The Roman name of Ignatius (or Egnatius) tells nothing as to his birth or origin. It was not unknown in Syria and Palestine, and was sometimes borne by Jews. But another and a second name--Theophorus--of regular recurrence in the seven genuine Epistles records at least his spiritual birth. Ignatius probably assumed the name of 'the God-bearer' at the time of his conversion or his baptism; the precedent lay before him of a Saul commemorating a critical incident in his career (Acts xiii. 9) by a similar adoption of a name; and that assumed by Ignatius became in its turn an epithet freely applied to the Fathers at the Oecumenical councils. The name gave birth to more than one beautiful legend. Was not Ignatius, according to the Eastern belief, the 'God-borne' [Greek: theophoros], the very child whom the Lord took into His arms (St. Mark ix. 36, 37)? Was he not the 'God-bearer' [Greek: theophoros] on the fragments of whose heart according to Western tradition, was found stamped in golden letters the name of Jesus Christ? Whether he were a slave or not must remain uncertain. It is a more probable deduction from his own language that he--the 'untimely birth,'[66]--the 'one born out of due time' and 'the last' of the faithful, had been rescued from a pagan life, such as Antioch on the Orontes, the home of panders and dancing girls, and 'Daphnici mores' would have applauded. 'His,' says Bishop Lightfoot, 'was one of those "broken" natures out of which God's heroes are made. If not a persecutor of Christ, if not a foe to Christ, as seems probable, he had at least been for a considerable portion of his life an alien from Christ. Like St. Paul, like Augustine, like Francis Xavier, like Luther, like John Bunyan, he could not forget that his had been a dislocated life; and the memory of the catastrophe, which had shattered his former self, filled him with awe and thanksgiving, and fanned the fervour of his devotion to a white heat.