which must have taken place subsequent to the conclusion of St. Luke's history, and of course after St. Paul's liberation from his first imprisonment. The epistle, therefore, which contains this reference, since it appears from other parts of it to have been written whilst St. Paul was a prisoner at Rome, proves that he had returned to that city again, and undergone there a second imprisonment.

I do not produce these particulars for the sake of the support which they lend to the testimony of the fathers concerning St. Paul's second imprisonment, but to remark their consistency and agreement with one another. They are all resolvable into one supposition: and although the supposition itself be in some sort only negative, viz., that the epistle was not written during St. Paul's first residence at Rome, but in some future imprisonment in that city; yet is the consistency not less worthy of observation; for the epistle touches upon names and circumstances connected with the date and with the history of the first imprisonment, and mentioned in letters written during that imprisonment, and so touches upon them, as to leave what is said of one consistent with what is said of others, and consistent also with what is said of them in different epistles. Had one of these circumstances been so described, as to have fixed the date of the epistle to the first imprisonment, it would have involved the rest in contradiction. And when the number and particularity of the articles which have been brought together under this head are considered; and when it is considered also, that the comparisons we have formed amongst them, were in all probability neither provided for, nor thought of, by the writer of the epistle, it will be deemed something

very like the effect of truth, that no invincible repugnancy is perceived between them.

No. II.

In the Acts of the Apostles, in the sixteenth chapter, and at the first verse, we are told that Paul came to Derbe and Lystra, and, behold, a certain disciple was there named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman, who was a Jewess, and believed; but his father was a Greek." In the epistle before us, in the first chapter and at the fifth verse, St. Paul writes to Timothy thus: "Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy; when I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also." Here we have a fair unforced example of coincidence. In the history Timothy was the "son of a Jewess that believed:" in the epistle St. Paul applauds "the faith which dwelt in his mother Eunice." In the history it is said of the mother," that she was a Jewess, and believed;" of the father, "that he was a Greek." Now when it is said of the mother alone "that she believed," the father being nevertheless mentioned in the same sentence, we are led to suppose of the father, that he did not believe, i. e., either that he was dead, or that he remained unconverted. Agreeably hereunto, whilst praise is bestowed in the epistle upon one parent, and upon her sincerity in the faith, no notice is taken of the other. The mention of the grandmother is the addition of a circumstance not found in the history: but it is a circumstance which, as well as the names of the parties, might naturally be expected to be

known to the apostle, though overlooked by his historian.

Chap. iii. 15.

known the holy

No. III.

"And that from a child thou hast

Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation.”

This verse discloses a circumstance which agrees exactly with what is intimated in the quotation from the Acts, adduced in the last number. In that quotation it is recorded of Timothy's mother, " that she was a Jewess." This description is virtually, though, I am satisfied, undesignedly, recognised in the epistle, when Timothy is reminded in it, "that from a child he had known the holy scriptures." "The holy scriptures" undoubtedly meant the scriptures of the Old Testament. The expression bears that sense in every place in which it occurs. Those of the New had not yet acquired the name, not to mention that in Timothy's childhood probably none of them existed. In what manner then could Timothy have known "from a child" the Jewish scriptures, had he not been born, on one side or on both, of Jewish parentage? Perhaps he was not less likely to be carefully instructed in them, for that his mother alone possessed that religion.

No. IV.

Chap. ii. 22. "Flee also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”

"Flee also youthful lusts." The suitableness of this precept to the age of the person to whom it is addressed, is gathered from 1 Tim. iv. 12: "Let no

man despise thy youth." Nor do I deem the less of this coincidence, because the propriety resides in a single epithet; or because this one precept is joined with, and followed by, a train of others, not more applicable to Timothy, than to any ordinary convert. It is in these transient and cursory allusions that the argument is best founded. When a writer dwells and rests upon a point in which some coincidence is discerned, it may be doubted whether he himself had not fabricated the conformity, and was endeavouring to display and set it off. But when the reference is contained in a single word, unobserved perhaps by most readers, the writer passing on to other subjects, as unconscious that he had hit upon a correspondency, or unsolicitous whether it were remarked or not, we may be pretty well assured that no fraud was exercised, no imposition intended.

No. V.

Chap. iii. 10, 11. “But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, long-suffering, charity, patience, persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me."

The Antioch here mentioned was not Antioch the capital of Syria, where Paul and Barnabas resided "a long time;" but Antioch in Pisidia, to which place Paul and Barnabas came in their first apostolic progress, and where Paul delivered a memorable discourse, which is preserved in the thirteenth chapter of the Acts. At this Antioch the history relates, that "the Jews stirred up the devout and honourable women, and the chief men of the city, and raised

persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them out of their coasts. But they shook off the dust of their feet against them, and came unto Iconium . . . . . And it came to pass in Iconium, that they went both together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spake that a great multitude both of the Jews and also of the Greeks believed; but the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles, and made their minds evil-affected against the brethren. Long time therefore abode they speaking boldly in the Lord, which gave testimony unto the word of his grace, and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands. But the multitude of the city was divided; and part held with the Jews, and part with the Apostles. And when there was an assault made both of the Gentiles and also of the Jews, with their rulers, to use them despitefully and to stone them, they were ware of it, and fled unto Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and unto the region that lieth round about, and there they preached the gospel. . . . And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead. Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up and came into the city; and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe: and when they had preached the gospel in that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and to Antioch." This account comprises the period to which the allusion in the epistle is to be referred. We have so far therefore a conformity between the history and the epistle, that St. Paul is asserted in the history to have suffered persecutions in the three cities, his persecutions at which are appealed to in