salvation; in view of vii, he could call such errorists logically — though not of course as if he meant people who believed in Christ but not in God. ‘These atheists of unbelievers’ is a phrase which is echoed later in writers like Origen (Cels. ii. 3) and Tertullian (De Carne Christi 15), when dealing with errorists like the docetists.

⁶⁶ An apt parallel to this stroke is found in Tertullian's word on the Valentini ans; ita omnia in imagines urgent, plane et ipsi imaginarii Christiani (Adv. Val. 27). It was from this epigrammatic phrase of Ignatius (, that towards the end of the century these errorists got their name of Docetists. It is an anachronism, although it is convenient, to speak of them as such in the age of Ignatius himself.

⁶⁷ The neat correction of into is due to Voss. It is now confirmed by the Coptic version. Th e alternative would be either to omit (so the longer recension and the Armenian version) or to interpret the negative as an indignant interrogative (with Jacobson, Bunsen, Dressel, Hilgenfeld, Scholz, Hoole, an d Hefele).

⁶⁸ A reminiscence of Matthew (15, 13), as in Philad. iii. In the next clause (as already in ii and iv ) th e Syriac idiom requires to be rendered ‘be seen to be,’ not ‘appear.’

⁶⁹ ‘We belong to his fruit, thanks to his blessed passion’ (Smyrn. i). The fruit or outcome of docetism cannot be immortality, it is implied, for it lacks the vital core of the living Christ who has been really crucified. Having no Cross, such a gospel lacks the power to generate immortality.

⁷⁰ This () is Lightfoot's suggestion (‘be found’) for . The point of this saying about the divine presupposing is put otherwise in Smyrn. viii (). If this argument, which started in viii and which closes here, be compared with the other allusion to (in Ephes. iv), it will be seen that both stress the vital outcome of faith in or as the evidence of such union with the Lord.

⁷¹ Accept my instructions and directions (a common meaning of being ‘the learner'), in the spirit in which they are offered (see iii and vi), instead of resenting them.

⁷² I.e. of martyrdom (as in Rom. i). For (in ) the Latin version reads conor, which may be (Smith) an error for coronor in the sense of cingor, but it has suggested (Bunsen, Lightfoot, Srawley), though this meaning of the verb (‘press eagerly’) does not recur in Ignatius. He means either that the was appointed him (‘set before him’) or that he was all eager for it— ‘que je suis tout près d'obtenir’ (Lelong), ‘que je souhaite ardemment d'obtenir’ (Bruston), ‘le lot que je m'efforce d'obtenir’ (Delafosse), or ‘den zu erlangen mir gar sehr angelegen ist’ (Zeller). But it is not easy to see how this comes out of . Conjectures like (Vedel, Hilgenfeld) and (Smith) are unhelpful, though Ivar Heikel's (Studien und Kritiken, 1935, 317) would certainly straighten out the text. The Coptic version has . Either the original verb has been lost, or has been twisted to suit the writer's purpose, whether he thought of himself as ‘invested’ with the or of the as imminent (sortem mihi instantem, Dressel, Funk).

⁷³ A final echo of I Corinthians (9, 27 ).

⁷⁴ A parallel to this occurs in Ephes. viii (, ‘I am your humble, devoted servant’), where again the is omitted after the verb. In contemporary Greek had weakened in force, while amounted colloquially to our ‘devoted’ (‘mon esprit se dévoue pour vous,’ Delafosse); the sacrificial significance of the metaphor had begun to fade out, in both terms.

⁷⁵ This is the point which he is trying to make in his forced, elliptic saying, (v), ‘we are short of much (that we need to secure) if we are not to fall short of God,’ i.e. if we members of the Church are not to fail in our .

⁷⁶ Perhaps also as the Community or Polity, if is to be taken thus in Philad. i and Polykarp iv; the phrase is used by Lucian in his satire upon Christian attentions to a martyr (De Morte Peregrini xiii), but, in spite of Zahn (Ignatius von Antiochen, 333) and De Genouillac (L'Eglise Chrétienne au temps de Saint Ignace d'Antioche, 1907, 11, 126), this civic sense is uncertain. In any case it is not normal.

⁷⁷ Once he does use in its military sense (Polykarp vi, as in 2 Tim. 2, 4); see note above on viii.

⁷⁸ Antioch had been already disturbed by the baptist mission of Menander (mentioned by the longer recension among the ‘vile adventitious growths’ of Trall. xi), who not only ascribed creation to angels but promised immortality to his baptized adherents, as the one escape from created mortality. Ignatius does not use the sacrament of baptism into Christ as Paul had done, to bring out the union of Christians with Christ; his theology of the Incarnation leads him to prefer the Eucharist as the sacrament of union and immortality. In calling the ‘strange food’ (vi), by the way, he does not imply that the docetic dissenters were interlopers, as Bruston imagines (‘apportée du dehors’); it is not that they were outsiders but that such separatism is foreign to the Household of God (Philad. iii). In the light of Philad. ii, where the also work by , it is conceivable that Ignatius is hinting here at libertine tendencies in these enthusiasts of the spirit; but if so it is no more than a passing allusion.

⁷⁹ A phrase — and an original phrase — of Ignatius himself (, Magn. xiv). He might be literally called a friend ‘of fire,’ if the Syriac Nourono or Nourani (fiery), which was attached to his name, indicated that Ignatius was somehow connected with ignis, as Renan conjectures (Les Evangiles, 485).