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❝our prayers, remembering without ceafing your work of faith, and labour of love," 1 Theff. chap. i. ver. 3. To Timothy : "I thank God, whom I ferve from my fore"fathers with pure confcience, that with"out ceafing I have remembrance of thee "in my prayers night and day," 2 Tim. chap. i. ver. 4. In thefe quotations, it is ufually his remembrance, and never his hearing of them, which he makes the subject of his thankfulness to God.

As great difficulties ftand in the way of fuppofing the epistle before us to have been written to the church of Ephefus, fo I think it probable that it is actually the epiftle to the Laodiceans, referred to in the fourth chapter of the epiftle to the Coloffians. The text which contains that reference is this: "When this epifle is read among you, cause "that it be read alfo in the church of the Laodiceans, and that ye likewife read the

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epiftle from Laodicea," chap. iv. ver. 16. The "epiftle from Laodicea" was an epistle fent by St. Paul to that church, and by them tranfmitted to Coloffe. The two churches were mutually to communicate the epiftles

they

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they had received. This is the way in which the direction is explained by the greater part of commentators, and is the most probable sense that can be given to it. It is alfo probable that the epiftle alluded to was an epistle which had been received by the church of Laodicea lately. It appears then, with a confiderable degree of evidence, that there existed an epistle of St. Paul's nearly of the fame date with the epistle to the Coloffians, and an epiftle directed to a church (for fuch the church of Laodicea was) in which St. Paul had never been. What has been obferved concerning the epistle before us, fhews that it answers perfectly to that character.

Nor does the mistake feem very difficult to account for. Whoever inspects the map of Afia Minor will fee, that a person proceeding from Rome to Laodicea would probably land at Ephefus, as the nearest frequented fea-port in that direction. Might not Tychicus then, in paffing through Ephefus, communicate to the Chriftians of that place the letter, with which he was charged? And might not copies of that letter be mul

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tiplied and preferved at Ephefus? Might not fome of the copies drop the words of defignation εν τη Λαοδίκεια*, which it was of no confequence to an Ephefian to retain ? Might not copies of the letter come out into the Christian church at large from Ephesus ; and might not this give occafion to a belief that the letter was written to that church? And, laftly, might not this belief produce

* And it is remarkable that there seem to have been fome ancient copies without the words of defignation, either the words in Ephefus, or the words in Laodicea. St. Bafil, a writer of the fourth century, fpeaking of the "And

prefent epistle, has this very fingular passage :

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writing to the Ephefians, as truly united to him who "is through knowledge, he (Paul) calleth them in a peculiar fense such who are; faying, to the faints who are "and (or even) the faithful in Chrift Jefus; for fo those "before us have tranfmitted it, and we have found it in "ancient copies." Dr. Mill interprets (and, notwithftanding fome objections that have been made to him, in my opinion rightly interprets) these words of Bafil, as declaring that this father had seen certain copies of the epistle in which the words "in Ephefus" were wanting. And the paffage, I think, must be confidered as Bafil's fanciful way of explaining what was really a corrupt and defective reading; for I do not believe it poffible that the author of the epifile could have originally written αίγεοις τοις εσιν, without any name of place to follow it.

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the error which we fuppofe to have crept into the infcription?

No. V.

As our epiftle purports to have been written during St. Paul's imprisonment at Rome, which lies beyond the period, to which the Acts of the Apoftles brings up his history; and as we have seen and acknowledged that the epiftle contains no reference to any transaction at Ephefus during the apostle's refidence in that city, we cannot expect that it should supply many marks of agreement with the narrative. One coincidence however occurs, and a coincidence of that minute and lefs obvious kind, which, as hath been repeatedly obferved, is of all others the moft to be relied upon.

Chap. vi. ver. 19, 20, we read, "praying "for me, that I may open my mouth boldly "to make known the mystery of the gospel, "for which I am an ambaffador in bonds." "In bonds," ev aλuce, in a chain. In the twenty-eighth chapter of the Acts we are informed, that Paul, after his arrival at Rome, was fuffered to dwell by himself with a foldier,

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that kept him. Dr. Lardner has fhewn that this mode of cuftody was in ufe amongst the Romans, and that whenever it was adopted the prifoner was bound to the foldier by a single chain; in reference to which St. Paul, in the twentieth verfe of this chapter, tells the Jews, whom he had affemblad, "For this cause therefore have I called for

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you to fee you, and to speak with you, "because that for the hope of Israel I am "bound with this chain," τny advow tautnu @egina. It is in exact conformity therefore with the truth of St. Paul's fituation at the time, that he declares of himself in the epiftle, πρεσβεύω εν αλύσει. And the exactnefs is the more remarkable, as aλuris (a chain) is no where used in the fingular number to express any other kind of cuftody. When the prisoner's hands or feet were bound together, the word was dopo (bonds), as in the twenty-fixth chapter of the Acts, where Paul replies to Agrippa, "I would to God "that not only thou, but alfo all that hear me "this day, were both almost and altogether "fuch as I am, except these bonds," wagenτος των δεσμών τουτων. When the prisoner

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