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To the Ephesians

St Ignatius of Antioch, Lake, Loeb 1912

Chapter 20

Promise of future doctrinal exposition

If Jesus Christ permit me through your prayers, and it be his will, in the second book,¹ which I propose to write to you, I will show you concerning the dispensation of the new man Jesus Christ, which I have begun to discuss, dealing with his faith and his love, his suffering and his resurrection;

especially if the Lord reveal² to me that you all severally join in the common meeting in grace from his name,³ in one faith and in Jesus Christ, “who was of the family of David according to the flesh,” the Son of Man and the Son of God, so that you obey the bishop and the presbytery with an undisturbed mind, breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote that we should not die, but live for ever in Jesus Christ.

Notes

This second book was either never written, or at all events is not extant in the genuine recension: but a later editor has supplied a “second epistle to the Ephesians” which is undoubtedly not genuine.
This appears to be the only possible translation. But the text is not improbably corrupt.
Or possibly, as Lightfoot thinks, ἐξ ὀνόματος means “every individual of you.” It is in any case a strange phrase.