A Vindication of the Epistles of St. Ignatius

Document notes

Original title: Vindiciae epistolarum S. Ignatii A Latin monograph in two parts defending the authenticity of the seven letters transmitted under the name of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, in the shorter Greek recension recovered by James Ussher and Isaac Vossius in the 1640s, and answering chapter by chapter the Huguenot scholar Jean Daillé's De scriptis quae sub Dionysii Areopagitae et Ignatii Antiocheni nominibus circumferuntur (Geneva, 1666). Dedicated to Gilbert Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury, the volume comprises a dedication, an Ad Lectorem, a six-chapter Prooemium narrating the rise, progress, and present state of the controversy in order of publication, a first part assembling external testimony from Polycarp, Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, Chrysostom and later Greek, Latin, Syriac and Arabic witnesses against the argument from silence, a second part drawing internal proof from the letters themselves (chronology, heresiology, martyrological character, diction, ecclesiastical nomenclature, and the inscriptions), followed by Addenda et Interserenda, Corrigenda, two letters of Isaac Vossius against David Blondel with Pearson's interleaved counter-notes, and an analytical Elenchus Capitum. It treats the manuscript tradition, the Old Latin, Syriac, Arabic and Ethiopic versions, and the printed editions as a recensional history to be dated, replacing Ussher's three recensions with a census of four ancient editions, and it distinguishes carefully among forger, interpolator, and translator while defending the threefold ministry of bishops, presbyters, and deacons as apostolic. 👉 Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here 📜 View the original source file This text was transcribed and translated as part of the ExLatinis project—an effort by Leo to make English translations of every published text in Latin in early modern Europe (between 1450 and 1750) available to the public for free online.

• Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here
• View the original source file

Document excerpt

VINDICIAE Epistolarum S. IGNATII. AUTORE JOANNE PEARSON PRESBYTERO. ACCESSERUNT ISAACI VOSSII EPISTOLÆ DUÆ ADVERSUS DAVID BLONDELLUM. S. Chrysostomus Homilia XI in Epist. ad Ephesios. 'Αρειν το Πορεία, εἰ πε μοι, το λερειν οπι ορθοδοξοι εἰσι; τα πις χειροτονίας οιχεί κη πολωλε; κη πί το όρελον της αλλων, παῦτος οκ πιερωμένως; αποστρομη υπο της πίσεως, υπον κη υπο ταῦτας μαχεαν χρης. CANTABRIGIÆ: Typis Ioanne Hayes; Prostant Londini, apud Guil. Wells & Rob. Scott, ad Insignia Principis in vico Little Britain dicto. 1672.