Phabe "a servant of the church at Cenchrea," because he read in the Acts of the Apostles that Paul had "shorn his head" in that place?

No. III.

Chap. i. 13. "Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was let hitherto, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles." Again, xv. 23, 24: "But now having no more place in these parts, and having a great desire these many years (**, oftentimes,) to come unto you, whensoever I take my journey into Spain I will come to you; for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you: but now I go up unto Jerusalem to minister to the saints. When, therefore, I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain."

With these passages compare Acts xix. 21. "After these things were ended, (viz. at Ephesus,) Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem; saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome."

If the passage in the epistle was taken from that in the Acts, why was Spain put in? If the passage in the Acts was taken from that in the epistle, why was Spain left out? If the two passages were unknown to each other, nothing can account for their conformity but truth. Whether we suppose the history and the epistle to be alike fictitious, or the history to be true but the letter spurious, or the letter to be genuine but the history a fable, the meeting with this circumstance in both, if neither borrowed it from the other, is upon all these suppositions equally inexplicable.

No. IV.

The following quotation I offer for the purpose of pointing out a geographical coincidence, of so much importance, that Dr. Lardner considered it as a confirmation of the whole history of St. Paul's travels.

Chap. xv. 19. "So that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ."

I do not think that these words necessarily import that St. Paul had penetrated into Illyricum, or preached the Gospel in that province; but raLet it be observed that our epistle purports to ther that he had come to the confines of Illyricum, have been written at the conclusion of St. Paul's (mixes to Ixλugixx,) and that these confines were second journey into Greece: that the quotation the external boundary of his travels. St. Paul from the Acts contains words said to have been considers Jerusalem as the centre, and is here spoken by St. Paul at Ephesus, some time before viewing the circumference to which his travels he set forwards upon that journey. Now I con- extended. The form of expression in the original tend that it is impossible that two independent conveys this idea-απο Περυσαλήμ και κύκλω μέχρι fictions should have attributed to St. Paul the TS Iλugs. Illyricum was the part of this cirsame purpose, especially a purpose so specific and cle which he mentions in an epistle to the Roparticular as this, which was not merely a general mans, because it lay in a direction from Jerusadesign of visiting Rome after he had passed lem towards that city, and pointed out to the Rothrough Macedonia and Achaia, and after he had man readers the nearest place to them, to which performed a voyage from these countries to Jeru- his travels from Jerusalem had brought him. The salem. The conformity between the history and name of Illyricum nowhere occurs in the Acts the epistle is perfect. In the first quotation from of the Apostles; no suspicion, therefore can be the epistle, we find that a design of visiting Rome received that the mention of it was borrowed from had long dwelt in the apostle's mind: in the quo- thence. Yet I think it appears, from these same tation from the Acts, we find that design ex- Acts, that St. Paul, before the time when he pressed a considerable time before the epistle was wrote his Epistle to the Romans, had reached the written. In the history, we find that the plan confines of Illyricum; or, however, that he might which St. Paul had formed was, to pass through have done so, in perfect consistency with the acMacedonia and Achaia; after that to go to Jeru- count there delivered. Illyricum adjoins upon salem; and when he had finished his visit there, Macedonia; measuring from Jerusalem towards to sail for Rome. When the epistle was written, Rome, it lies close behind it. If, therefore, St. he had executed so much of his plan, as to have Paul traversed the whole country of Macedonia, passed through Macedonia and Achaia; and was the route would necessarily bring him to the conpreparing to pursue the remainder of it, by speed- fines of Illyricum, and these confines would be ily setting out towards Jerusalem: and in this described as the extremity of his journey. Now point of his travels he tells his friends at Rome, the account of St. Paul's second visit to the that, when he had completed the business which peninsula of Greece, is contained in these words: carried him to Jerusalem, he would come to them." He departed for to go into Macedonia; and Secondly, I say, that the very inspection of the passages will satisfy us that they were not made up from one another.

Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you; for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you; but now I go up to Jerusalem to minister to the saints. When, therefore, I have erformed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain."-This from the epistle.

Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem: saying. After I have been there, I must also see Rome."-This from the Acts.

when he had gone over these parts, and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece." Acts xx. 2. This account allows, or rather leads us to suppose, that St. Paul, in going over Macedonia (be To μign exive,) had passed so far to the west, as to come into those parts of the country which were contiguous to Illyricum, if he did not enter into Illyricum itself. The history, therefore, and the epistle so far agree, and the agreement is much strengthened by a coincidence of time. At the time the epistle was written, St. Paul might say, in conformity with the history, that he had "come into Illyricum;" much before that time, he could not have said so; for, upon his former journey to Macedonia, his route

is laid down from the time of his landing at Phi- | maining part of it at Tyre, xxi. 4; and afterwards lippi to his sailing from Corinth. We trace him from Agabus at Cæsarea, xxi. 11. from Philippi to Amphipolis and Apollonia; from thence to Thessalonica; from Thessalonica to Berea; from Berea to Athens; and from Athens There is another strong remark arising from to Corinth which tract confines him to the east- the same passage in the epistle; to make which ern side of the peninsula, and therefore keeps him understood, it will be necessary to state the pasall the while at a considerable distance from Illy-sage over again, and somewhat more at length. ricum. Upon his second visit to Macedonia, the history, we have seen, leaves him at liberty. It must have been, therefore, upon that second visit, if at all, that he approached Illyricum; and this visit, we know, almost immediately preceded the writing of the epistle. It was natural that the apostle should refer to a journey which was fresh in his thoughts.

Another adaptation, and somewhat of the same kind, is the following:

done by sending his Son; that God had rejected brethren, that the gospel which was preached of the unbelieving Jews, and had substituted in their me, is not after man; for I neither received it of place a society of believers in Christ, collected in- man, neither was I taught it but by the revelation differently from Jews and Gentiles. Soon after of Jesus Christ."-ch. i. 11, 12. "I am afraid, the writing of this epistle, St. Paul, agreeably to lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain."the intention intimated in the epistle itself, took iv. 11, 12. "I desire to be present with you now, his journey to Jerusalem. The day after he ar- for I stand in doubt of you."-iv. 20. "Behold, I, rived there, he was introduced to the church. Paul, say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, What passed at this interview is thus related, Christ shall profit you nothing."-v. 2. "This Acts xxi. 19: "When he had saluted them, he de- persuasion cometh not of him that called you.”— clared particularly what things God had wrought v. 8. This is the style in which he accosts the among the Gentiles by his ministry: and when Galatians. In the epistle to the converts of Rome, they heard it, they glorified the Lord: and said where his authority was not established, nor his unto him, thou seest, brother, how many thou- person known, he puts the same points entirely sands of Jews there are which believe; and they upon argument. The perusal of the epistle will are all zealous of the law; and they are informed prove this to the satisfaction of every reader: and, of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are as the observation relates to the whole contents of among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying, that the epistle, I forbear adducing separate extracts. they ought not to circumcise their children, nei- I repeat, therefore, that we have pointed out a disther to walk after the customs." St. Paul distinction in the two epistles, suited to the relation claimed the charge: but there must have been in which the author stood to his different corressomething to have led to it. Now it is only to pondents. suppose that St. Paul openly professed the principles which the epistle contains; that, in the course of his ministry, he had uttered the senti- 2. The Jews, we know, were very numerous ments which he is here made to write: and the at Rome, and probably formed a principal part matter is accounted for. Concerning the accusa- amongst the new converts; so much so, that the tion which public rumour had brought against Christians seem to have been known at Rome him to Jerusalem, I will not say that it was just; rather as a denomination of Jews, than as any but I will say, that if he was the author of the thing else. In an epistle consequently to the Roepistle before us, and if his preaching was con- man believers, the point to be endeavoured after sistent with his writing, it was extremely natural: by St. Paul was to reconcile the Jewish converts for though it be not a necessary, surely it is an to the opinion, that the Gentiles were admitted by easy inference, that if the Gentile convert, who God to a parity of religious situation with themdid not observe the law of Moses, held as advan-selves, and that without their being bound by the tageous a situation in his religious interests as the Jewish convert who did, there could be no strong reason for observing that law at all. The remonstrance therefore of the church of Jerusalem, and the report which occasioned it, were founded in no very violent misconstruction of the apostle's doctrine. His reception at Jerusalem was exactly what I should have expected the author of this epistle to have met with. I am entitled therefore to argue, that a separate narrative of effects experienced by St. Paul, similar to what a person might be expected to experience who held the doctrines advanced in this epistle, forms a proof that he did hold these doctrines; and that the epistle bearing his name, in which such doctrines are laid down, actually proceeded from him.

1. The Epistle to the Galatians relates to the same general question as the Epistle to the Romins. St. Paul had founded the church of Galatin; at Rome, he had never been. Observe How a difference in his manner of treating of the sane subject, corresponding with this difference in his situation. In the Epistle to the Galatians he puts the point in a great measure upon auority: "I marvel that ye are so soon removed frora him that called you into the grace of Christ, anto another Gospel."-Gal. i. 6. "I certify you,

law of Moses. The Gentile converts would probably accede to this opinion very readily. In this epistle, therefore, though directed to the Roman church in general, it is in truth a Jew writing to Jews. Accordingly you will take notice, that as often as his argument leads him to say any thing derogatory from the Jewish institution, he constantly follows it by a softening clause. Having (ii. 28, 29,) pronounced, not much perhaps to the satisfaction of the native Jews, "that he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither that circumcision which is outward in the flesh:" he adds immediately, "What advantage then hath the Jew, or what profit is there in circumcision? Much every way." Having, in the third chapter, ver. 28, brought his argument to this formal conclusion, "that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law," he presently subjoins, ver. 31, "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid! Yea, we establish the law." In the seventh chapter, when in the sixth verse he had advanced the bold assertion, "that now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held;" in the very next verse he comes in with this healing question, "What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? God forbid! Nay, I had not known sin but by the law. Having in the following words insinuated, or rather more than insinuated, the inefficacy of the Jewish law, viii. 3, "for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" after a digression indeed, but that sort of a digression which he could never resist, a rapturous contemplation of his Christian hope, and which occupies the latter part of this chapter; we find him in the

stance considerably in favour of the authenticity of the epistle; for it must have been a far-fetched contrivance in a forgery, first to have feigned the receipt of a letter from the Church of Corinth, which letter does not appear; and then to have drawn up a fictitious answer to it, relative to a great variety of doubts and inquiries, purely economical and domestic; and which, though likely enough to have occurred to an infant society, in a situation and under an institution so novel as that of a Christian Church then was, it must have very much exercised the author's invention, and could have answered no imaginable purpose of forgery, to introduce the mention of at all. Particulars of the kind we refer to, are such as the following: the rule of duty and prudence relative to entering into marriage, as applicable to virgins, to widows; the case of husbands married to unconverted wives; of wives having unconverted husbands; that case where the unconverted party chooses to separate, where he chooses to continue the union; the effect which their conversion produced upon their prior state, of circumcision, of slavery; the eating of things offered to idols, as it was in itself, as others were affected by it; the joining in idolatrous sacrifices; the decorum to be observed in their religious assemblies, the order of speaking, the silence of women, the covering or uncovering of the head, as it became men, as it became women. These subjects, with their several subdivisions, are so particular, minute, and numerous, that though they be exactly agreeable to the circumstances of the persons to whom the letter was written, nothing, I believe, but the existence and reality of those circumstances could have suggested to the writer's thoughts.

next, as if sensible that he had said something which would give offence, returning to his Jewish brethren in terms of the warmest affection and respect: "I say the truth in Christ Jesus; I lie not; my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart; for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers; and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came.' When, in the thirty-first and thirty-second verses of this ninth chapter, he represented to the Jews the error of even the best of their nation, by telling them that " Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, had not attained to the law of righteousness, because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law, for they stumbled at that stumbling stone," he takes care to annex to this declaration these conciliating expressions: "Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved; for I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge." Lastly, having ch. x. 20, 21, by the application of a passage in Isaiah, insinuated the most ungrateful of all propositions to a Jewish ear, the rejection of the Jewish nation, as God's peculiar people; he hastens, as it were, to qualify the intelligence of their fall by this interesting expostulation: "I say, then, hath God cast away his people, (i. e. wholly and entirely?") God forbid! for I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away his people, But this is not the only nor the principal observawhich he foreknew;" and follows this thought, tion upon the correspondence between the church throughout the whole of the eleventh chapter, in of Corinth and their apostle, which I wish to a series of reflections calculated to soothe the Jew-point out. It appears, I think, in this correspondish converts, as well as to procure from their Gen- ence, that although the Corinthians had written tile brethren respect to the Jewish institution. to St. Paul, requesting his answer and his direcNow all this is perfectly natural. In a real St. tions in the several points above enumerated, yet Paul, writing to real converts, it is what anxiety that they had not said one syllable about the to bring them over to his persuasion would na- enormities and disorders which had crept in turally produce; but there is an earnestness and amongst them, and in the blame of which they all a personality, if I may so call it, in the manner, shared; but that St. Paul's information concernwhich a cold forgery, I apprehend, would neithering the irregularities then prevailing at Corinth have conceived nor supported.

CHAPTER III.

The First Epistle to the Corinthians.

No. I.

BEFORE we proceed to compare this epistle with the history, or with any other epistle, we will employ one number in stating certain remarks applicable to our argument, which arise from a perusal of the epistle itself.

By an expression in the first verse of the seventh chapter, "now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me," it appears, that this letter to the Corinthians was written by St. Paul in answer to one which he had received from them; and that the seventh, and some of the following chapters, are taken up in resolving certain doubts, and regulating certain points of order, concerning which the Corinthians had in their letter consulted him. This alone is a circum

had come round to him from other quarters. The
quarrels and disputes excited by their contentious
adherence to their different teachers, and by their
placing of them in competition with one another,
were not mentioned in their letter, but communi-
cated to St. Paul by more private intelligence: "It
hath been declared unto me, my brethren, by
them which are of the house of Chloe, that there
are contentions among you. Now this I say,
that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I
of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ.”
(i. 11, 12.) The incestuous marriage "of a man
with his father's wife," which St. Paul reprehends
with so much severity in the fifth chapter of our
epistle, and which was not the crime of an indi-
vidual only, but a crime in which the whole
church, by tolerating and conniving at it, had
rendered themselves partakers, did not come to St.
Paul's knowledge by the letter, but by a rumour
which had reached his ears: "It is reported
commonly that there is fornication among you,
and such fornication as is not so much as named
among the Gentiles, that one should have his
father's wife; and ye are puffed up, and have not

rather mourned that he that hath done this deed Ephesus at the time, and in the midst of those might be taken away from among you." (v. 1, 2.) conflicts to which the expression relates. "The Their going to law before the judicature of the churches of Asia salute you," (xvi. 19.) Asia, country, rather than arbitrate and adjust their throughout the Acts of the Apostles and the disputes among themselves, which St. Paul ani- epistles of St. Paul, does not mean the whole of madverts upon with his usual plainness, was not Asia Minor or Anatolia, nor even the whole of intimated to him in the letter, because he tells them the proconsular Asia, but a district in the antehis opinion of this conduct before he comes to the rior part of that country, called Lydian Asia, dicontents of the letter. Their litigiousness is cen- vided from the rest, much as Portugal is from sured by St. Paul in the sixth chapter of his epis- Spain, and of which district Ephesus was the tle, and it is only at the beginning of the seventh capital. "Aquila and Priscilla salute you," chapter that he proceeds upon the articles which (xvi. 19.) Aquila and Priscilla were at Ephesus he found in their letter; and he proceeds upon during the period within which this epistle was them with this preface: "Now concerning the written, Acts (xviii. 18. 26.) "I will tarry at things whereof ye wrote unto me," (vii. 1,) which Ephesus until Pentecost," (xvi. 8.) This, I introduction he would not have used if he had apprehend, is in terms almost asserting that he been already discussing any of the subjects con- was at Ephesus at the time of writing the epistle. cerning which they had written. Their irregu-—“ A great and effectual door is opened unto me,” larities in celebrating the Lord's supper, and the (xvi. 9.) How well this declaration corresponded utter perversion of the institution which ensued, with the state of things at Ephesus, and the prowere not in the letter, as is evident from the terms gress of the Gospel in these parts, we learn from in which St. Paul mentions the notice he had re-the reflection with which the historian concludes ceived of it: "Now in this that I declare unto you, the account of certain transactions which passed I praise you not, that ye come together not for there: "So mightily grew the word of God and the better, but for the worse; for first of all, when prevailed," (Acts xix. 20;) as well as from the ye come together in the church, I hear that there complaint of Demetrius, "that not only at Ephebe divisions among you, and I partly believe it." sus, but also throughout all Asia, this Paul hath Now that the Corinthians should, in their own persuaded, and turned away much people," letter, exhibit the fair side of their conduct to the (xix. 26.) "And there are many adversaries," apostle, and conceal from him the faults of their says the epistle, (xvi. 9.) Look into the history behaviour, was extremely natural, and extremely of this period: "When divers were hardened and probable: but it was a distinction which would believed not, but spake evil of that way before the not, I think, have easily occurred to the author of multitude, he departed from them, and separated a forgery; and much less likely is it, that it should the disciples." The conformity, therefore, upon have entered into his thoughts to make the dis- this head of comparison, is circumstantial and tinction appear in the way in which it does ap- perfect. If any one think that this is a conformpear, viz: not by the original letter, not by any ity so obvious, that any forger of tolerable caution express observation upon it in the answer, but and sagacity would have taken care to preserve it, distantly by marks perceivable in the manner, or I must desire such a one to read the epistle for in the order, in which St. Paul takes notice of himself; and, when he has done so, to declare their faults. whether he has discovered one mark of art or design; whether the notes of time and place appear to him to be inserted with any reference to each other, with any view of their being compared with each other, or for the purpose of establishing a visible agreement with the history, in respect of them.

No. II.

Our epistle purports to have been written after St. Paul had already been at Corinth: "I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom," (ii. 1,) and in many other places to the same effect. It purports also to have been written upon the eve of another visit to that church: "I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will," (iv. 19;) and again, I will come to you when I shall pass through Macedonia," (xvi. 5.) Now the history relates that St. Paul did in fact visit Corinth twice: once as recorded at length in the eighteenth, and a second time as mentioned briefly in the twentieth chapter of the Acts. The same history also informs us, (Acts IX. 1,) that it was from Ephesus St. Paul proceeded upon his second journey into Greece. Therefore, as the epistle purports to have been written a short time preceding that journey; and as St. Paul, the history tells us, had resided more than two years at Ephesus, before he set out upon it, it follows that it must have been from Ephesus, to be consistent with the history, that the epistle was written; and every note of place in the episthe agrees with this supposition. "If, after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not?" (xv. 32.) I allow that the apostle might say this, wherever he was; but it was more natural and more to the purpose to say it, if he was at Ꮓ

No. III.

Chap. iv. 17-19. "For this cause I have sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church. Now some are puffed up, as though I would not come unto you; but I will come unto you shortly, if the Lord will."

With this I compare Acts xix. 21, 22: "After these things were ended, Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem; saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome; so he sent unto Macedonia two of them that ministered unto him, Timotheus and Erastus."

Though it be not said, it appears, I think, with sufficient certainty, I mean from the history, independently of the epistle, that Timothy was sent upon this occasion into Achaia, of which Corinth was the capital city, as well as into Macedonia: for the sending of Timothy and Erastus is, in the passage where it is mentioned, plainly connected with St. Paul's own journey: he sent them before