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THE RIGHT REVEREND

JOHN LAW, D. D.,

LORD BISHOP OF KILLALA AND ACHONRY,

AS A TESTIMONY OF ESTEEM FOR HIS VIRTUES AND LEARNING,

AND OF GRATITUDE

FOR THE LONG AND FAITHFUL FRIENDSHIP WITH WHICH THE AUTHOR HAS BEEN HONOURED BY HIM,

THIS ATTEMPT TO CONFIRM THE EVIDENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN HISTORY

IS INSCRIBED,

BY HIS AFFECTIONATE AND MOST OBLIGED SERVANT,

W. PALEY.

Dr. John Law, to whom Paley thus dedicated this volume, was his early friend and fellow tutor at Cambridge he was possessed of considerable talents, and has been sometimes supposed to have assisted Paley in the authorship of his Moral and Political Philosophy; thus the chapter "on reverencing the Deity" has been often ascribed to Dr. Law.

He was born at Greystoke, in 1745, became bishop of Clonfert in 1782, was translated to Killala in 1787, and to Elphin in 1795. He died March 19, 1810. He was a man of great liberality of feeling: thus when he was made bishop of Killala, finding that his diocese was principally tenanted by Catholics, he printed for their use an edition of the works of Gother, a Catholic author, and had it distributed amongst the poor of his diocese. He came of a talented and fortunate family; his brother became, in 1812, bishop of Chester, and another brother, the celebrated Lord Ellenborough, was long chief justice of the court of King's Bench. Gent. Mag. 1810, p. 380.

THE TRUTH

OF

THE SCRIPTURE HISTORY OF ST. PAUL EVINCED.

CHAPTER I.

EXPOSITION OF THE ARGUMENT.

THE volume of Christian Scriptures contains thirteen letters purporting to be written by St Paul; it contains also a book, which, amongst other things, professes to deliver the history, or rather memoirs of the history, of this same person. By assuming the genuineness of the letters, we may prove the substantial truth of the history; or, by assuming the truth of the history, we may argue strongly in support of the genuineness of the letters. But I assume neither one nor the other. The reader is at liberty to suppose these writings to have been lately discovered in the library of the Escurial, and to come to our hands destitute of any extrinsic or collateral evidence whatever; and the argument I am about to offer is calculated to shew, that a comparison of the different writings would, even under these circumstances, afford good reason to believe the persons and transactions to have been real, the letters authentic, and the narration in the main to be true.

Agreement or conformity between letters bearing the name of an ancient author, and a received history of that author's life, does not necessarily establish the credit of either: because,

1. The history may, like Middleton's life of Cicero, or Jortin's Life of Erasmus, have been wholly, or in part, compiled from the letters: in which case it is manifest that the history adds nothing to the evidence already afforded by the letters; or,

2. The letters may have been fabricated out of the history: a species of imposture which is certainly practicable; and which, without any accession of proof or authority, would necessarily produce the appearance of consistency or agreement; or,

3. The history and letters may have been founded upon some authority common to both ; as upon reports and traditions which prevailed in the age in which they were composed, or upon some ancient record now lost, which both writers consulted; in which case also the letters, without being genuine, may exhibit marks of conformity with the history; and the history, without being true, may agree with the letters.

Agreement therefore, or conformity, is only to be relied upon so far as we can exclude these several suppositions. Now the point to be noticed is, that in the three cases above enumerated, conformity must be the effect of design. Where the history is compiled from the letters, which is the first case, the design and composition of the work are in general so confessed, or made so evident by comparison, as to leave us in no danger of confounding the production with original history, or of mistaking it for an independent authority. The agreement, it is possible, will be close and uniform, and will easily be perceived to result from the

intention of the author, and from the plan and conduct of his work. Where the letters are fabricated from the history, which is the second case, it is always for the purpose of imposing a forgery upon the public; and in order to give colour and probability to the fraud, names, places, and circumstances, found in the history, may be studiously introduced into the letters, as well as a general consistency be endeavoured to be maintained. But here it is manifest that whatever congruity appears, is the consequence of meditation, artifice, and design.The third case is that wherein the history and the letters, without any direct privity or communication with each other, derive their materials from the same source; and, by reason of their common original, furnish instances of accordance and correspondency. This is a situation in which we must allow it to be possible for ancient writings to be placed; and it is a situation in which it is more difficult to distinguish spurious from genuine writings, than in either of the cases described in the preceding suppositions; inasmuch as the congruities observable are so far accidental, as that they are not produced by the immediate transplanting of names and circumstances out of one writing into the other. But although, with respect to each other, the agreement in these writings be mediate and secondary, yet it is not properly or absolutely undesigned: because, with respect to the common original from which the information of the writers proceeds, it is studied and factitious. The case of which we treat must, as to the letters, be a case of forgery: and when the writer who is personating another, sits down to his composition-whether he have the history with which we now compare the letters, or some other record before him; or whether he have only loose tradition and reports to go by-he must adapt his imposture, as well as he can, to what he finds in these accounts; and his adaptations will be the result of counsel, scheme, and industry; art must be employed; and vestiges will appear of management and design. Add to this, that, in most of the following examples, the circumstances in which the coincidence is remarked are of too particular and domestic a nature to have floated down upon the stream of general tradition.

Of the three cases which we have stated, the difference between the first and the two others is, that in the first the design may be fair and honest, in the others it must be accompanied with the consciousness of fraud; but in all there is design. In examining, therefore, the agreement between ancient writings, the character of truth and originality is undesignedness and this test applies to every supposition; for, whether we suppose the history to be true, but the letters spurious; or the letters to be genuine, but the history false: or, lastly, falsehood to belong to both-the history to be a fable, and the letters to be fictitious: the same inference will result-that either there will be no agreement between them, or the agreement will be the effect of design. Nor will it elude the principle of this rule, to suppose the same person to have been the author of all the letters, or even the author both of the letters and the history; for no less design is necessary to produce coincidence between different parts of a man's own writings, especially when they are made to take the different forms of a history and of original letters, than to adjust them to the circumstances found in any other writing.

With respect to those writings of the New Testament which are to be the subject of our present consideration, I think that, as to the authenticity of the epistles, this argument, where it is sufficiently sustained by instances, is nearly conclusive; for I cannot assign a supposition of forgery, in which coincidences of the kind we inquire after are likely to appear. As to the history, it extends to these points:-It proves the general reality of the circumstances: it proves the historian's knowledge of these circumstances. In the present instance it confirms his pretensions of having been a contemporary, and in the latter part of his history, a companion, of St. Paul. In a word, it establishes the substantial truth of the narration; and substantial truth is that which, in every historical inquiry, ought to be the first thing sought after and ascertained: it must be the groundwork of every other observation.

The reader then will please to remember this word undesignedness, as denoting that upon which the construction and validity of our argument chiefly depend.

As to the proofs of undesignedness, I shall in this place say little; for I had rather the reader's persuasion should arise from the instances themselves, and the separate remarks with

which they may be accompanied, than from any previous formulary or description of the arguIn a great plurality of examples, I trust he will be perfectly convinced that no design or contrivance whatever has been exercised and if some of the coincidences alleged appear to be minute, circuitous, or oblique, let him reflect that this very indirectness and subtilty is that which gives force and propriety to the example. Broad, obvious, and explicit agreements, prove little; because it may be suggested that the insertion of such is the ordinary expedient of every forgery: and though they may occur, and probably will occur, in genuine writings, yet it cannot be proved that they are peculiar to these. Thus what St. Paul declares in chap. xi. of 1 Cor. concerning the institution of the eucharist-“ For I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread; and when he had given thanks he brake it, and said, Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for you; this do in remembrance of me”—though it be in close and verbal conformity with the account of the same transaction preserved by St. Luke, is yet a conformity of which no use can be made in our argument; for if it should be objected that this was a mere recital from the Gospel, borrowed by the author of the Epistle, for the purpose of setting off his composition by an appearance of agreement with the received account of the Lord's supper, I should not know how to repel the insinuation. In like manner, the description which St. Paul gives of himself in his Epistle to the Philippians (iii. 5.)-"Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless"-is made up of particulars so plainly delivered concerning him, in the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistle to the Romans, and the Epistle to the Galatians, that I cannot deny but that it would be easy for an impostor, who was fabricating a letter in the name of St. Paul, to collect these articles in to one view. This, therefore, is a conformity which we do not adduce. But when I read in the Acts of the Apostles, that when "Paul came to Derbe and Lystra, behold a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman which was a Jewess;" and when, in an epistle addressed to Timothy, I find him reminded of his "having known the Holy Scriptures from a child," which implies that he must, on the one side or both, have been brought up by Jewish parents: I conceive that I remark a coincidence which shews, by its very obliquity, that scheme was not employed in its formation. In like manner if a coincidence depend upon a comparison of dates, or rather of circumstances from which the dates are gathered the more intricate that comparison shall be; the more numerous the intermediate steps through which the conclusion is deduced; in a word, the more circuitous the investigation is, the better, because the agreement which finally results is thereby farther removed from the suspicion of contrivance, affectation, or design. And it should be remembered, concerning these coincidences, that it is one thing to be minute, and another to be precarious; one thing to be unobserved, and another to be obscure; one thing to be circuitous or oblique, and another to be forced, dubious, or fanciful. And this distinction ought always to be retained in our thoughts.

The very particularity of St. Paul's epistles; the perpetual recurrence of names of persons and places: the frequent allusions to the incidents of his private life, and the circumstances of his condition and history; and the connexion and parallelism of these with the same circumstances in the Acts of the Apostles, so as to enable us, for the most part, to confront them one with another; as well as the relation which subsists between the circumstances, as mentioned or referred to in the different epistles-afford no inconsiderable proof of the genuineness of the writings, and the reality of the transactions. For as no advertency is sufficient to guard against slips and contradictions, when circumstances are multiplied, and when they are liable to be detected by contemporary accounts equally circumstantial, an impostor, I should expect, would either have avoided particulars entirely, contenting himself with doctrinal discussions, moral precepts, and general reflections *; or if, for the sake of imitating St. Paul's style he should

This, however must not be misunderstood. A person writing to his friends, and upon a subject in which the transactions of his own life were concerned, would probably be led in the course of his letter, especially if it was a long

one, to refer to passages found in his history. A person addressing an epistle to the public at large, or under the form of an epistle delivering a discourse upon some speculative argument, would not, it is probable, meet with an

have thought it necessary to intersperse his composition with names and circumstances, he would have placed them out of the reach of comparison with the history. And I am confirmed in this opinion by the inspection of two attempts to counterfeit St. Paul's epistles, which have come down to us; and the only attempts of which we have any knowledge, that are at all deserving of regard. One of these is an epistle to the Laodiceans, extant in Latin, and preserved by Fabricius in his collection of apocryphal scriptures. The other purports to be an epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, in answer to an epistle from the Corinthians to him. This was translated by Scroderus from a copy in the Armenian language which had been sent to W. Whiston, and was afterward, from a more perfect copy, procured at Aleppo, published by his sons, as an appendix to their edition of Moses Chorenensis. No Greek copy exists of either: they are not only not supported by ancient testimony, but they are negatived and excluded; as they have never found admission into any catalogue of apostolical writings, acknowledged by, or known to, the early ages of Christianity. In the first of these I found, as I expected, a total evitation of circumstances. It is simply a collection of sentences from the canonical epistles, strung together with very little skill. The second, which is a more versute and specious forgery, is introduced with a list of names of persons who wrote to St. Paul from Corinth; and is preceded by an account sufficiently particular of the manner in which the epistle was sent from Corinth to St. Paul, and the answer returned. But they are names which no one ever heard of: and the account it is impossible to combine with any thing found in the Acts, or in the other epistles. It is not necessary for me to point out the internal marks of spuriousness and imposture which these compositions betray; but it was necessary to observe, that they do not afford those coincidences which we propose as proofs of authenticity in the epistles which we defend.

Having explained the general scheme and formation of the argument, I may be permitted to subjoin a brief account of the manner of conducting it.

I have disposed the several instances of agreement under separate numbers; as well to mark more sensibly the divisions of the subject, as for another purpose, viz. that the reader may thereby be reminded that the instances are independent of one another. I have advanced nothing which I do not think probable; but the degree of probability by which different instances are supported, is undoubtedly very different. If the reader, therefore, meets with a number which contains an instance that appears to him unsatisfactory, or founded in mistake, he will dismiss that number from the argument, but without prejudice to any other. He will have occasion also to observe, that the coincidences discoverable in some epistles are much fewer and weaker than what are supplied by others. But he will add to his observation this important circumstance that whatever ascertains the original of one epistle, in some measure establishes the authority of the rest. For, whether these epistles be genuine or spurious, every thing about them indicates that they come from the same hand. The diction, which it is extremely difficult to imitate, preserves its resemblance and peculiarity throughout all the epistles. Numerous expressions and singularities of style, found in no other part of the New Testament, are repeated in different epistles; and occur in their respective places, without the smallest appearance of force or art. An involved argumentation, frequent obscurities, especially in the order and transition of thought, piety, vehemence, affection, bursts of rapture, and of unparalleled sublimity, are properties, all, or most of them, discernible in every letter of the collection. But although these epistles bear strong marks of proceeding from the same hand, I think it is still more certain that they were originally separate publications. They form no continued story; they compose no regular correspondence; they comprise not the transactions of any particular period; they carry on no connexion of argument; they depend not upon one another; except in one or two instances, they refer not to one another. I will farther undertake to say, that no study or care has been employed to produce or preserve an appearance of consistency amongst them. All which observations shew that they were not intended by the person, whoever he was, that wrote them, to come

occasion of alluding to the circumstances of his life at all he might, or he might not; the chance on either side is nearly equal. This is the situation of the catholic epistle. Although, therefore, the presence of these allusions and

agreements be a valuable accession to the arguments by which the authenticity of a letter is maintained, yet the want of them certainly forms no positive objection.