distinct and very different recensions, if we except the Epistle to
Polycarp, in which the variations are very few. Of these two
recensions the shorter has been most generally received: the
circumstance of its being shorter seems much to have influenced its
reception; and the text of the Medicean Codex and of the two copies
of the corresponding Latin version belonging to Caius College,
Cambridge, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, has been adopted ...
In all these there is no distinction whatever drawn between the
former and latter Epistles: all are placed upon the same basis; and
there is no ground whatever to conclude either that the arranger of
the Greek recension or the translator of the Latin version esteemed
one to be better or more genuine than another. Nor can any prejudice
result to the Epistles to the Tarsians, to the Antiochians, and to
Hero, from the circumstance of their being placed after the others
in the collection; for they are evidently arranged in chronological
order, and rank after the rest as having been written from Philippi,
at which place Ignatius is said to have arrived after he had
despatched the previous Letters. So far, therefore, as the evidence
of all the existing copies, Latin as well as Greek, of both the
recensions is to be considered, it is certainly in favour of the
rejected Epistles, rather than of those which have been retained."
[84:1]

Proceeding from counter-statements to actual facts, I will very briefly
show the order in which these Epistles have been found in some of the
principal MSS. One of the earliest published was the ancient Latin
version of eleven Epistles edited by J. Faber Stapulensis in 1498, which
was at least quoted in the ninth century, and which in the subjoined
table I shall mark A, [84:2] and which also exhibits the order of Cod.
Vat. 859, assigned to the eleventh century. [84:3] The next (B) is a