heroes of the Church. Not many years before, a terrific persecution
had raged in his own city of Lyons; many had been put in prison,
and some had been thrown to wild beasts; [55:1] and it is obviously
to one of these anonymous sufferers that Irenaeus here directs
attention. The "one of our people" is not certainly an apostolic
Father; but some citizen of Lyons, moving in a different sphere,
whose name the author does not deem it necessary to enrol in the
record of history. Neither is it to a _written_ correspondence,
but to the _dying words_ of the unknown martyr, to which he adverts
when we read,--"One of our people _said_, As I am the wheat of God,
I am also ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may be found the
pure bread of God."

The two witnesses of the second century who are supposed to uphold
the claims of the Ignatian Epistles have now been examined, and it
must be apparent that their testimony amounts to nothing. Thus
far, then, there is no external evidence whatever in favour of
these letters. The result of this investigation warrants the
suspicion that they are forgeries. [55:2] The internal evidence
abundantly confirms this impression. Any one who carefully peruses
them, and then reads over the Epistle of Clemens Romanus, the
Teaching of the Apostles, the writings of Justin Martyr, and the
Epistle of Polycarp, may see that the works just named are the
productions of quite another period. The Ignatian letters describe
a state of things which they totally ignore. Dr. Lightfoot himself
has been at pains to point out the wonderful difference between
the Ignatian correspondence and the Epistle of Polycarp. "In
whatever way," says he, "we test the documents, the contrast is
very striking,--more striking, indeed, than we should have
expected to find between two Christian writers who lived at the