Independent investigation of the phenomena of the Armenian version and of the Syriac fragments led him to regard the 'short' or Curetonian recension as an abridgment or mutilation, rather than the nucleus, of the 'middle' or Vossian form; and Zahn's monograph, _Ignatius von Antiochien_(1873), never yet answered, dealt a fatal blow at the claims of the Curetonian letters. Since then Lipsius has been convinced by Merx; Renan and Harnack are agreed; and most scholars will come to the conclusion, that through the Bishop of Durham's own serious investigation of the diction and style of the 'short' form, 'the last sparks of its waning life have been extinguished.' The collection was directed by no doctrinal, Eutychian or Monophysite, motive, nor composed (as Hefele suggested) in support of moral aim or monastic piety. It is simply a 'loose and perfunctory curtailment of the middle form, neither epitome nor extract, but something between the two,' and to be dated about the year A. D. 400 or somewhat earlier. The ground having been thus cleared from the accretions of the 'long' form and the mutilations of the 'short,' the Bishop of Durham considers in the next place the genuineness of the seven Epistles known to Eusebius, and preserved to us not only in the original Greek, but also in Latin and other translations. It is a bitter reflection, that discussion on this subject was (and--in a less degree--is still) evoked, not so much by critical and textual variations and difficulties, as by the exigencies of party spirit and theological animosity. A dreary, if necessary, page of ecclesiastical history has to be studied, when French Protestant and English Puritan turned passionately against the discovery of Ussher and Voss. It is small comfort to the charitably minded to be told that, had no Daille attacked[74] the Ignatian letters, Pearson would not have stepped forward as their champion. The consideration of the genuineness of the Seven Epistles falls naturally under the head of external and internal evidence. The Bishop gives his conclusion on the external evidence in the following words:-- '(1.) No Christian writings of the second century, very few writings of antiquity, whether Christian or pagan, are so well authenticated as the Epistles of Ignatius. If the Epistle of Polycarp be accepted as genuine, the authentication is perfect. (2.) The main ground of objection against the genuineness of the Epistle of Polycarp is its authentication of the Ignatian Epistles. Otherwise there is every reason to believe that it would have passed unquestioned. (3.) The Epistle of Polycarp itself is exceptionally well authenticated by the testimony of his disciple Irenaeus. (4.) All attempts to explain the phenomena of the Epistle of Polycarp, as forged or interpolated to give colour to the Ignatian Epistles, have signally failed.'