warrant equally strong suspicions. Hippolytus tells us that
Callistus was a Patripassian. "The Father," said he, "having taken
human nature, deified it by uniting it to Himself, ... and so he
said that the Father had suffered with the Son." [75:3] Hence
Ignatius, in these Epistles, startles us by such expressions as
"the blood of God," [75:4] and "the passion of my God." [75:5]
Callistus is accused by Hippolytus as a trimmer prepared, as
occasion served, to conciliate different parties in the Church
by appearing to adopt their views. Sometimes he sided with
Hippolytus, and sometimes with those opposed to him; hence it is
that the theology taught in these letters is of a very equivocal
character. Dr. Lightfoot has seized upon this fact as a reason
that they are never quoted by Irenaeus. "The language approaching
dangerously near to heresy might," says he, "have led him to avoid
directly quoting the doctrinal teaching." [76:1] A much better
reason was that he had never heard of these letters; and yet their
theology is exactly such a piebald production as might have been
expected from Callistus.

It is not easy to understand how Dr. Lightfoot has brought himself
to believe that these Ignatian Epistles were written in the
beginning of the second century. "_Throughout the whole range of
Christian literature_," says he, "no more uncompromising advocacy
of the episcopate can be found than appears in these writings ...
It is when asserting the claims of the episcopal office to
obedience and respect that the language is _strained to the
utmost_. The bishops established _in the farthest part of the
world_ are in the counsels of Jesus Christ." [76:2] It is simply
incredible that such a state of things could have existed six or
seven years after the death of the Apostle John. All the extant