the same subject: "Remember ye not, that when I was 66 yet with you I told you these things? And now ye "know what withholdeth." If such conversation actually passed; if, whilst he was yet with them," he told them "those things," then it follows that the epistle is authentic. And of the reality of this conversation it appears to be a proof, that what is said in the epistle might be understood by those who had been present to such conversation, and yet be incapable of being explained by any other. No man writes unintelligibly on purpose. But it may easily happen, that a part of a letter which relates to a subject, upon which the parties had conversed together before, which refers to what had been before said, which is in truth a portion or continuation of a former discourse, may be utterly without meaning to a stranger, who should pick up the letter upon the road, and yet be perfectly clear to the person to whom it is directed, and with whom the previous communication had passed. And if, in a letter which thus accidentally fell into my hands, I found a passage expressly referring to a former conversation, and difficult to be explained without knowing that conversation, I should consider this very difficulty as a proof that the conversation had actually passed, and consequently that the letter contained the real correspondence of real persons.

Chap. iii. 8.

No. II.

Neither did we eat any man's bread "for nought, but wrought with labour and travail night "and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you not because we have not power, but to make our"selves an ensample unto you to follow us."

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In a letter, purporting to have been written to another of the Macedonic churches, we find the following declaration :

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"Now ye, Philippians, know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia,

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no church communicated with me as concerning giving "and receiving, but ye only." [iv. 15.]

The conformity between these two passages is strong and plain. They confine the transaction to the same period. The Epistle to the Philippians refers to what passed in the beginning of the gospel," that is to say, during the first preaching of the gospel on that side of the Ægean sea. The Epistle to the Thessalonians speaks of the apostle's conduct in that city upon "his first "entrance in unto them," which the history informs us was in the course of his first visit to the peninsula of Greece.

As St. Paul tells the Philippians, "that no church "communicated with him as concerning giving and re"ceiving, but they only," he could not, consistently with the truth of this declaration, have received any thing from the neighbouring church of Thessalonica. What thus appears by general implication in an epistle to another church, when he writes to the Thessalonians themselves, is noticed expressly and particularly: "neither did we eat any man's bread for nought, but wrought night and "day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you.

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The texts here cited farther also exhibit a mark of conformity with what St. Paul is made to say of himself in the Acts of the Apostles. The apostle not only reminds the Thessalonians that he had not been chargeable to any of them, but he states likewise the motive which dictated this reserve: "not because we have not power, but to "make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us." (iii. 9.) This conduct, and what is much more precise, the end which he had in view by it, was the very same as that which the history attributes to St. Paul in a discourse, which it represents him to have addressed to the elders of the church of Ephesus: "Yea, ye yourselves also know "that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, "and to them that were with me. I have showed you "all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support "the weak.' Acts, xx. 34. The sentiment in the epistle and in the speech is in both parts of it so much alike, and yet the words which convey it show so little of

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imitation or even of resemblance, that the agreement cannot well be explained without supposing the speech and the letter to have really proceeded from the same person.

No. III.

Our reader remembers the passage in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, in which St. Paul spoke of the coming of Christ: "This we say unto you by the word "of the Lord, that we which are alive, and remain unto "the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which "are asleep; for the Lord himself shall descend from "heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we “which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together "with them in the clouds, and so shall we be ever with "the Lord. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, "that that day should overtake you as a thief." 1 Thess. iv. 15-17, and v. 4. It should seem that the Thessalonians, or some however amongst them, had from this passage conceived an opinion (and that not very unnaturally) that the coming of Christ was to take place instantly, oti évéσtyxev *; and that this persuasion had produced, as it well might, much agitation in the church. The apostle therefore now writes, amongst other purposes, to quiet this alarm, and to rectify the misconstruction that had been put upon his words: “Now "we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord "Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, "that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, "neither by spirit nor by word, nor by letter, as from "us, as that the day of Christ is at hand." [2 Th. ii. 1, 2.] If the allusion which we contend for be admitted, namely, if it be admitted, that the passage in the Second Epistle relates to the passage in the First, it amounts to a considerable proof of the genuineness of both epistles. I have no conception, because I know no example, of such

* Ὅτι ἐνέστηκεν nempe hoc anno, says Grotius, ἐνέστηκεν hic dici tur de re præsenti, ut Rom. viii. 38. 1 Cor. iii. 22. Gal. i. 4. Heb. ix. 9.

a device in a forgery, as first to frame an ambiguous passage in a letter, then to represent the persons to whom the letter is addressed as mistaking the meaning of the passage, and lastly to write a second letter in order to correct this mistake.

I have said that this argument arises out of the text, if the allusion be admitted; for I am not ignorant that many expositors understand the passage in the Second Epistle, as referring to some forged letters, which had been produced in St. Paul's name, and in which the apostle had been made to say that the coming of Christ was then at hand. In defence, however, of the explanation which we propose, the reader is desired to ob

serve,

1. The strong fact, that there exists a passage in the First Epistle, to which that in the Second is capable of being referred, i. e. which accounts for the error the writer is solicitous to remove. Had no other epistle than the Second been extant, and had it under these circumstances come to be considered, whether the text before us related to a forged epistle or to some misconstruction of a true one, many conjectures and many probabilities might have been admitted in the enquiry, which can have little weight, when an epistle is produced, containing the very sort of passage we were seeking, that is, a passage liable to the misinterpretation which the apostle protests against.

2. That the clause which introduces the passage in the Second Epistle bears a particular affinity to what is found in the passage cited from the First Epistle. The clause is this: "We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our "Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto "him." Now in the First Epistle the description of the coming of Christ is accompanied with the mention of this very circumstance of his saints "being collected round "him." "The Lord himself shall descend from heaven "with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with "the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise "first; then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet "the Lord in the air." 1 Thess. iv. 16, 17. This I

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suppose to be the " gathering together unto him" in

tended in the Second Epistle; and that the author when he used these words, retained in his thoughts what he had written on the subject before.

3. The Second Epistle is written in the joint name of Paul, Silvanus, and Timotheus, and it cautions the Thessalonians against being misled "by letter as from us" (ως δι' ἡμῶν). Do not these words "δι' ἡμῶν” appropriate the reference to some writing which bore the name of these three teachers? Now this circumstance, which is a very close one, belongs to the epistle at present in our hands; for the epistle which we call the First Epistle to the Thessalonians contains these names in its superscription.

4. The words in the original, as far as they are material to be stated, are these [2 Th. ii. 2.]" eis rò mò ταχέως σαλευθῆναι ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ νοὸς, μηδὲ προεῖσθαι, μήτε διὰ πνεύματος, μήτε διὰ λόγου, μήτε δι' ἐπιστολῆς, ὡς δι ̓ ἡμῶν, ὡς ὅτι ἐνέστηκεν ἡἡμέρα τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Under the weight of the preceding observations may not the words μήτε διὰ λόγου, μήτε δι' ἐπιστολῆς, ὡς δι' ἡμῶν be construed to signify quasi nos quid tale aut dixerimus aut scripserimus, intimating that their words had been mistaken, and that they had in truth said or written no such thing.

* Should a contrary interpretation be preferred, I do not think that it implies the conclusion that a false epistle had then been published in the apostle's name. It will completely satisfy the allusion in the text to allow, that some one or other at Thessalonica had pretended to have been told by St. Paul and his companions, or to have seen a letter from them in which they had said, that the day of Christ was at hand. In like manner, as Acts, xv. 1, 24, it is recorded that some had pretended to have received instructions from the church of Jerusalem, which had not been received: "to whom they gave no such commandment." And thus Dr. Benson interpreted the passage μηδὲ προεῖσθαι, μήτε διὰ πνεύματος, μήτε δια λόγου, μήτε δι' ἐπιστολῆς, ὡς δι ̓ ἡμῶν, nor be dismayed by any revelation, or discourse, or epistle, which any one shall pretend "to have heard or received from us."

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