External testimony therefore leaves a very strong presumption in favour of the genuineness of the Ignatian letters in one form or other; and before rejecting them entirely, we are bound to show that internal evidence furnishes really substantial and valid objections to their authenticity. It is not sufficient, for instance, to allege that the saint's desire for martyrdom, as exhibited in these Epistles, is extravagant, because we have ample testimony for believing that such extravagance (whether commendable or not) was highly characteristic of the faith and zeal of the early Christians when tried by persecution. Nor again, is it of any avail to produce some eccentricities of thought or language, because there is no _a priori_ reason why St Ignatius should not have indulged in such eccentricities.
Unless therefore really solid objections can be urged, we are bound by all ordinary laws of literary evidence to accept as genuine at all events the shortest form in which these Epistles are presented to us. In other words, the Curetonian letters at least must be received. And as these satisfy all the quotations and references of the second and third centuries (though not those of Eusebius in the first half of the fourth), perhaps not more is required by the external testimony. Against the genuineness of these it may be presumed that our author has advanced what he considered the strongest arguments which the case admits; and I have answered them. I am quite aware that other objections have been alleged by other critics; but it will be sufficient here to express a conviction that these have no real force against even the slightest external testimony, and to undertake to meet them if they are reproduced. Thus all the supposed anachronisms have failed. Bochart, for instance, was bold enough to maintain that the Ignatian Epistle to the Romans could not have been written before the time of Constantine the Great, because 'leopards' are mentioned in it, and the word was not known until this late age. In reply to Bochart, Pearson and others showed conclusively, by appealing (among other documents) to the contemporary Acts of Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas (who suffered when Geta was Cæsar, about A.D. 202), that 'leopards' were so called more than a century at least before Constantine, while they gave good reasons for believing that the word was in use much earlier. I am able to carry the direct evidence half a century farther back. The word occurs in an early treatise of Galen (written about the middle of the second century), without any indication that it was then a new or unusual term. This passage, which (so far as I am aware) has been hitherto overlooked, carries the use back to within some forty years, or less, of the professed date of the Ignatian letters; and it must be regarded as a mere accident that no earlier occurrence has been noticed in the scanty remains of Greek and Roman literature which bridge over the interval. Of the institution of episcopacy again, it is sufficient to say that its prevalence in Asia Minor at this time, whatever may have been the case elsewhere, can only be denied by rejecting a large amount of direct and indirect evidence on this side of the question, and by substituting in its place a mere hypothesis which rests on no basis of historical fact.