'The Ignatian Epistles are an exceptionally good training-ground for the student of early Christian literature and history. They present in typical and instructive forms the most varied problems, textual, exegetical, doctrinal, and historical. One who has thoroughly grasped these problems will be placed in possession of a master key which will open to him vast storehouses of knowledge.
'But' (continues the Bishop) 'I need not say that their educational value was not the motive which led me to spend so much time over them. The destructive criticism of the last half century is, I think, fast spending its force. In its excessive ambition it has "o'erleapt itself." It has not indeed been without its use. It has led to a thorough examination and sifting of ancient documents. It has exploded not a few errors, and discovered or established not a few truths. For the rest, it has by its directness and persistency stimulated investigation and thought on these subjects to an extent which a less aggressive criticism would have failed to secure. The immediate effect of the attack has been to strew the vicinity of the fortress with heaps of ruins. Some of these were best cleared away without hesitation or regret; but in other cases the rebuilding is a measure demanded by truth and prudence alike. I have been reproached by my friends for allowing myself to be diverted from the more congenial task of commenting on St. Paul's Epistles; but the importance of the position seemed to me to justify the expenditure of much time and labour in "repairing a breach" not indeed in the "House of the Lord" itself, but in the immediately outlying buildings.'
St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp (together with St. Clement of Rome) are the links which connect the Apostolic age proper with the Fathers of the second and third centuries; and this fact has made them and their scanty literature the hope and despair, the pride and the scorn, of opposing factions. In the whirl and confusion of discordant criticisms it is everything to study and to build up by the help of one who has caught the spirit of the master-lives he expounds. There breathes throughout the volumes of the Bishop of Durham the spirit of St. Ignatius's counsel--