"But it appears to me scarcely serious to say: there are the Seven
Letters in Armenian, and I maintain, they prove that Cureton's text
is an incomplete extract, because, I think, I have found some Syriac
idioms in the Armenian text! Well, if that is not a joke, it simply
proves, according to ordinary logic, that the Seven Letters must
have once been translated into Syriac. But how can it prove that the
Greek original of this supposed Syriac version is the genuine text,
and not an interpolated and partially forged one?" [80:3]

Dr. Lightfoot blames me for omitting to mention this argument, on the
ground that "a discussion which, while assuming the priority of the
Curetonian letters, ignores this version altogether, has omitted a vital
problem of which it was bound to give an account." Now all this is sheer
misrepresentation. I do not assume the priority of the Curetonian
Epistles, and I examine all the passages contained in the seven Greek
Epistles which have any bearing upon our Gospels.

Passing on to another point, I say:

"Seven Epistles have been selected out of fifteen extant, all
equally purporting to be by Ignatius, simply because only that
number were mentioned by Eusebius." [81:1]

Another passage is also quoted by Dr. Lightfoot, which will be found a
little further on, where it is taken for facility of reference. Upon
this he writes as follows:--

"This attempt to confound the seven Epistles mentioned by Eusebius
with the other confessedly spurious Epistles, as if they presented