HORE PAULINE:

OR,

THE TRUTH

OF

THE SCRIPTURE HISTORY OF ST. PAUL EVINCED.

TO THE RIGHT REVEREND JOHN LAW, D. D.

LORD BISHOP OF KILLALA AND ACHONRY,

As a testimony of esteem for his virtues and learning, and of gratitude for the long and faithful friendship with which the Author has been honoured by him, this attempt to confirm the Evidence of the Christian History is inscribed, by his affectionate and most obliged Servant,

W. PALEY.

CHAPTER 1.

Exposition of the Argument.

3. The history and letters may have been founded upon some authority common to both; as upon reports and traditions which prevailed in the age in which they were composed, or upon some ancient record now lost, which both writers consulted; in which case also, the letters, without being genuine, may exhibit marks of conformity with the history; and the history, without being true, may agree with the letters.

THE volume of Christian Scriptures contains thirteen letters purporting to be written by St Paul: it contains also a book, which, amongst other things, professes to deliver the history, or rather memoirs of the history, of this same person. By assuming the genuineness of the letters, we may prove the substantial truth of the history: or, Agreement, therefore, or conformity, is only to by assuming the truth of the history, we may ar- be relied upon so far as we can exclude these gue strongly in support of the genuineness of the several suppositions. Now the point to be noticed letters. But I assume neither one nor the other. is, that in the three cases above enumerated, conThe reader is at liberty to suppose these writings formity must be the effect of design. Where the to have been lately discovered in the library of the history is compiled from the letters, which is the Escurial, and to come to our hands destitute of any first case, the design and composition of the work extrinsic or collateral evidence whatever; and the are in general so confessed, or made so evident by argument I am about to offer is calculated to show, comparison, as to leave us in no danger of conthat a comparison of the different writings would, founding the production with original history, or even under these circumstances, afford good rea- of mistaking it for an independent authority. The son to believe the persons and transactions to have agreement, it is probable, will be close and uniform, been real, the letters authentic, and the narration and will easily be perceived to result from the inin the main to be true. tention of the author, and from the plan and conAgreement or conformity between letters bear-duct of his work.-Where the letters are fabriing the name of an ancient author, and a received cated from the history, which is the second case, history of that author's life, does not necessarily it is always for the purpose of imposing a forgery establish the credit of either; because,

1. The history may, like Middleton's Life of Cicero, or Jortin's Life of Erasmus, have been wholly, or in part, compiled from the letters; in which case it is manifest that the history adds nothing to the evidence already afforded by the letters; or,

2. The letters may have been fabricated out of the history; a species of imposture which is certainly practicable; and which, without any accession of proof or authority, would necessarily produce the appearance of consistency and agree ment; or,

upon the public; and in order to give colour and probability to the fraud, names, places, and circumstances, found in the history, may be studiously introduced into the letters, as well as a general consistency be endeavoured to be maintained. But here it is manifest that whatever congruity appears, is the consequence of meditation, artifice, and design.-The third case is that wherein the history and the letters, without any direct privity or communication with each other, derive their materials from the same source; and, by reason of their common original, furnish instances of accordance and correspondency. This is a situation

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in which we must allow it to be possible for ancient writings to be placed; and it is a situation in which it is more difficult to distinguish spurious from genuine writings, than in either of the cases described in the preceding suppositions; inasmuch as the congruities observable are so far accidental, as that they are not produced by the immediate transplanting of names and circumstances out of one writing into the other. But although, with respect to each other, the agreement in these writings be mediate and secondary, yet it is not properly or absolutely undesigned because, with respect to the common original from which the information of the writers proceeds, it is studied and factitious. The case of which we treat must, as to the letters, be a case of forgery: and when the writer who is personating another, sits down to his composition-whether he have the history with which we now compare the letters, or some other record before him; or whether he have only loose tradition and reports to go by-he must adapt his imposture, as well as he can, to what he finds in these accounts; and his adaptations will be the result of counsel, scheme, and industry: art must be employed; and vestiges will appear of management and design. Add to this, that, in most of the following examples, the circumstances in which the coincidence is remarked, are of too particular and domestic a nature, to have floated down upon the stream of general tradition.

thing sought after and ascertained: it must be the groundwork of every other observation.

The reader then will please to remember this word undesignedness, as denoting that upon which the construction and validity of our argument chiefly depend.

As to the proofs of undesignedness, I shall in this place say little; for I had rather the reader's persuasion should arise from the instances themselves, and the separate remarks with which they may be accompanied, than from any previous formulary or description of argument. In a great plurality of examples, I trust he will be perfectly convinced that no design or contrivance whatever has been exercised: and if some of the coincidences alleged appear to be minute, circuitous, or oblique, let him reflect that this very indirectness and subtility is that which gives force and propriety to the example. Broad, obvious, and explicit agreements prove little; because it may be suggested that the insertion of such is the ordinary expedient of every forgery: and though they may occur, and probably will occur in genuine writings, yet it cannot be proved that they are peculiar to these. Thus what St. Paul declares in chap. xi. of 1 Cor. concerning the institution of the eucharist-" For I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread; and when he had given thanks he brake it, and said, Of the three cases which we have stated, the Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for difference between the first and the two others is, you; this do in remembrance of me"-though it that in the first the design may be fair and honest, be in close and verbal conformity with the account in the others it must be accompanied with the of the same transaction preserved by St. Luke, is consciousness of fraud; but in all there is design. yet a conformity of which no use can be made in In examining, therefore, the agreement between our argument; for if it should be objected that this ancient writings, the character of truth and ori- was a mere recital from the gospel, borrowed by ginality is undesignedness: and this test applies the author of the epistle, for the purpose of setting to every supposition; for, whether we suppose the off his composition by an appearance of agreement history to be true, but the letters spurious; or, the with the received account of the Lord's supper, I letters to be genuine, but the history false; or, should not know how to repel the insinuation. In lastly, falsehood to belong to both-the history to like manner, the description which St. Paul gives be a fable, and the letters fictitious: the same in- of himself in his epistle to the Philippians (iii. 5.) ference will result-that either there will be no -"Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of agreement between them, or the agreement will Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of be the effect of design. Nor will it elude the the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; principle of this rule, to suppose the same person concerning zeal, persecuting the Church; touchto have been the author of all the letters, or evening the righteousness which is in the law, blamethe author both of the letters and the history; for no less design is necessary to produce coincidence between different parts of a man's own writings, especially when they are made to take the different forms of a history and of original letters, than to adjust them to the circumstances found in any other writing.

With respect to those writings of the New Testament which are to be the subject of our present consideration, I think, that, as to the authenticity of the epistles, this argument, where it is sufficiently sustained by instances, is nearly conclusive; for I cannot assign a supposition of forgery, in which coincidences of the kind we inquire after are likely to appear. As to the history, it extends to these points:-It proves the general reality of the circumstances: it proves the historian's knowledge of these circumstances. In the present instance it confirms his pretensions of having been a contemporary, and in the latter part of his history, a companion, of St. Paul. In a word, it establishes the substantial truth of the narration; and substantial truth is that, which, in every historical inquiry, ought to be the first

less"-is made up of particulars so plainly delivered concerning him, in the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistle to the Romans, and the Epistle to the Galatians, that I cannot deny but that it would be easy for an impostor, who was fabricating a letter in the name of St. Paul, to collect these articles into one view. This, therefore, is a conformity which we do not adduce. But when I read in the Acts of the Apostles, that when "Paul came to Derbe and Lystra, behold a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman which was a jewess;" and when, in an epistle addressed to Timothy, I find him reminded of his "having known the Holy Scriptures from a child;" which implies that he must, on one side or both, have been brought up by Jewish parents: I conceive that I remark a coincidence which shows, by its very obliquity, that scheme was not employed in its formation. In like manner, if a coincidence depend upon a comparison of dates, or rather of circumstances from which the dates are gathered the more intricate that comparison shall be; the more numerous the intermediate steps through which the conclusion

ical epistles, strung together with very little skill. The second, which is a more versute and specious forgery, is introduced with a list of names of persons who wrote to St. Paul from Corinth; and is preceded by an account sufficiently particular of the manner in which the epistle was sent from Corinth to St. Paul, and the answer returned. But they are names which no one ever heard of; and the account it is impossible to combine with any thing found in the Acts, or in the other epistles. It is not necessary for me to point out the internal marks of spuriousness and imposture which these compositions betray; but it was necessary to observe, that they do not afford those coincidences which we propose as proofs of authenticity in the epistles which we defend.

Having explained the general scheme and formation of the argument, I may be permitted to subjoin a brief account of the manner of conducting it.

is deduced; in a word, the more circuitous the in- I simply a collection of sentences from the canonvestigation is, the better, because the agreement which finally results is thereby farther removed from the suspicion of contrivance, affectation, or design. And it should be remembered, concerning these coincidences, that it is one thing to be minute, and another to be precarious; one thing to be unobserved, and another to be obscure; one thing to be circuitous or oblique, and another to be forced, dubious, or fanciful. And this distinction ought always to be retained in our thoughts. The very particularity of St. Paul's epistles; the perpetual recurrence of names of persons and places; the frequent allusions to the incidents of his private life, and the circumstances of his condition and history; and the connexion and parallelism of these with the same circumstances in the Acts of the Apostles, so as to enable us, for the most part, to confront them one with another; as well as the relation which subsists between the circumstances, as mentioned or referred to in the different Epistles-afford no inconsiderable proof of the genuiness of the writings, and the reality of the transactions. For as no advertency is sufficient to guard against slips and contradictions, when circumstances are multiplied, and when they are liable to be detected by contemporary accounts equally circumstantial, an impostor, I should expect, would either have avoided particulars entirely, contenting himself with doctrinal discussions, moral precepts, and general reflections; or if, for the sake of imitating St. Paul's style, he should have thought it necessary to intersperse his composition with names and circumstances, he would have placed them out of the reach of comparison with the history. And I am confirmed in this opinion by the inspection of two attempts to counterfeit St. Paul's epistles, which have come down to us; and the only attempts of which we have any knowledge, that are at all deserving of regard. One of these is an epistle to the Laodiceans, extant in Latin, and preserved by Fabricius, in his collection of apocryphal scriptures. The other purports to be an epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, in answer to an epistle from the Corinthians to him. This was translated by Scroderus from a copy in the Arminian language which had been sent to W. Whiston, and was afterwards, from a more perfect copy procured at Aleppo, published by his sons, as an appendix to their edition of Moses Chorenensis. No Greek copy exists of either: they are not only not supported by ancient testimony, but they are negatived and excluded; as they have never found admission into any catalogue of apostolical writings, acknowledged by, or known to, the early ages of Christianity. In the first of these I found, as I expected, a total evitation of circumstances. It is

*

This, however, must not be misunderstood. A person writing to his friends, and upon a subject in which the transactions of his own life were concerned, would probably be led, in the course of his letter, espe cially if it was a long one, to refer to passages found in his history. A person addressing an epistle to the public at large, or under the form of an epistle delivering a discourse upon some speculative argument, would not, it is probable, meet with an occasion of alluding to the circumstances of his life at all; he might, or he might not; the chance on either side is nearly equal. This is the situation of the catholic epistle. Although, there fore, the presence of these allusions and agreements be a valuable accession to the arguments by which the authenticity of a letter is maintained, yet the want of them certainly forms no positive objection.

I have disposed the several instances of agreement under separate numbers: as well to mark more sensibly the divisions of the subject, as for another purpose, viz: that the reader may thereby be reminded that the instances are independent of one another. I have advanced nothing which I did not think probable; but the degree of probability by which different instances are supported, is undoubtedly very different. If the reader, therefore, meets with a number which contains an instance that appears to him unsatisfactory, or founded in mistake, he will dismiss that number from the argument, but without prejudice to any other. He will have occasion also to observe that the coincidences discoverable in some epistles are much fewer and weaker than what are supplied by others. But he will add to his observation this important circumstance that whatever ascertains the original of one epistle, in some measure establishes the authority of the rest. For, whether these epistles be genuine or spurious, every thing about them indicates that they come from the same hand. The diction, which it is extremely difficult to imitate, preserves its resemblance and peculiarity throughout all the epistles. Numerous expressions and singularities of style, found in no other part of the New Testament, are repeated in different epistles; and occur in their respective places, without the smallest appearance of force or art. An involved argumentation, frequent obscurities, especially in the order and transition of thought, piety, vehemence, affection, bursts of rapture, and of unparalleled sublimity, are properties, all or most of them, discernible in every letter of the collection. But although these epistles bear strong marks of proceeding from the same hand, I think it is still more certain that they were originally separate publications. They form no continued story; they compose no regular correspondence; they comprise not the transactions of any particular period; they carry on no connexion of argument; they depend not upon one another; except in one or two instances, they refer not to one another. I will farther undertake to say, that no study or care has been employed to produce or preserve an appearance of consistency amongst them. All which observations show that they were not intended by the person, whoever he was, that wrote them, to come forth or be read together: that they appeared at first separately, and have been collected since.

The proper purpose of the following work is to

bring together, from the Acts of the Apostles, and from the different epistles, such passages as furnish examples of undesigned coincidence; but I have so far enlarged upon this plan, as to take into it some circumstances found in the epistles, which contributed strength to the conclusion, though not strictly objects of comparison.

It appeared also a part of the same plan, to examine the difficulties which presented themselves in the course of our inquiry.

I do not know that the subject has been proposed or considered in this view before. Ludovicus, Capellus, Bishop Pearson, Dr. Benson, and Dr. Lardner, have each given a continued history of St. Paul's life, made up from the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles joined together. But this, it is manifest, is a different undertaking from the present, and directed to a different purpose.

If what is here offered shall add one thread to that complication of probabilities by which the Christian history is attested, the reader's attention will be repaid by the supreme importance of the subject; and my design will be fully answered.

CHAPTER II.
The Epistle to the Romans.
No. I.

THE first passage I shall produce from this epistle, and upon which a good deal of observation will be founded, is the following:

several journeys to Jerusalem before, and one also immediately after his first visit into the peninsula of Greece, (Acts xviii, 21,) it cannot from hence be collected in which of these visits the epistle was written, or with certainty, that it was written in either. The silence of the historian, who professes to have been with St. Paul at the time, (c. xx. v. 6,) concerning any contribution, might lead us to look out for some different journey, or might induce us, perhaps, to question the consistency of the two records, did not a very accidental reference, in another part of the same history, afford us sufficient ground to believe that this silence was omission. When St. Paul made his reply before Felix, to the accusations of Tertullus, he alleged, as was natural, that neither the errand which brought him to Jerusalem, nor his conduct whilst he remained there, merited the calumnies with which the Jews had aspersed him. "Now after many years (i. e. of absence,) I came to bring alms to my nation, and offerings; whereupon certain Jews from Asia found me purified in the temple, neither with multitude, nor with tumult, who ought to have been here before thee, and object, if they had aught against me." Acts xxiv. 17-19. This mention of alms and offerings certainly brings the narrative in the Acts near to an accordancy with the epistle; yet no one, I am persuaded, will suspect that this clause was put into St. Paul's defence, either to supply the omission in the preceding narrative, or with any view to such accordancy.

After all, nothing is yet said or hinted, concerning the place of the contribution; nothing concerning Macedonia and Achaia. Turn therefore to the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. xvi. ver. 1-4, and you have St. Paul delivering the following directions: "Concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given or

"But now I go unto Jerusalem, to minister unto the saints; for it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia, to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusa-ders to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye; lem."-Rom. xv. 25, 26.

upon the first day of the week let every one of In this quotation three distinct circumstances you lay by him in store as God hath prospered are stated-a contribution in Macedonia for the him, that there be no gatherings when I come. relief of the Christians of Jerusalem, a contribu- And when I come, whomsoever you shall approve tion in Achaia for the same purpose, and an in- by your letters, them will I send to bring your tended journey of St. Paul to Jerusalem. These liberality unto Jerusalem; and if it be meet, that circumstances are stated as taking place at the I go also, they shall go with me." In this passame time, and that to be the time when the epis-sage we find a contribution carrying on at Cotle was written. Now let us inquire whether we rinth, the capital of Achaia, for the Christians of can find these circumstances elsewhere, and whe- Jerusalem; we find also a hint given of the posther, if we do find them, they meet together in sibility of St. Paul going up to Jerusalem himrespect of date. Turn to the Acts of the Apos- self, after he had paid his visit into Achaia: but tles, chap. xx. ver. 2, 3, and you read the follow-this is spoken of rather as a possibility than as ing account: "When he had gone over those any settled intention; for his first thought was, parts, (viz. Macedonia,) and had given them" Whomsoever you shall approve by your letters, much exhortation, he came into Greece, and them will I send to bring your liberality to Jeruthere abode three months; and when the Jews salem:" and in the sixth verse he adds, "that ye laid wait for him, as he was about to sail into Sy may bring me on my journey whithersoever I ria, he proposed to return through Macedonia." go." This epistle purports to be written after St. From this passage, compared with the account of Paul had been at Corinth: for it refers throughSt. Paul's travels given before, and from the se-out to what he had done and said amongst them quel of the chapter, it appears that upon St. Paul's second visit to the peninsula of Greece, his intention was, when he should leave the country, to proceed from Achaia directly by sea to Syria; but that to avoid the Jews, who were lying in But though the contribution in Achaia be exwait to intercept him in his route, he so far pressly mentioned, nothing is here said concernchanged his purpose as to go back through Mace-ing any contribution in Macedonia. Turn, theredonia, embark at Philippi, and pursue his voyage from thence towards Jerusalem. Here, therefore, is a journey to Jerusalem; but not a syllable of any contribution. And as St. Paul had taken

whilst he was there. The expression, therefore, "when I come," must relate to a second visit; against which visit the contribution spoken of was desired to be in readiness.

fore, in the third place, to the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. viii. ver. 1-4, and you will discover the particular which remains to be sought for: "Moreover, brethren, we do you to

nice examination, that he could have determined them to belong to the same period. In the third place, I remark, what diminishes very much the suspicion of fraud, how aptly and connectedly the mention of the circumstances in question, viz. the journey to Jerusalem, and of the occasion of that journey, arises from the context, " 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, if first I be somewhat filled with your company. But now I go unto Jerusalem, to minister unto the saints; for it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem. It hath pleased them verily, and their debtors they are; for if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things. When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed them to this fruit, I will come by you into Spain." Is the passage in Italics like a passage foisted in for an extraneous purpose? Does it not arise from what goes before, by a junction as easy as any example of writing upon real business can furnish? Could any thing be more natural than that St. Paul, in writing to the Romans, should speak of the time when he hoped to visit them; should mention the business which then detained him; and that he purposed to set forwards upon his journey to them when that business was completed?

No. II.

wit of the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia; how that, in a great trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality for to their power, I bear record, yea and beyond their power, they were willing of themseives praying us with much entreaty, that we would receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering to the saints." To which add, chap. ix. ver. 2: "I know the forwardness of your mind, for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia, that Achaia was ready a year ago." In this epistle we find St. Paul advanced as far as Macedonia, upon that second visit to Corinth which he promised in his former epistle; we find also, in the passages now quoted from it, that a contribution was going on in Macedonia at the same time with, or soon however following, the contribution which was made in Achaia; but for whom the contribution was made does not appear in this epistle at all: that information must be supplied from the first epistle. Here, therefore, at length, but fetched from three different writings, we have obtained the several circumstances we inquired after, and which the Epistle to the Romans brings together, viz. a contribution in Achiaia for the Christians of Jerusalem; a contribution in Macedonia for the same; and an approaching journey of St. Paul to Jerusalem. We have these circumstances each by some hint in the passage in which it is mentioned, or by the date of the writing in which the passage occurs-fixed to a particular time; and we have that time turning out upon examination to be in all the same: namely towards the close of St. Paul's second visit to the peninsula of Greece. This is an instance of conformity beyond the possibility, I will venture to say, of random writing to produce. I also assert, that it is in the highest degree improbable that it should have been the effect of contrivance and design. The imputation of design amounts to this: that the forger of the Epis-referred to in the epistle, with the order of events tle to the Romans inserted in it the passage upon which our observations are founded, for the purpose of giving colour to his forgery by the appearance of conformity with other writings which were then extant. I reply, in the first place, that, if he did this to countenance his forgery, he did it for the purpose of an argument which would not strike one reader in ten thousand. Coincidences so circuitous as this, answer not the ends of forgery; are seldom, I believe, attempted by it. In the second place, I observe, that he must have had the Acts of the Apostles, and the two epistles to the Corinthians, before him at the time. In the Acts of the Apostles (I mean that part of the Acts which relate to this period,) he would have found the journey to Jerusalem; but nothing Chap. xvi. 21-23: "Timotheus, my workabout the contribution. In the First Epistle to the fellow, and Lucius, and Jason, and Sosipater, my Corinthians he would have found a contribution kinsmen, salute you. I, Tertius, who wrote this going on in Achaia for the Christians of Jerusa-epistle, salute you in the Lord. Gaius, mine host, lem, and a distant hint of the possibility of the and of the whole church, saluteth you; and journey; but nothing concerning a contribution Quartus, a brother." With this passage I comin Macedonia. In the Second Epistle to the Co-pare, Acts xx. 4: "And there accompanied him rinthians he would have found a contribution in Macedonia accompanying that in Achaia; but no intimation for whom either was intended, and not a word about the journey. It was only by a close and attentive collation of the three writings, that he could have picked out the circumstances which ho has united in his epistle; and by a still more

By means of the quotation which formed the subject of the preceding number, we collect that the Epistle to the Romans was written at the conclusion of St. Paul's second visit to the peninsula of Greece; but this we collect, not from the epistle itself, nor from any thing declared concerning the time and place in any part of the epistle, but from a comparison of circumstances

recorded in the Acts, and with references to the same circumstances, though for quite different purposes, in the two epistles to the Corinthians. Now would the author of a forgery, who sought to gain credit to a spurious letter by congruities, depending upon the time and place in which the letter was supposed to be written, have left that time and place to be made out, in a manner so obscure and indirect as this is? If therefore coincidences of circumstances can be pointed out in this epistle, depending upon its date, or the place where it was written, whilst that date and place are only ascertained by other circumstances, such coincidences may fairly be stated as undesigned. Under this head I adduce

into Asia, Sopater of Berea; and, of the Thessa lonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timotheus; and, of Asia, Tychicus and Trophimus." The Epistle to the Romans, we have seen, was written just before St. Paul's departure from Greece, after his second visit to that peninsula: the persons mentioned in the