Letters of Ignatius as proof of anything is problematic. In addition to the known forgeries, the existence of short, mid, and long rescensions of ones which may contain some truth leaves one to guess just what to believe.
"... Of later collections of Ignatian letters which have been preserved, the oldest is known as the "long recension". This collection, the author of which is unknown, dates from the latter part of the fourth century. It contains the seven genuine and six spurious letters, but even the genuine epistles were greatly interpolated to lend weight to the personal views of its author. For this reason they are incapable of bearing witness to the original form. The spurious letters in this recension are those that purport to be from Ignatius."
Catholic Encyclopedia - Ignatius
Do you care to venture a guess when "catholic" - adjective became "Catholic" - proper noun?
Someone was being facetious and showing the absurdity of the claim that the church fathers were all Catholic.
:)
But that's true of Luke's Gospel as well, the long and short versions, that is. So, which version do you believe to be the pristine word of God? Hint: Marcion and Valentius liked one of them. :)
Ingatius' letters are, like those of Paul, divided into a collection which are attributed to Paul and the other (half) to authors pretending to be Paul. Then, again, all we have are later 2nd century copies of copies of what Paul allegedly wrote in the first half of the first century.
It contains the seven genuine and six spurious letters, but even the genuine epistles were greatly interpolated to lend weight to the personal views of its author. For this reason they are incapable of bearing witness to the original form. The spurious letters in this recension are those that purport to be from Ignatius." [Catholic Encyclopedia]
This is exactly the same type of bi-polar on-again off-again logic which seems to work flawlessly when it comes to some things (i.e. Ignatius) and completely shuts down when it comes to other heavily interpolated works "they are incapable of bearing witness to the original form." (i.e. Gospel of John, for example, or half of Pauline epistles), or even the identity of the author (i.e. Synoptic Gospels), which are accepted blindly on faith as capable of bearing witness!
If you bothered to read around the phrase that you are quoting, you would have seen that the Smyrneans is not in dispute, except by some unsubstantiated slander by Calvin, who simply did not like the content.