went preaching the kingdom of God, will see my face again: whereas, it is my own conviction, both from the order of the terms, and from the emphasis laid on the iμeïs távtes, that they ought to be rendered; And now, behold, I know that ye will not all of you, among whom I went preaching the kingdom of God, see my face again. The fulfilment of this prediction would require no more than that some of the persons, then present, should never see St. Paul again. And this might easily be the case; for between the time of this address, A. U. 809. and the time when St. Paul was first at liberty to come back to Asia in A. U. 816. were eight years complete, or nearly so, at least; and in eight years' time, great changes might take place any where and in any society. In fact it must have been the case; for, first, after St. Paul's departure, grievous wolves would come among the Church of Ephesus, who should not spare the flock; and, secondly, St. Paul is addressing the elders of the Ephesian Church, and them, as it would seem, exclusively. Ephesus, then, and its Church, at this time, were not in want of elders; but, when St. Paul wrote his First to Timothy, which was long after this time, Ephesus and its Church were either still in want of elders, or had but recently been supplied therewith. What, then, had become of the elders whom he was now addressing? Could all have been still alive, or still present in Ephesus? or is it not a natural inference that between the time of this address, and the time of the Epistle to Timothy, the still undisturbed and quiet order of the Ephesian Church had been agitated in some manner or other, and the integrity of its community had suffered in the loss even of some among its governors themselves, which loss could be repaired only by the appointment of fresh?

It is still possible, then, that Timothy, for some reason or other, might be placed in confinement at Rome, after the Epistle to the Philippians itself was written; and if so, in the latter half of A. U. 813. at the earliest; and, therefore, if his imprisonment, a priori, was likely to last as long as St. Paul's had lasted, his release was not to be expected

suppose that this was the case, and, consequently, that the Epistle to the Hebrews, written soon after this release, was written either in the last half of A. U. 815. or in the first of A. U. 816. The probability of both these assumptions may be further confirmed as follows.

It is manifest from Rom. xv. 24-28. that St. Paul had projected a visit to Spain, even before he designed to go to Rome; or rather, that the visit to Rome was something ex Tapéрyou with respect to this visit to Spain; something which he intended to do by the way, in comparison of that; and over and above, though preparatory to, the execution of his original purpose. And still more evident it is that, for those who would travel either by land or by sea from Asia, or from Greece, to Spain-Italy in general, and even Rome in particular, would lie in the direct line of the course which they must take.

Now if St. Paul had deliberately conceived the design of this visit before he went up to Jerusalem—and if he went up to Jerusalem, though with a particular ignorance, yet under a general assurance that bonds and persecutions awaited him-what reason is there to suppose that the retention of his original design would be prevented by his subsequent imprisonment? Its execution would necessarily be delayed, so long as his imprisonment lasted; but when his imprisonment was over, and he was at liberty to go wheresoever he would, the very proximity of Spain would be an additional motive, for completing his purpose of visiting it. I cannot think St. Paul's intentions of this kind. were ever lightly formed, nor, consequently, likely to be easily abandoned: nor, perhaps, would the implicit assumption of some such fact, in the course of his Evangelical ministry, after his confinement at Rome, as a visit to Spain, (for which assumption he himself had furnished such strong grounds of belief a priori,) ever have been called into question, if those, who have treated of the history of St. Paul's ministry, had not almost generally fallen into the same mistake of bringing him to Rome too late; and therefore not allowed a sufficient interval of time between the close of

his imprisonment, and even the latest possible date of his death, for the transaction of this purpose, and of many others, which must also have intervened. I have obviated this inconvenience by placing the commencement of his imprisonment in the spring of A. U. 812. and, consequently, its termination in the spring of A. U. 814-between which, and even the earliest date of the close of his ministry, which it would be possible to admit, A. U. 818. there would yet be four or five years' interval.

The tradition that he did accordingly visit Spain is the most ancient, and, perhaps, the most authentic, of any such traditions, which ecclesiastical history has perpetuated; for it may be traced up to the time of the presbyter Caius, contemporary with the Roman Bishop Pius, who speaks of Paul's departure from the city to Spain, as a certain and undeniable matter of fact2; and even past his time, to the age of Clement, the third Bishop of Rome, and the contemporary of St. Paul himselfa; for though he does not mention Spain by name, yet if we consider that he was writing from Rome, and that he speaks of the extreme bounds of the west, relatively to the geographical position of Rome, it is as certain that, by this description of the limits to which St. Paul's personal labours had extended, he must mean Spain, as if he had expressly named it.

After these two contemporaneous testimonies to the fact in question, I should consider it superfluous to produce any more, depending on the authority of later times. I will observe only that the testimony of the Latin Presbyter supposes Paul to go to Spain from the city; and that of Clement supposes him to have evangelized the whole of that country he could not otherwise have preached the gospel to the extreme bounds of the west, which the ancients universally considered to be the Straits of Gibraltar. I think, then, that upon the strength of these two testimonies we are authorized to assume, first, that St. Paul set out to Spain at the close of his imprisonment at Rome; and, secondly,

that he was long enough in Spain to have, more or less, evangelized the whole country. He would set out, then, soon after the spring of A. U. 814. and he could not, perhaps, have accomplished his purpose, or be likely to leave Spain again, under two years' time at least. The extent and the populousness of the country, and the very great probability that Christianity had not been previously introduced into it, justify us in asserting this with confidence.

Now that, when he had made an end of the circuit of Spain, he would come back again to Italy, before he could return to Asia, is just as much a matter of course, as that he should have come to Italy at first, before he could travel to Spain. The time of his return to Italy, if the data on which we ground the conclusion are correct, would be either the latter half of 815. or the first half of 816. and both in the ninth of Nero: and this is the very time when I have already shewn it to be probable St. Paul was writing the Epistle to the Hebrews, and writing it, as the Epistle itself proves, from Italy. It is some confirmation of each of these conclusions, that the well-known inscription in Gruter b, the time of which is synchronous with the tenth of Nero, the date of the first general persecution of Christianity, if it be admitted as genuine, proves that the gospel had been introduced into Spain at least by the tenth of Nero; and I think it is some argument of the genuineness of the inscription itself, that, if we are right in the conclusion already established, it must have been introduced there by St. Paul himself, even before the ninth.

The date of the Epistle to the Hebrews will thus be determined to the ninth of Nero; and that it was the latter half of this ninth, not the former, and, consequently, A. U. 816. not A. U. 815. may further be shewn as follows.

I. The writer was preparing to leave Italy and to return to Asia, which we may suppose he would not do except in the spring or summer quarter of the year.

II. That when the Epistle was written, a persecution

was going on against the Church of Judæa, has been made to appear elsewhered; and yet that it was a persecution of no long standing may be collected from xii. 4: Ye have not yet resisted unto blood-aνTIXATÉσTYTE—more properly, Ye have not yet been set in opposition unto blood—while striving against the sin of apostasy; that is, ye have not yet been placed in circumstances under which, while striving against the sin of apostasy, it would be necessary for you to resist unto blood. It appears from x. 34. that the violence of the persecution as yet had been limited to the spoiling or plundering of their goods. But whatsoever it was, that it was the second which they had yet experienced appears also from x. 32. which refers to a former persecution, and yet only one former; and, therefore, to the persecution in the time of Saul.

Now, as that former persecution was begun by the martyrdom of Stephen, so may it be inferred from xiii. 7. was this second by the martyrdom of those, who are called the youμsvo of the Church, and who are said to have spoken to them the word of God; the end of whose conversation among them, that is, the exit, or mode of departing, from the world, which they had finally experienced, they are commanded to remember, in order to imitate their faith-avabeœpouvτes—literally, reviewing; but as a spectacle, which is over and over again brought before the eyes. This description can apply in general to none so justly as to the Apostles of Christ, nor to any of these in particular, (as not only Apostles of Christ, but also the youuevos of the Hebrew Church,) as to either James, the one the brother of John, and the other the brother of our Lord; the former martyred at a time when other of the Apostles were still left with the Hebrew Church, and the latter their first Bishop; and himself, in the course of time, a martyr also. Both these martyrdoms may be here intended; but that the latter in particular is alluded to seems to me to follow not only from the reason of the thing, but from the coincidence of the time of the martyrdom itself.

d Vol. i. Diss. ii. 132.