We must, however, again point out that, with the single exception of the short passage in the Epistle to Polycarp, c. ii., which is not a quotation, differs from the reading in Matthew, and may well be from any other source, none of these supposed reminiscences of our synoptic Gospels are found in the Syriac version of the three epistles. The evidential value of the seven Greek epistles is clearly stated by an English historian and divine: "My conclusion is, that I should be unwilling to claim historical authority for any passage not contained in Dr. Cureton's Syriac reprint."(3) We must, however, go much further, and assert that none of the Epistles have any value as evidence for an earlier period than the end of the second or beginning of the third century, if indeed they possess any value at all. The whole of the literature ascribed to Ignatius is, in fact, such a tissue of fraud and imposture, and the successive versions exhibit such undeniable marks of the grossest interpolation, that even if any small original element exist referrible to Ignatius, it is impossible to define it, or to distinguish with the slightest degree of accuracy between what is authentic and what is spurious. The Epistles do not, however, in any case afford evidence even of the existence of our synoptic Gospels. {272} 2. We have hitherto deferred all consideration of the so-called Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, from the fact that, instead of proving the existence of the Epistles of Ignatius, with which it is intimately associated, it is itself discredited in proportion as they are shown to be in authentic. We have just seen that the martyr-journey of Ignatius to Rome is, for cogent reasons, declared to be wholly fabulous, and the epistles purporting to be written during that journey must be held to be spurious. The Epistle of Polycarp, however, not only refers to the martyr-journey (c. ix.), but to the Ignatian Epistles which are inauthentic (c. xiii.), and the manifest inference is that it also is spurious. Polycarp, who is said by Irenæus(1) to have been in his youth a disciple of the Apostle John, became Bishop of Smyrna, and suffered martyrdom at a very advanced age.(2) On the authority of Eusebius and Jerome, it has hitherto been generally believed that his death took place in a.d. 166-167. In the account of his martyrdom, which we possess in the shape of a letter from the Church of Smyrna, purporting to have been written by eye-witnesses, which must be pronounced spurious, Polycarp is said to have died under the Proconsul Statius Quadratus.(3) If this statement be correct, the date hitherto received can no longer be maintained, for recent investigations have determined that Statius Quadratus was proconsul in a.d. 154-5 or 155-6.(4) Some critics, {273}