The immoral asceticism to which I have alluded. I have, on the whole, decided to leave out. It is a fact well known by readers of ecclesiastical history, under the title of παρεισακταί, or subintroductæ . The only importance of introducing it here was the public sanction given to a most vile and abominable practice; for Hermas was read in the Churches. This Hermas was brother to Pope Pius I. (of old he was thought to be he whom Paul speaks of), and he lived about forty to sixty years after the death of the apostle John.
Now, I have really given the very best things that are said in Barnabas, Clement, and Polycarp, and the other two, if good, can be spoken of in Ignatius and Hermas. Some of old rejected Barnabas; the others have hardly been called in question as to genuineness. Some call Hermas inspired, as Origen: Irenæus quotes it as scripture. Now, genuine or not, Hermas and Clement were read in the churches; not in result put in the canon, still were added at the end of the manuscripts of the New Testament, as Barnabas and Hermas in the Sinaitic, Clement in the Alexandrian, and so on. I do not know that Ignatius’ epistles ever were; he was a martyr, and eager for martyrdom. Nor do I know that Polycarp’s was; but in the early church it was a question as to most of them whether they were scripture or not; they were of the next highest authority, and some unquestionably constantly read in the churches. If Ignatius’ Latin or Greek ones are spurious, the Syriac are there, and quite enough: nobody doubts that he wrote epistles—seven, it is said; nobody doubts that the primitive church teemed with forgeries and falsifications to prop up the system I refer to, and other foolish or evil things.
