From false premises thus assumed (in common with others, perhaps,) by the author of that fragment, the false conclusion would follow naturally enough, that Paul did accomplish the purpose which, under those circumstances, he had announced. And on this easy hypothesis, with so much gross neglect of apostolic chronology, besides other points of ignorance alleged against him by his own editors, the erroneous imagination of that author may, I think, be fairly accounted for, reducing the value of his authority in the scale to very little above nothing.

And no consideration, let me add, but that of very deep and sincere respect for the names mingled up with this question, could have induced me to bestow on the point before us a serious and continued attention, far beyond what, from its own merits, it might otherwise demand.

APPENDIX G.

Which, from the conjecture on TITUS iii. 13. in s. 2., may be assigned to p. 123. of this work.

s. 1. On the Epistle to the Hebrews.

s. 2. On the two persons who might have been the bearers of it.

s. 1. In the title to his HORE PAULINE, Dr. Paley distinctly says, The Truth of the Scripture History of St. Paul, evinced by a comparison of the Epistles which bear his name, &c.; and immediately in the Exposition of the argument, he says again, The volume of Christian Scriptures contains thirteen Letters purporting to be

written by St. Paul. The Epistle to the Hebrews, which certainly does not bear his name as the other epistles bear it, is thus excluded by Dr. Paley from that catalogue: which exclusion must, then, have arisen from some want of clear and entire satisfaction in his mind as to its having been the genuine or the direct work of St. Paul.

In his Evidences of Christianity, published four years after the HORÆ PAULINE, Dr. Paley speaks more explicitly. "I allege this epistle [to the Hebrews] without hesitation: for, whatever doubts may have been raised about its author, there can be none concerning the age in which it was written. No epistle in the collection carries about it more indubitable marks of antiquity, than this does," &c. &c. NOTE. pp. 70, 1. Edit. 1825.

After all the doubts, however, and disquisitions which have arisen on this subject, and notwithstanding what must always be felt, the marked difference of style and manner which distinguishes that from the other writings of the apostle; I yet very sincerely receive the Epistle to the Hebrews as essentially stamped with the apostolic authority of St. Paul himself.

That it should wear so much the character of an argumentative discourse and so little present that of an epistolary address, is, at all events, the natural consequence of its immediate object, to reason on the high mission and divine nature of our blessed Lord with the Hebrew Christians from their own sacred books: to which Hebrew Christians, however, generally speaking, St. Paul had become more or less obnoxious, as the apostle of the Gentiles, and the assertor of their evangelical liberty.

The greater part of that class of men would of course be strangers to the person of St. Paul and yet some

of them could hardly fail to recognise the writer, towards the close of the epistle, when he acknowledges the compassion which they had shown to him in his bonds, x. 33, 4., while at Cesarea apparently, and the joyful contribution of their goods to the relief of his necessities there.

Writing in a situation so very peculiar, though St. Paul did not like immediately to avow himself as the author, yet, from other indications of a personal nature, it may appear, that he did not ultimately intend to disavow it or to conceal himself. Two passages, pointed out as very decisive, are the following:

xiii. 19. But I beseech you the rather to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner.

-23. Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty; with whom, if he come shortly, I will see you.

But, singularly enough, although those passages might be sufficiently clear at the time of writing, in the present day, it must be confessed, some ambiguity hangs on both of them: for neither does the one Greek word in v. 19., άдожаτаσralã, belong to the phraseology of St. Paul, nor can the other, v. 23., àπoλελvμévov, be so certainly claimed, in that signification, as entirely to forbid a different meaning which the context does not exclude, being allowed by his friends to depart.

It may not, however, be impertinent or unprofitable to remark, that for establishing the great point proposed in the H. P., even if the Epistle to the Hebrews had been always received as from the pen of St. Paul, still it could not be made tributary to the purpose of Dr. Paley; from its being necessarily destitute of those many references to places, persons, and facts, materials, so richly found in the thirteen epistles, to show undesigned coincidence with the Acts. But then this acknowledged peculiarity in that epistle, so long as

other considerations are not wanting to counterbalance it, may not be allowed to carry decisive weight in settling so complex a question as that of its authorship.

s. 2. Out of the notion (first briefly started by Luther, in GENES. xlviii. 20., and lately much favoured abroad) that Apollos might be the author, a different idea has arisen in my mind; an idea, original perhaps, and yet not beyond the range of probability, which would discover the commissioned bearers of it to the Hebrews in Judea.

In ACTS xviii. 24...28. Apollos, we are told, being an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, passed over from Ephesus to Corinth; and there mightily convinced the Jews, and that publickly, showing by the Scriptures, that Jesus was Christ, the Messiah. Ir therefore at a later day any man but St. Paul could be the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, or if the hand of any other man could be employed under his direction to write it, Apollos, it must be allowed, was altogether peculiarly qualified for that purpose.

And for such a sacred purpose, why should we doubt or deny, that a guiding inspiration might be given to the pen of such a writer?

But, at all events, if to secure for that great doctrinal argument a favourable reception with the Hebrews addressed as such, it was necessary somehow to introduce the epistle in the first instance and try its effect, without declaring St. Paul to be the author of it; no Christian brother was more likely, with pleasing eloquence and in a conciliatory spirit, to deliver and recommend it to an audience of learned Jews, than Apollos.

Under this latter impression, especially, I have been sometimes inclined to fancy, that we have an unexplained text ready to bear application to that very end. end. And

if any calculation of time, place, and circumstance, in these matters, would otherwise allow, it has struck my mind to interpret the following words of Paul to Titus, as of much more distinct importance than at first sight may be thought:

TIT. iii. 13. Bring (or forward) Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their journey diligently, that nothing be wanting unto them.

Now, as it is very clear that so critical a task as that of presenting the epistle without its writer's name, would never be consigned to any common messenger, we may well suppose, that St. Paul would select the most intelligent of his friends and followers to be authorised and instructed accordingly.

Here, then, we have Apollos eminently accomplished and zealous in the cause, with Zenas the lawyer (interpreter and teacher of the law), announced as on some important mission from St. Paul; and they are particularly commended to Titus to be by him forwarded from Crete with all possible diligence, more probably, at least, to the coast of Palestine than to any other that can be named.