Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

66

66

66

"God had done by sending his Son; that God had rejected the unbelieving Jews, and had substituted in "their place a society of believers in Christ, collected indifferently from Jews and Gentiles." Soon after the writing of this epistle, St. Paul, agreeably to the intention intimated in the epistle itself, took his journey to Jerusalem. The day after he arrived there, he was introduced to the church. What passed at this interview is thus related, Acts, xxi. 19: "When he had saluted them, he "declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry: and when they "heard it, they glorified the Lord; and said unto him, "Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law; "and they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all "the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake "Moses, saying, that they ought not to circumcise their "children, neither to walk after the customs." St. Paul disclaimed the charge; but there must have been something to have led to it. Now, it is only to suppose that St. Paul openly professed the principles which the epistle contains; that, in the course of his ministry, he had uttered the sentiments which he is here made to write and the matter is accounted for. Concerning the accusation which public rumour had brought against him to Jerusalem, I will not say that it was just; but I will say that, if he was the author of the epistle before us, and if his preaching was consistent with his writing, it was extremely natural; for, though it be not a necessary, surely it is an easy inference, that if the Gentile convert, who did not observe the law of Moses, held as advantageous 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.

No. VIII.

This number is supplemental to the former. I propose to point out in it two particulars in the conduct of the argument, perfectly adapted to the historical circumstances under which the epistle was written; which yet are free from all appearance of contrivance, and which it would not, I think, have entered into the mind of a sophist to contrive.

1. The Epistle to the Galatians relates to the same general question as the Epistle to the Romans. St. Paul had founded the church of Galatia; at Rome he had never been. Observe now a difference in his manner of treating of the same subject, corresponding with this difference in his situation. In the Epistle to the Galatians he puts the point in a great measure upon authority: "I marvel that 66 ye are so soon removed from him that called you into "the grace of Christ, unto another gospel." Gal. i. 6. "I "certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached "of me, is not after man; for I neither received it of man, “neither was I taught it but by the revelation of Jesus "Christ;" (i. 11, 12.) “ I am afraid lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain ;" (iv. 11.) "I desire to "be present with you now, for I stand in doubt of you ;" (iv. 20.) Behold I, Paul, say unto you, that, if ye be "circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing;" (v. 2.) "This persuasion cometh not of him that called you;' (v. 8.) This is the style in which he accosts the Galatians. In the epistle to the converts of Rome, where his authority was not established, nor his person known, he puts the same point entirely upon argument. The perusal of the epistle will prove this to the satisfaction of every reader; and, as the observation relates to the whole con

[ocr errors]

66

[ocr errors]

tents of the epistle, I forbear adducing separate extracts. I repeat, therefore, that we have pointed out a distinction in the two epistles, suited to the relation in which the author stood to his different correspondents.

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

2. The Jews, we know, were very numerous at Rome, and probably formed a principal part amongst the new converts; so much so, that the Christians seem to have been known at Rome rather as a denomination of Jews, than as any thing else. In an epistle, consequently, to the Roman believers, the point to be endeavoured after by St. Paul was, to reconcile the Jewish converts to the opinion, that the Gentiles were admitted by God to a parity of religious situation with themselves, and that without their being bound by the 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. cordingly 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 circum"cision which is outward in the flesh," he adds immediately, "What advantage then hath the Jew, or what

66

Ac

[ocr errors]

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

66

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

66

66

thau 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 like"ness 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 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: [ix. 1...] " I say the truth "in Christ; I lie not; my conscience also bearing me "witness, in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heavi"ness 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 righteous"ness, 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 his declaration these conciliating expressions [x. 1, 2.] : "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, 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 66 away his people (i. e. wholly and entirely)? "God

66

66

66

66

66

forbid; for I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abra"ham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away

"his people which he foreknew:" and follows this thought, throughout the whole of the eleventh chapter, in a series of reflections calculated to soothe the Jewish converts, as well as to procure from their Gentile brethren respect to the Jewish institution. Now all this is perfectly natural. In a real St. Paul writing to real converts, it is what anxiety to bring them over to his persuasion would naturally produce; but there is an earnestness and a personality, if I may so call it, in the manner, which a cold forgery, I apprehend, would neither have conceived nor supported.

CHAP. 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 circumstance 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

D

« PreviousContinue »