The Areopagus, or Mars Hill; with the Temple of Theseus, Athens.Actsxvii.22.“That Athenswaswholly enslaved to idolatry, has been abundantly proved by our philological illustrators, especially the indefatigable Wetstein, from Pausanias Attic. 1, 24: Strabo10.p.472, c: Lucian,t. 1.Prometheusp.180: Livy 45, 27. So also Pausanias in Attic. c. 18, 24. (cited by Pearce and Doddridge,) who tells us, that Athens had more images than all the rest of Greece; and Petronius Satyriconc. 17, who humorously says, ‘It was easier to find a god than a man there.’” (Bloomfield Annotations.)“καὶ ἐν τῆ ἀγορᾶ.Of themarket-placesat Athens, of which there were many, the most celebrated were the Old and the New Forum. The former was in the Ceramicus, a very ample space, part within, and part without the city. See Meursius,dissertatione de Ceramico Gemino,§46. and Potter’s Archaeology 1, 8.p.30. The latter was outside of the Ceramicus, in a place called Eretria. See Meursius, Ath. Attic.l. 1.c. 6.And this seems to be the one here meant. For no forum, except the Ceramicus and the Eretriacum, was called, absolutely,ἄγορα, but had a name to denotewhichwas meant, as Areopagiticum, Hippodamium, Piraeum,&c.In process of time, and at the period when Paul was at Athens, the forum was transferred from the Ceramicus into the Eretria; a change which, indeed, had been introduced in the time of Augustus; and that this was the most frequented part of the city, we learn from Strabo10.p.447. Besides, the Eretriac forum was situated before theστοὰ, or portico, in which the Stoics, of whom mention is just after made, used to hold their public discourses. It was moreover calledκύκλος, from its round form.”“Ἄρειον πάγον,Mars’ Hill.Πάγοςsignifies properly ahigh situation.Thiswas a hill opposite to that of the citadel on the west; as we learn from Herodias 8, 52. [See the passages produced supra, to which I add Livy 26, 44.Tumulum quem Mercurii vocant.Editor.] It was so called, either because it had been consecrated to Mars (as the Campus Martius at Rome,) or because (as♦Pausanias relates, Att. C. 28,) Mars, when he had slain Halyrrothius, son of Neptune, was the first who there pleaded a capital cause, which took place before the twelve gods. The judges used to sit by night, andsub dio; and whatever was done was keptvery secret. [whence the proverbἈρεοπαγίτου σιωπηλότερος, to which may be compared ours, ‘as grave as a Judge.’ Editor.] They gave their judgment, notviva voce, but in writing. Nor were any admitted into the number of Areopagists but persons of noble birth, of unspotted morality, and eminent for justice and equity. See more in Meursius de Areopago.” (Kuinoel.) (Bloomfield Annotations.)♦“Pausanius” replaced with “Pausanias”Paul taking his stand there, in that splendid scene, uttered in a bold tone and in his noblest style, the great truths which he was divinely consecrated to reveal. Never yet had Athens, in her most glorious state, heard a discourse which, for solemn beauty and lofty eloquence, could equal this brief declaration of the providence of God in the religion of his creatures. Never did the world see an orator in a sublimer scene, or in one that could awaken higher emotions in those who heard, or him who spoke. He stood on the hill of Mars, with Athens beneath and around him, and the mighty Acropolis rising with its “tiara of proud towers,” walls and temples, on the west,——bounding and crowning the view in that direction;——to the north-east lay the forum, the late scene of his discussions, and beyond lay the philosophic Academia, around and through which rolled the flowery Cephisus. Before him sat the most august and ancient court in the Grecian world, waiting for the revelation of his solemn commission respecting the new deities which he was expected to propose as an addition to their polytheistic list;——around him were the sages of the Athenian schools, listening in grave but curious attention, for the new thingswhich the eastern stranger had brought to their ears. The apostle raised his eyes to all the monuments of Athenian devotion which met the view on every side. Before him on the high Acropolis was the mighty temple of the Athenian Minerva; on the plain beyond was the splendid shrine of the Olympian Jove; on his right was the temple of Theseus, the deified ancient king of Attica, who laid the first foundation of her glories; and near were the new piles which the later Grecian adulation had consecrated to the worship of her foreign conquerors——to the deified Caesars. Beginning in that tone of dignified politeness, which always characterized his address towards the great ones of earth, he won their hearts and their attention by a courteously complimentary allusion to the devout though misguided zeal, whose solid tokens everywhere surrounded him. “Ye men of Athens! I see in all places that you areVERY RELIGIOUS. For passing along and gazing at the shrines of your devotion, I found an altar on which was written,——‘To the unknown God;’——Him therefore, whom, not knowing, you worship, I preach to you.” The rest of this splendid, though brief discourse, need not be repeated, because it is given with tolerable fidelity in the common English translation; but it deserves notice how readily and completely, on all occasions, Paul accommodated himself to the circumstances of his hearers. His style on this occasion is remarkably protracted and rounded in its periods, highly cumulative in structure, and harmonious in its almost rhythmical flow;——the whole bearing the character which was best suited to the fancy and fashion of the Athenians,——though still very decidedly marked by the peculiarities of his eastern origin. Here too, he gave them a favorable impression of his knowledge of the Grecian classics, by his apt and happy quotation from Aratus, the philosophical poet of his native province, Cilicia. “For we also are his offspring.”Very religious.——This is unquestionably the just meaning ofxvii.22. See Bloomfield and all the standard commentators. “Too superstitions” is insulting.“‘To the Unknown God.’ (xvii.23.)——It is very evident from the testimony of Laertius, that the Athenians had altars in their public places, inscribed to unknown gods or demons. He informs us, that when Athens was visited with a great plague, the inhabitants invited Epimenides the philosopher, to lustrate their city. The method adopted by him was to carry several sheep to the Areopagus; whence they were left to wander as they pleased, under the observation of persons sent to attend them. As each sheep lay down, it was sacrificed on the spot to thepropitious god; (In vita Epimenideslib. xi.) and as the Athenians were ignorant of what god was propitious, they erected an altar with this inscription,♦ΘΕΟΙΣ ΑΣΙΑΣ, ΚΑΙ ΕΥΡΩΠΗΣ, ΚΑΙ ΛΙΒΗΥΣ, ΘΕΩ ΑΓΝΩΣΤΩ ΚΑΙ ΞΕΝΩ:——To the gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa, to the strange and unknown god.♦“AΙΒΗΥΣ” replaced with “ΛΙΒΗΥΣ” and“KΛI” replaced with “ΚΑΙ”“On the architrave of a Doric portico at Athens, which was standing when that city was visited about sixty years since, byDr.Chandler andMr.Stuart, is a Greek inscriptionto the following purport:——‘The people’ [of Athens have erected this fabric] ‘with the donations to Minerva Archegetia,’ [or the conductress,] ‘by the god Caius Julius Caesar and his son the god Augustus, when Nicias was Archon.’ Over the middle of the pediment was a statue of Lucius Caesar, with this inscription:——‘The people’ [honor] ‘Lucius Caesar, the son of the Emperor Augustus Caesar, the son of the god.’ There was also a statue to Julia, the daughter to Augustus, and the mother of Lucius, thus inscribed:——‘The Senate of the Areopagus, and the Senate of the Six Hundred’ [dedicate this statue to] ‘the goddess Julia, Augusta, Provident.’ These public memorials supply an additional proof of the correctness of Paul’s observations on the Athenians, that they were too much addicted to the adoption of objects for worship and devotion.” (Hammond’s Annotations of Cave’s Lives of the Apostles, Horne’s Introduction.)As he concluded however, with the solemn declaration of the great foundation-truth of Christianity,——that God had raised Jesus from the dead,——there was a very general burst of contempt from the more scornful portion of his audience, at the idea of anything so utterly against all human probability. Of the immortality of the soul, the divinest of their own philosophers had reasoned,——and it was by most of the Athenian sects, considered on the whole, tolerably well established; but the notion of the actual revivification of the perished body,——the recall of the scattered dust and ashes, to the same breathing, moving, acting, thinking form, which for ages had ceased to be,——all amounted to a degree of improbable absurdity,——that not the wildest Grecian speculator had ever dreamed of. So the proud Epicureans and Stoics turned sneeringly away from the barbarian stranger who had come so far to try their credulity with such a tale; and thus they for ever lost the opportunity to learn from this new-opened fountain of truth, a wisdom that the long researches of all the Athenian schools had never reached and could never reach, without the light of this truly divine eastern source, which they now so thoughtlessly scorned. But there were some, more considerate, among the hearers of the apostle, who had learned that it is the most decided characteristic of a true philosopher, to reject nothing at first sight or hearing, though it may happen to be contrary to his own personal experience and learning; and these, weighing the matter with respectful doubt, told Paul——“We will hear thee again about this.” Without any further attempt to unfold the truth at that time, Paul departed from the Areopagus, and no more uplifted his voice on the high places of Athens, in testimony of that solemn revelation of the Son of Man from the dead,——the conviction of whose truth, in spite of all philosophic sneers, was destined to oversweep the whole of that world which they knew, and a new one beyond it, and to exalt the name of that despised wanderer toa fame compared with which that of Socrates should be small. Paul was however afterwards visited by several of those who heard him before the Areopagus; and after a free, conversational discussion of the whole subject, and a more familiar exhibition of the evidences of his remarkable assertions, professed their satisfaction with the arguments, and believed. Among these, even one of the judges of the august Areopagus owned himself a disciple of Jesus. Besides him is mentioned a woman named Damaris; and others not specified, are said to have believed.“‘Dionysius the Areopagite.’ Actsxvii.34.——Dionysius is said to have been bred at Athens in all the arts and sciences: at the age of twenty-five he went into Egypt to learn astronomy. At the time of our Savior’s death he was at Heliopolis, where, observing the darkness that attended the passion, he cried out thus:——‘That certainly, at that time, either God himself suffered, or was much concerned for somebody that did.’ Returning to Athens he became one of the senators of the Areopagus; he was converted bySt.Paul, and by him appointed bishop of Athens. Having labored and suffered much for the holy cause, he became a martyr to the faith, being burnt to death at Athens, in the93dyear of Christ.” (Cave’s Lives of the Apostles. Stanhope on Epistles and Gospels. Calmet’s Dictionary.)From the grave manner in which this story is told, the reader would naturally suppose that these great writers had some authority for these incidents; but in reality, everything that concerns Dionysius the Areopagite, is utterly unknown; and not one of these impudent inventions can be traced back further than the sixth century.After this tolerably hopeful beginning of the gospel in Athens, Paul left that city, and went southwestward to Corinth, then the most splendid and flourishing city of all Greece, and the capital of the Roman province of Achaia. It was famous, beyond all the cities of the world, for its luxury and refinement,——and the name of “Corinthian” had, long before the time of Paul, gone forth as a proverbial expression for what was splendid in art, brilliant in invention, and elegant in vice.Here first arose that sumptuous order of architecture that still perpetuates the proverbial elegance of the splendid city of its birth, and the gorgeously beautiful style of the rich Corinthian column, “waving its wanton wreath,”——may be taken as an aptly expressive emblem of the general moral and internal, as well as external characteristics of this last home of true Grecian art. Here longest tarried the taste, art and refinement, which so eminently marked the first glories of Greece, and when the triumphs of that ancient excellence were beginning to grow dim in its brighter early seats in Attica and in Ionian Asia, they flashed out with a most dazzling beauty in the splendid city of the Isthmus,——but alas!——in a splendor that was indeed only a passing flash,——a last brilliant gleam from this glorious spot, before the lamp of Hellenic glory in art, went out forever. In the day ofthe apostle’s visit however, it was in its most “high and palmy state,”——the queen of the Grecian world. It was glorious too, in the dearest recollections of the patriotic history of Greece; for here was the center of that last brilliant Achaian confederacy, which was cherished by the noble spirits of Aratus and Philopoemen; and here too was made the last stand against the all-crushing advance of the legions of Rome: and when it fell at last before that resistless conquering movement,——“great was the fall of it.” The burning of Corinth by Mummius, (B. C. 144, the year of the fall of Carthage,) is infamous above all the most barbarous acts of Roman conquest, for its melancholy destruction of the works of ancient art, with which it then abounded. But from the ashes of this mournful ruin, it rose soon after, under the splendid patronage of Roman dominion, to a new splendor, that equalled, or perhaps outwent the glories of its former perfection, which had been ripening from the day when, as recorded by old Homer, in the freshness of its early power, it sent forth its noble armaments to the siege of Troy, or set afloat the earliest warlike navy in the world, or was made, through a long course of centuries, the center of the most brilliant of Grecian festivals, in the celebration of the Isthmian games before its walls. The Roman conquerors, as if anxious to make to this ancient seat of Grecian splendor, a full atonement for the barbarous ruin with which they had overwhelmed it, now showered on it all the honors and favors in their power. It was rebuilt as a Roman colony,——endowed by the munificence of senates, consuls, and emperors, and made the capital of the Roman province of Achaia, until the dismemberment of the empire. Shining in its gaudy fetters, it became what it has been described to be in the apostolic age, and was then beyond all doubt the greatest Grecian city in Europe, if not in the world. Athens was then mouldering in more than incipient decay——“the ghost of its former self;” for even Cicero, long before this, describes it as presenting everywhere spectacles of the most lamentable ruin and decline; but Corinth was in the highth of its glory,——its luxury,——its vice,——its heathen wickedness,——and may therefore be justly esteemed the most important scene of labor into which apostolic enterprise had ever yet made its way, and to have been well worthy of the attention which it ever after received from him, to the very last of his life, being made the occasion and object of a larger and a more splendid portion of his epistolary labors, than all with which he ever favored any otherplace in the world; nor can this protracted notice of its condition and character be justly blamed for its intrusion on this hurried narrative.“Corinth.——There is scarcely any one of the seats of ancient magnificence and luxury, that calls up more vivid and powerful associations, than are awakened by the name of this once opulent and powerful city. Corinth, ‘the prow and stern of Greece,’ the emporium of its commerce, the key and bulwark of the Peloponnesus, was proverbial for its wealth as early as the time of Homer. Its situation was so advantageous for the inexperienced navigation of early times, that it became of necessity the center of trade. The first naval battle on record was fought between Corinth and its colony Corcyra, about 657 B. C. ‘Syracuse, the ornament of Sicily, Corcyra, some time sovran of the seas, Ambracia in Epirus, and several other cities more or less flourishing, owe their origin to Corinth.’ (Travels of♦Anacharsis,vol. III.c. 37.) Thucydides states, that the Corinthian ship-builders first produced galleys with three benches of oars. The circumnavigation of the peninsula was tedious and uncertain to a proverb; while at the Isthmus, not only their cargoes, but, if requisite, the smaller vessels might be transported from sea to sea. By its port of Cenchreae, it received the rich merchandise of Asia, and by that of Lechaeum, it maintained intercourse with Italy and Sicily. The Isthmian Games, by the concourse of people which they attracted at their celebration, contributed not a little to its immense opulence; and the prodigality of its merchants rendered the place so expensive, that it became a saying, ‘It is not for every one to go to Corinth.’ Even after its barbarous destruction by the Romans, it must have been an extremely magnificent city. Pausanias mentions in and near the city, a theater, an odeum, a stadium, and sixteen temples. That of Venus possessed above a thousand female slaves. ‘The women of Corinth are distinguished by their beauty; the men by their love of gain and pleasure. They ruin their health by convivial debauches, and love with them is only licentious passion. Venus is their principal deity.... The Corinthians, who performed such illustrious acts of valor in the Persian war, becoming enervated by pleasure, sunk under the yoke of the Argives; were obliged alternately to solicit the protection of the Lacedaemonians, the Athenians, and the Thebans; and are at length reduced to be only the wealthiest, the most effeminate, and the weakest state in Greece.’” (Anacharsis.) (Modern Traveler,pp.160, 161.)♦“Anarchasis” replaced with “Anacharsis”The Hebrew stranger, entering without despondency, this new scene of labor, passed on unnoticed, and looking about for those with whom he might be bold to communicate, on the score of national and religious sympathies, he found among those who like himself were strangers, a Jew, by name Aquilas, who with his wife Priscilla had lately arrived from Italy, whence they had just been driven by a vexatious decree of Claudius Caesar, which, on some groundless accusation, ordered all the Jews to depart from Rome. Aquilas, though lately a resident in Italy, was originally from Pontus in the northern part of Asia Minor, not very far from Paul’s native province; and this proximity of origin joined to another circumstance arising out of it, drew the strangers together, in this foreign city. In Pontus even at this day is carried on that same famous manufacture of camlet articles for which Cilicia was also distinguished and proverbial, and it is therefore perfectly reasonable to suppose that in that age also, this business was common in the same region, because the variety of goat which producesthe material, has always been confined within those limits. Being of the same trade, then, and both of them friendless strangers, seeking employment and support, Paul and Aquilas fell into one another’s company and acquaintance, and getting work at the same time, they seem to have set up a kind of partnership in their trade, living together, and working in the same way, from day to day. This, of course, gave constant opportunity for the freest communication on all subjects of conversation; and Aquila would not be long in finding out the great object, which had led Paul away from his country and friends, to a place where his necessities drove him to the laborious exercise of an occupation, which a person of his rank and character could not originally have acquired with any intention of gaining his livelihood thereby. That this was the sole motive of his present application to his tedious business, is abundantly testified in the epistles, which he afterwards wrote to this same place; for he expressly says, that he “was chargeable to no man,” but “labored with his own hands.” Yet the diligent pursuit of this laborious avocation, did not prevent him from appearing on the sabbath, in the synagogue, as a teacher of divine things; nor would the noble principles of Jewish education permit any man to despise the stranger on account of his necessitous and apparently humble circumstances. His weekly ministry was therefore pursued without hindrance, and with success; for “he persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.” Among those who received the most eminent advantage from his apostolic labors, was his fellow-workman Aquilas, who with his wife Priscilla, here imbibed such a portion of Christian knowledge, as ever after made both him and her, highly useful as teachers of the new faith, to which they were at this time converted. It would seem, however, that Paul did not, during the first part of his ministrations, very openly and energetically proclaim the grand doctrine of the faith; for it was not till after the arrival of Silas and Timothy from Macedonia, that he “pressed on in the word, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.” As had usually been the case, whenever he had proclaimed this solemn truth to his own countrymen, he was met by the Corinthian Jews, for the most part, with a most determined and scornful opposition; so that renouncing their fellowship in the expressive gesture of an Oriental,——shaking his raiment,——he declared——“Your blood be on your own heads:——I am clean. Henceforth, I will go to the Gentiles.” Leaving their company,he then went into the house of a religious friend, close to the synagogue, and there took up his abode. But not all the Jews were involved in the condemnation of this rejection. On the contrary, one of the most eminent men among them, Crispus, either then or formerly the ruling elder of the synagogue, professed the faith of Jesus, notwithstanding its unpopularity. Along with him his whole family were baptized, and many other Corinthians received the word in the same manner. In addition to these nobly encouraging results of his devoted labors, his ardor in the cause of Jesus received a new impulse from a remarkable dream, in which the Lord appeared to him, uttering these words of high consolation,——“Fear not, but speak, and hold not thy peace; for I am with thee, and no one shall hurt thee. I have many people in this city.” Under the combined influence of both natural and supernatural encouragements, he therefore remained zealously laboring in Corinth, and made that city his residence, as Luke very particularly records, for a year and six months.“xviii.5.συνείχετο τῳ λόγω,&c.The common reading isπνεύματι. Now sinceσυννέχεσθαι, among other significations, denotesangi,maerore corripi, (see Luke♦xii.50, and the note on Matthew ♦iv.24,) many Commentators, as Hammond, Mill, and Wolf, explain, “angebatur Paulus animo, dum docebat Judaeos, Jesum esse Messiam;”viz.“since he could produce no effect among them.” And they compare verse 6. But this interpretation is at variance with the context.♦“12” replaced with “xii” and“4” replaced with “iv” for consistency“Now this verb also signifies toincite,urge; as in 2 Corinthiansv.14. Hence Beza, Pricaeus, and others, explain: ‘intus et apud se aestuebat prae zeli ardore;’ which interpretation I should admit, if there were not reason to suppose, from the authority ofMSS.and Versions, that the true reading, (though the more difficult one,) isλύγῳ, of which the best interpretation, and that most suitable to the context, is the one found in the Vulgate ‘instabat verbo.’ Forσυνέχεσθαιdenotes also to beheld, occupied byanything; as in Sappho 17, 20. Herodotus 1, 17, 22. Aelian, Varia Historia, 14, 22. This♦signification of the word being admitted, the sense will be: ‘When they had approached whom Paul (who knew thatcombinedstrength is most efficacious) had expected as his assistants in promulgating the Christian doctrine, and of whom, in so large and populous a city there was need,thenheapplied himself closelyto the work of teaching.’ Kuinoel. (Bloomfield’s Annotations,p.593.)♦“significaiion” replaced with “signification”HIS EPISTLES WRITTEN FROM CORINTH.The period of his residence in this city is made highly interesting and important in the history of the sacred canon, by the circumstance that here he wrote some of the first of those epistles to his various missionary charges, which constitute the most controverted and the most doctrinal portion of the New Testament. In treating of these writings, in the course of the narrative of his life, the very contracted limits now left to his biographer, will make it necessary to be much more brief in his literary history, than in that of those other apostles, whose writings have claimed and received so full a statement, under their respectivelives. Nor is there so much occasion for the labors of the apostolic historian on this part of the history of the apostolic works, as on those already so fully treated; for while the history of the writings of Peter, John, Matthew, James and Jude, has so seldom been presented to the eyes of common readers, the writings of Paul, which have always been the great storehouse of Protestant dogmatism, have been discussed and amplified in their history, scope, character, and style, more fully than all the rest of the Bible, for common readers; but in the great majority of instances, proving such a comment on the sadly prophetical words of Peter on these very writings, that the apostolic historian may well and wisely dread to immerse himself in such a sea of difficulties as presents itself to view; and he therefore cautiously avoids any intermeddling with discussions which will possibly involve him in the condemnation pronounced by the great apostolic chief, on those “unlearned and unstable,” who even in his time had begun to “wrest to their own destruction, the things hard to be understood in the epistles of his beloved brother Paul;” a sentence which seems to have been wholly overlooked by the great herd of dogmatizing commentators, who, very often, without either the “learning” or the “stability,” which Peter thought requisite for the safe interpretation of the Pauline epistles, have rushed on to the task of vulgarizing these noble and honest writings, to suit the base purposes of some popular system of mystical words and complex doctrines. If then, the “unlearned and unstable” have been thus distinctly warned by the highest apostolic authority, against meddling with these obscure and peculiar writings; and since the whole history of didactic theology is so full of melancholy comments on the undesignedly prophetical force of Peter’s denunciation,——it is no more than prudent to decline the slightest interference with a subject, which has been on such authority declared to require the possession of so high a degree of learning and stability, for its safe and just treatment. The few things which may be safely stated, will merely concern the place, time and immediate occasion of the writing of each of these epistles.In the first place, as to theorderin which these works of Paul are arranged in the common New Testament canon, it should be observed that it has reference neither to date, subject, nor anything whatever in their character or object, except the very arbitrary circumstance of therankandimportanceof the places and persons that were the original objects of their composition. Theepistle to the Romans is always placed first, because the imperial city to which it was directed was beyond all question the greatest in the world. The epistles to the Corinthians are next, because that city was the nearest in rank and importance to Rome, of all those which were the objects of Paul’s epistolary attentions. The epistle to the Galatians is next, because it was directed to a great province, inferior indeed in importance, to the two great cities before mentioned, but vastly above any of the other places to which Paul wrote. The epistle to the Ephesians comes next, because Ephesus ranked far above any of the cities which follow. Philippi wassupposed, by those who arranged the canon, greater than Colosse and Thessalonica, because it was thought to have been a capital city. Thus all those epistles which are addressed to whole churches, are placed first; and those which are addressed to individuals in the same manner, form a class by themselves; that to Timothy being placed first of these, because he was the most eminent of all the apostle’s assistants,——Titus being inferior to him in dignity, and Philemon, a person of no account at all, except from the bare circumstance, that he was accidentally the subject of Paul’s notice. The epistle to the Hebrews is last of all, because it is altogether peculiar in its character, addressed neither to churches, nor to an individual, but to a whole nation, being published and circulated for their general benefit. The circumstance also that it was long denied a place in the canon, and considered as a spurious writing, improperly attributed to Paul, probably caused it to be put last of all his writings, when in the course of time, it was at length allowed a place in the canon.FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS.That epistle which the great majority of all modern critics consider as the earliest of all those writings of Paul that are now preserved, is the first to the Thessalonians. It is directed to them from Paul, Silvanus, (or Silas,) and Timothy, which shows that it was written after Paul had been joined by these two brethren, which was not until some time after his arrival in Corinth. It appears by the second and third chapters, that the apostle, having been hindered by some evil agency of the wicked, from visiting Thessalonica, as he had earnestly desired to do, had been obliged to content himself with sending Timothy to the brethren there, to comfort them in their faith, and to inquire whether they yet stood fast in their first honorable profession; forhe declares himself to have been anxious to know whether by some means the tempter might not have tempted them, and his labor have thus been in vain. But he now informs them how he has lately been greatly comforted by the good news brought from them by Timothy, who had assured the apostle of their faith and love, and that they had great remembrance of him always, desiring much to see him, as he them. Making known to them the great joy which these tidings had caused in him, he now affectionately re-assures them of his high and constant regard for them, and of his continued remembrance of them in his prayers. He then proceeds briefly to exhort them to a perseverance in the Christian course, in which they had made so fair an outset, urging upon them more especially, those virtues which were peculiarly rare among those with whom they were daily brought in contact,——purity of life, rigid honesty in business transactions, a charitable regard for the feelings of others, a quiet, peaceable, inoffensive deportment, and other minuter counsels, according to the peculiar circumstances of different persons among them. The greater portion of this brief letter, indeed, is taken up with these plain, practical matters, with no reference to any deep doctrinal subjects, the whole being thus evidently well-suited to the condition of believers who had but just begun the Christian course, and had been in no way prepared to appreciate any learned discussion of those obscure points which in later periods were the subject of so much controversy among some of Paul’s converts. Their dangers hitherto had also been mainly in the moral rather than in the doctrinal way, and the only error of mere belief, to which he makes reference, is one which has always been the occasion of a great deal of harmless folly among the ignorant and the weak minded in the Christian churches, from the apostolic age to this day. The evil however, was considered by the apostle of so much importance, that he thought it worth while to briefly expose its folly to the Thessalonians, and he accordingly discourses to them of the day of judgment, assuring them that those who might happen to be alive at the moment of Christ’s coming, would derive no peculiar advantage from that circumstance, because those who had died in Christ should rise first, and the survivors be then caught up to meet the Lord in the air. But as for “the times and the seasons,”——those endless themes for the discursive nonsense of the visionary, even to the present day and hour,——he assures them that there was no need at all that he shouldwrite to them, because they already well knew that the day of the Lord should come as a thief in the night, according to the words of Jesus himself. The only practical benefit which they could expect to derive then, from this part of their faith, was the conviction of the necessity of constantly bearing in mind the shortness and uncertainty of their earthly stay, and the importance of watchfulness and sobriety. After several sententious moral exhortations, he concludes with affectionate salutations, and with an earnest, solemn charge, that the letter should be read to all the brethren of the church.It will be observed, that at the conclusion of the epistle is a statement that it was written fromAthens,——an assertion perfectly absurd, and rendered evidently so by the statements contained in the epistle itself, as above shown. All the similar statements appended to his other epistles are equally unauthorized, and most of them equally false;——being written by some exceedingly foolish copyists, who were too stupid to understand the words which they transcribed. Yet these idle falsehoods are gravely given in all copies of the English translation, and are thus continually sent abroad to mislead common readers, many of whom, seeing them thus attached to the apostolic writings, suppose them to be also of inspired authority, and are deceived accordingly. And they probably will continue to be thus copied, in spite of their palpable and mischievous falsehood, until such a revolution in the moral sense of common people takes place, that they shall esteem a new negative truth more valuable and interesting, than an old, groundless blunder.For some time after the writing of the first epistle to the Thessalonians, with these triumphs and other encouragements, Paul and his faithful helpers appear to have gone on steadily in their apostolic labors, with no special obstacle or difficulty, that is commemorated in the sacred record. But at last their old difficulties began to manifest themselves in the gradually awakened enmity of the Jews, who, though at his first distinct public ministrations they had expressed a decided and scornful opposition to the doctrine of a crucified Savior, yet suffered the new teachers to go on, without opposing them any farther than by scornful verbal hostility, blasphemy and abuse. But when they saw the despised heresy making such rapid advances, notwithstanding the contempt with which it was visited, they immediately determined to let it no longer take advantage of their inefficiency in resisting itsprogress. Of course, deprived themselves, of all political power, they had not the means of meeting the evil by physical violence, and they well knew that any attempt on their part to raise an illegal commotion against the strangers, would only bring down on the exciters of the disturbance, the whole vengeance of their Roman rulers, who were unsparing in their vengeance on those that undertook to defy the forms of their laws, for the sake of persecution, or any private ends; and least of all would a class of people so peculiar and so disliked as the Jews, be allowed to take any such treasonable steps, without insuring them a most dreadful punishment. These circumstances therefore compelled them to proceed, as usual, under the forms of law; and their first step against Paul therefore, was to apprehend him, and take him, as a violator of religious order, before the highest Roman tribunal,——that of the proconsul.The proconsul of Achaia, holding his supreme seat of justice in Corinth, the capital of that Roman province, was Lucius JuniusGallio, a man well known to the readers of one of the classic Latin writers of that age,——Seneca,——as one of the most remarkable exemplifications of those noble virtues which were the great theme of this philosopher’s pen. Out of many beautiful illustrations which may be drawn from Roman and Jewish writers, to explain and amplify the honest and faithful apostolic history of Luke, there is none more striking and gratifying than the aid here drawn from this fine philosophical classic, on the character of the noble proconsul, who by his upright, wise, and clement decision, against the mean persecutors of Paul,——and by his indignant refusal to pervert and degrade his vice-regal power to the base ends of private abuse, has acquired the grateful regard and admiring respect of all Christian readers of apostolic history. The name of Lucius Junius Gallio, by which he is known to Roman writers as well as in apostolic history, was not his original family designation, and therefore gives the reader no idea of his interesting relationship to one of the finest moralists of the whole period of the Roman empire. His original family name was Marcus Annaeus Novatus Seneca,——which appellation he exchanged for his later one, on being adopted by Lucius Junius Gallio, a noble Roman, who being destitute of children, adopted, according to a very common custom of the imperial city, one of a family that had already given promise of a fine reward to those who should take its offspring as theirs. The famous philosopher before mentioned,——LuciusAnnaeus Seneca,——was his own brother; both of them being the sons of Marcus Annaeus Seneca, a distinguished orator and rhetorician of the Augustan age. A strong and truly fraternal affection always continued to hold the two brothers together, even after they had been separated in name by the adoption of the older into the family of Gallio; and the philosopher often commemorates his noble brother, in terms of high respect; and dedicated to him one of the most perfect of those moral treatises which have immortalized the name of Seneca.The philosopher Seneca, after having been for many years banished from Rome by Claudius, was at length recalled by that emperor in the ninth year of his reign, corresponding to A. D. 49. He was immediately made a senator, and was still further honored by being intrusted with the education of Domitius, the son of Agrippina, afterwards adopted by Claudius as heir to the throne, to which he succeeded on the emperor’s death, under the name ofNero, by which he has now become so infamous wherever the Roman name is known. Being thus elevated to authority and great influence with the emperor, Seneca made use of his power, to procure for his brother Gallio such official honors as his talents and character justly claimed. In the eleventh year of Claudius he was made consul, as is recorded in the Fasti Consulares; and was soon after sent into Greece, as proconsul of Achaia. Arriving at Corinth in the year 53, he was immediately addressed by the Jewish citizens of that place in behalf of their plot against Paul; for they naturally supposed that this would be the best time for the attempt to bend the new governor to their purposes, when he was just commencing his administration, and would be anxious to please the subjects of his power by his opening acts. But Gallio had no disposition to acquire popularity with any class of citizens, by any such abuse of power, and by his conduct on this occasion very fairly justifies the high character given him by his brother Seneca. When the Jews came dragging Paul before the proconsular tribunal, with the accusation——“This fellow persuades men to worship God in a manner contrary to the ritual,”——before Paul could open his mouth in reply, Gallio carelessly answered——“If it were a matter of crime or misdemeanor, ye Jews! it would be reasonable that I should bear with you; but if it be a question of words and names, and of your ritual, look ye to it; for I do not wish to be a judge of those things.” With this contemptuous reply, he cleared the court of them. The Jews thusfound their fine scheme of abusing Paul under the sanction of the Roman tribunal, perfectly frustrated; nor was their calamity confined to this disappointment; for all the Greeks who were present at the trial,——indignant at the scandalous character of the proceeding,——took Sosthenes, the ruling elder of the synagogue, who had probably been most active in the persecution of Paul, as he was the regular legal chief of the Jews, and gave him a sound threshing in the court, before he could obey the orders of the Proconsul, and move off from the tribunal. Gallio was so far from being displeased at this very irregular and improper outbreak of public feeling, that he took no notice of the action whatever, though it was a shameful violation of the dignity of his tribunal; and it may therefore be reasonably concluded that he was very much provoked against the Jews, and was disposed to sympathize with Paul; otherwise he would have been apt to have punished the outrage of the Greeks upon Sosthenes.“The name of this proconsul was Marcus Annaeus Novatus, but being adopted by Lucius Junius Gallio, he took the name of his adopted father; he was brother to the famous Seneca, tutor to Nero. That philosopher dedicated to Gallio his book, ‘De Vita Beata.’ The Roman historians concur in giving him the character of a sweet disposition, an enemy to all vice, and particularly a hater of flattery. He was twice made proconsul of Achaia, first by Claudius, and afterwards by Nero. As he was the sharer of his brother’s prosperity, so he was of his misfortunes, when he fell under Nero’s displeasure, and was at length put to death by the tyrant, as well as his brother.” (Calmet’s Commentary. Poole’s Annotations. Williams on Pearson.)“In Actsxviii.12–16, we find Paul is brought before Gallio by the Jews, but this proconsul refused to judge any such matters, as not coming within his jurisdiction. The character for justice, impartiality, prudence, and mildness of disposition, which this passage gives to Gallio, is confirmed by Seneca, his brother, in these words:——Solebam tibi dicere, Gallionem fratrem meum (quem nemo non parum amat, etiam qui amare plus non potest,) alia vitia non nosse, hoc etiam, (i. e. adulationem,) odisse.——Nemo enim mortalium uni tam dulcis est, quam hic omnibus. Hoc quoque loco blanditiis tuis restitit, ut exclamares invenisse te inexpugnabilem virum adversus insidias, quas nemo non in sinum recipit.(Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Natural Questions,lib. iv.in preface, op.tom. iv.p.267, edited by Bipont.) In our translation Gallio is styled thedeputy, but the real Greek word isΑνθυπατευοντος,proconsul. The accuracy of Luke in this instance is very remarkable. In the partition of the provinces of the Roman empire, Macedonia and Achaia were assigned to the people and Senate of Rome. In the reign of Tiberius they were, at their own request, made over to the emperor. In the reign of Claudius, (A. U. C. 797. A. D. 44,) they were again restored to the Senate, after which time proconsuls were sent into this country. Nero afterwards made the Achaians a free people. The Senate therefore lost this province again. However, that they might not be sufferers, the emperor gave them the island of Sardinia, in the room of it. Vespasian made Achaia a province again. There is likewise a peculiar propriety in the name of the province of which Gallio was proconsul. The country subject to him was all Greece; but the proper name of the province among the Romans was Achaia, as appears from various passages of the Roman historians, and especially from the testimony of Pausanias.Καλουσι δε ουχ’ Ἑλλαδος, αλλα’♦Αχαιας ἡγεμονα οἱ Ῥωμαιοι διοτι εχειρωσαντο Ἑλληνας δε Αχαιων, τοτε του Ἑλληνικου προεστηκοτων.(Pausanias Description of Greece.lib. vii.p.563. Lardner’s Works, 4to.vol. I.p.19.)
The Areopagus, or Mars Hill; with the Temple of Theseus, Athens.Actsxvii.22.
The Areopagus, or Mars Hill; with the Temple of Theseus, Athens.Actsxvii.22.
The Areopagus, or Mars Hill; with the Temple of Theseus, Athens.Actsxvii.22.
“That Athenswaswholly enslaved to idolatry, has been abundantly proved by our philological illustrators, especially the indefatigable Wetstein, from Pausanias Attic. 1, 24: Strabo10.p.472, c: Lucian,t. 1.Prometheusp.180: Livy 45, 27. So also Pausanias in Attic. c. 18, 24. (cited by Pearce and Doddridge,) who tells us, that Athens had more images than all the rest of Greece; and Petronius Satyriconc. 17, who humorously says, ‘It was easier to find a god than a man there.’” (Bloomfield Annotations.)
“καὶ ἐν τῆ ἀγορᾶ.Of themarket-placesat Athens, of which there were many, the most celebrated were the Old and the New Forum. The former was in the Ceramicus, a very ample space, part within, and part without the city. See Meursius,dissertatione de Ceramico Gemino,§46. and Potter’s Archaeology 1, 8.p.30. The latter was outside of the Ceramicus, in a place called Eretria. See Meursius, Ath. Attic.l. 1.c. 6.And this seems to be the one here meant. For no forum, except the Ceramicus and the Eretriacum, was called, absolutely,ἄγορα, but had a name to denotewhichwas meant, as Areopagiticum, Hippodamium, Piraeum,&c.In process of time, and at the period when Paul was at Athens, the forum was transferred from the Ceramicus into the Eretria; a change which, indeed, had been introduced in the time of Augustus; and that this was the most frequented part of the city, we learn from Strabo10.p.447. Besides, the Eretriac forum was situated before theστοὰ, or portico, in which the Stoics, of whom mention is just after made, used to hold their public discourses. It was moreover calledκύκλος, from its round form.”
“Ἄρειον πάγον,Mars’ Hill.Πάγοςsignifies properly ahigh situation.Thiswas a hill opposite to that of the citadel on the west; as we learn from Herodias 8, 52. [See the passages produced supra, to which I add Livy 26, 44.Tumulum quem Mercurii vocant.Editor.] It was so called, either because it had been consecrated to Mars (as the Campus Martius at Rome,) or because (as♦Pausanias relates, Att. C. 28,) Mars, when he had slain Halyrrothius, son of Neptune, was the first who there pleaded a capital cause, which took place before the twelve gods. The judges used to sit by night, andsub dio; and whatever was done was keptvery secret. [whence the proverbἈρεοπαγίτου σιωπηλότερος, to which may be compared ours, ‘as grave as a Judge.’ Editor.] They gave their judgment, notviva voce, but in writing. Nor were any admitted into the number of Areopagists but persons of noble birth, of unspotted morality, and eminent for justice and equity. See more in Meursius de Areopago.” (Kuinoel.) (Bloomfield Annotations.)
♦“Pausanius” replaced with “Pausanias”
♦“Pausanius” replaced with “Pausanias”
♦“Pausanius” replaced with “Pausanias”
Paul taking his stand there, in that splendid scene, uttered in a bold tone and in his noblest style, the great truths which he was divinely consecrated to reveal. Never yet had Athens, in her most glorious state, heard a discourse which, for solemn beauty and lofty eloquence, could equal this brief declaration of the providence of God in the religion of his creatures. Never did the world see an orator in a sublimer scene, or in one that could awaken higher emotions in those who heard, or him who spoke. He stood on the hill of Mars, with Athens beneath and around him, and the mighty Acropolis rising with its “tiara of proud towers,” walls and temples, on the west,——bounding and crowning the view in that direction;——to the north-east lay the forum, the late scene of his discussions, and beyond lay the philosophic Academia, around and through which rolled the flowery Cephisus. Before him sat the most august and ancient court in the Grecian world, waiting for the revelation of his solemn commission respecting the new deities which he was expected to propose as an addition to their polytheistic list;——around him were the sages of the Athenian schools, listening in grave but curious attention, for the new thingswhich the eastern stranger had brought to their ears. The apostle raised his eyes to all the monuments of Athenian devotion which met the view on every side. Before him on the high Acropolis was the mighty temple of the Athenian Minerva; on the plain beyond was the splendid shrine of the Olympian Jove; on his right was the temple of Theseus, the deified ancient king of Attica, who laid the first foundation of her glories; and near were the new piles which the later Grecian adulation had consecrated to the worship of her foreign conquerors——to the deified Caesars. Beginning in that tone of dignified politeness, which always characterized his address towards the great ones of earth, he won their hearts and their attention by a courteously complimentary allusion to the devout though misguided zeal, whose solid tokens everywhere surrounded him. “Ye men of Athens! I see in all places that you areVERY RELIGIOUS. For passing along and gazing at the shrines of your devotion, I found an altar on which was written,——‘To the unknown God;’——Him therefore, whom, not knowing, you worship, I preach to you.” The rest of this splendid, though brief discourse, need not be repeated, because it is given with tolerable fidelity in the common English translation; but it deserves notice how readily and completely, on all occasions, Paul accommodated himself to the circumstances of his hearers. His style on this occasion is remarkably protracted and rounded in its periods, highly cumulative in structure, and harmonious in its almost rhythmical flow;——the whole bearing the character which was best suited to the fancy and fashion of the Athenians,——though still very decidedly marked by the peculiarities of his eastern origin. Here too, he gave them a favorable impression of his knowledge of the Grecian classics, by his apt and happy quotation from Aratus, the philosophical poet of his native province, Cilicia. “For we also are his offspring.”
Paul taking his stand there, in that splendid scene, uttered in a bold tone and in his noblest style, the great truths which he was divinely consecrated to reveal. Never yet had Athens, in her most glorious state, heard a discourse which, for solemn beauty and lofty eloquence, could equal this brief declaration of the providence of God in the religion of his creatures. Never did the world see an orator in a sublimer scene, or in one that could awaken higher emotions in those who heard, or him who spoke. He stood on the hill of Mars, with Athens beneath and around him, and the mighty Acropolis rising with its “tiara of proud towers,” walls and temples, on the west,——bounding and crowning the view in that direction;——to the north-east lay the forum, the late scene of his discussions, and beyond lay the philosophic Academia, around and through which rolled the flowery Cephisus. Before him sat the most august and ancient court in the Grecian world, waiting for the revelation of his solemn commission respecting the new deities which he was expected to propose as an addition to their polytheistic list;——around him were the sages of the Athenian schools, listening in grave but curious attention, for the new thingswhich the eastern stranger had brought to their ears. The apostle raised his eyes to all the monuments of Athenian devotion which met the view on every side. Before him on the high Acropolis was the mighty temple of the Athenian Minerva; on the plain beyond was the splendid shrine of the Olympian Jove; on his right was the temple of Theseus, the deified ancient king of Attica, who laid the first foundation of her glories; and near were the new piles which the later Grecian adulation had consecrated to the worship of her foreign conquerors——to the deified Caesars. Beginning in that tone of dignified politeness, which always characterized his address towards the great ones of earth, he won their hearts and their attention by a courteously complimentary allusion to the devout though misguided zeal, whose solid tokens everywhere surrounded him. “Ye men of Athens! I see in all places that you areVERY RELIGIOUS. For passing along and gazing at the shrines of your devotion, I found an altar on which was written,——‘To the unknown God;’——Him therefore, whom, not knowing, you worship, I preach to you.” The rest of this splendid, though brief discourse, need not be repeated, because it is given with tolerable fidelity in the common English translation; but it deserves notice how readily and completely, on all occasions, Paul accommodated himself to the circumstances of his hearers. His style on this occasion is remarkably protracted and rounded in its periods, highly cumulative in structure, and harmonious in its almost rhythmical flow;——the whole bearing the character which was best suited to the fancy and fashion of the Athenians,——though still very decidedly marked by the peculiarities of his eastern origin. Here too, he gave them a favorable impression of his knowledge of the Grecian classics, by his apt and happy quotation from Aratus, the philosophical poet of his native province, Cilicia. “For we also are his offspring.”
Very religious.——This is unquestionably the just meaning ofxvii.22. See Bloomfield and all the standard commentators. “Too superstitions” is insulting.
“‘To the Unknown God.’ (xvii.23.)——It is very evident from the testimony of Laertius, that the Athenians had altars in their public places, inscribed to unknown gods or demons. He informs us, that when Athens was visited with a great plague, the inhabitants invited Epimenides the philosopher, to lustrate their city. The method adopted by him was to carry several sheep to the Areopagus; whence they were left to wander as they pleased, under the observation of persons sent to attend them. As each sheep lay down, it was sacrificed on the spot to thepropitious god; (In vita Epimenideslib. xi.) and as the Athenians were ignorant of what god was propitious, they erected an altar with this inscription,♦ΘΕΟΙΣ ΑΣΙΑΣ, ΚΑΙ ΕΥΡΩΠΗΣ, ΚΑΙ ΛΙΒΗΥΣ, ΘΕΩ ΑΓΝΩΣΤΩ ΚΑΙ ΞΕΝΩ:——To the gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa, to the strange and unknown god.
♦“AΙΒΗΥΣ” replaced with “ΛΙΒΗΥΣ” and“KΛI” replaced with “ΚΑΙ”
♦“AΙΒΗΥΣ” replaced with “ΛΙΒΗΥΣ” and“KΛI” replaced with “ΚΑΙ”
♦“AΙΒΗΥΣ” replaced with “ΛΙΒΗΥΣ” and“KΛI” replaced with “ΚΑΙ”
“On the architrave of a Doric portico at Athens, which was standing when that city was visited about sixty years since, byDr.Chandler andMr.Stuart, is a Greek inscriptionto the following purport:——‘The people’ [of Athens have erected this fabric] ‘with the donations to Minerva Archegetia,’ [or the conductress,] ‘by the god Caius Julius Caesar and his son the god Augustus, when Nicias was Archon.’ Over the middle of the pediment was a statue of Lucius Caesar, with this inscription:——‘The people’ [honor] ‘Lucius Caesar, the son of the Emperor Augustus Caesar, the son of the god.’ There was also a statue to Julia, the daughter to Augustus, and the mother of Lucius, thus inscribed:——‘The Senate of the Areopagus, and the Senate of the Six Hundred’ [dedicate this statue to] ‘the goddess Julia, Augusta, Provident.’ These public memorials supply an additional proof of the correctness of Paul’s observations on the Athenians, that they were too much addicted to the adoption of objects for worship and devotion.” (Hammond’s Annotations of Cave’s Lives of the Apostles, Horne’s Introduction.)
As he concluded however, with the solemn declaration of the great foundation-truth of Christianity,——that God had raised Jesus from the dead,——there was a very general burst of contempt from the more scornful portion of his audience, at the idea of anything so utterly against all human probability. Of the immortality of the soul, the divinest of their own philosophers had reasoned,——and it was by most of the Athenian sects, considered on the whole, tolerably well established; but the notion of the actual revivification of the perished body,——the recall of the scattered dust and ashes, to the same breathing, moving, acting, thinking form, which for ages had ceased to be,——all amounted to a degree of improbable absurdity,——that not the wildest Grecian speculator had ever dreamed of. So the proud Epicureans and Stoics turned sneeringly away from the barbarian stranger who had come so far to try their credulity with such a tale; and thus they for ever lost the opportunity to learn from this new-opened fountain of truth, a wisdom that the long researches of all the Athenian schools had never reached and could never reach, without the light of this truly divine eastern source, which they now so thoughtlessly scorned. But there were some, more considerate, among the hearers of the apostle, who had learned that it is the most decided characteristic of a true philosopher, to reject nothing at first sight or hearing, though it may happen to be contrary to his own personal experience and learning; and these, weighing the matter with respectful doubt, told Paul——“We will hear thee again about this.” Without any further attempt to unfold the truth at that time, Paul departed from the Areopagus, and no more uplifted his voice on the high places of Athens, in testimony of that solemn revelation of the Son of Man from the dead,——the conviction of whose truth, in spite of all philosophic sneers, was destined to oversweep the whole of that world which they knew, and a new one beyond it, and to exalt the name of that despised wanderer toa fame compared with which that of Socrates should be small. Paul was however afterwards visited by several of those who heard him before the Areopagus; and after a free, conversational discussion of the whole subject, and a more familiar exhibition of the evidences of his remarkable assertions, professed their satisfaction with the arguments, and believed. Among these, even one of the judges of the august Areopagus owned himself a disciple of Jesus. Besides him is mentioned a woman named Damaris; and others not specified, are said to have believed.
As he concluded however, with the solemn declaration of the great foundation-truth of Christianity,——that God had raised Jesus from the dead,——there was a very general burst of contempt from the more scornful portion of his audience, at the idea of anything so utterly against all human probability. Of the immortality of the soul, the divinest of their own philosophers had reasoned,——and it was by most of the Athenian sects, considered on the whole, tolerably well established; but the notion of the actual revivification of the perished body,——the recall of the scattered dust and ashes, to the same breathing, moving, acting, thinking form, which for ages had ceased to be,——all amounted to a degree of improbable absurdity,——that not the wildest Grecian speculator had ever dreamed of. So the proud Epicureans and Stoics turned sneeringly away from the barbarian stranger who had come so far to try their credulity with such a tale; and thus they for ever lost the opportunity to learn from this new-opened fountain of truth, a wisdom that the long researches of all the Athenian schools had never reached and could never reach, without the light of this truly divine eastern source, which they now so thoughtlessly scorned. But there were some, more considerate, among the hearers of the apostle, who had learned that it is the most decided characteristic of a true philosopher, to reject nothing at first sight or hearing, though it may happen to be contrary to his own personal experience and learning; and these, weighing the matter with respectful doubt, told Paul——“We will hear thee again about this.” Without any further attempt to unfold the truth at that time, Paul departed from the Areopagus, and no more uplifted his voice on the high places of Athens, in testimony of that solemn revelation of the Son of Man from the dead,——the conviction of whose truth, in spite of all philosophic sneers, was destined to oversweep the whole of that world which they knew, and a new one beyond it, and to exalt the name of that despised wanderer toa fame compared with which that of Socrates should be small. Paul was however afterwards visited by several of those who heard him before the Areopagus; and after a free, conversational discussion of the whole subject, and a more familiar exhibition of the evidences of his remarkable assertions, professed their satisfaction with the arguments, and believed. Among these, even one of the judges of the august Areopagus owned himself a disciple of Jesus. Besides him is mentioned a woman named Damaris; and others not specified, are said to have believed.
“‘Dionysius the Areopagite.’ Actsxvii.34.——Dionysius is said to have been bred at Athens in all the arts and sciences: at the age of twenty-five he went into Egypt to learn astronomy. At the time of our Savior’s death he was at Heliopolis, where, observing the darkness that attended the passion, he cried out thus:——‘That certainly, at that time, either God himself suffered, or was much concerned for somebody that did.’ Returning to Athens he became one of the senators of the Areopagus; he was converted bySt.Paul, and by him appointed bishop of Athens. Having labored and suffered much for the holy cause, he became a martyr to the faith, being burnt to death at Athens, in the93dyear of Christ.” (Cave’s Lives of the Apostles. Stanhope on Epistles and Gospels. Calmet’s Dictionary.)
From the grave manner in which this story is told, the reader would naturally suppose that these great writers had some authority for these incidents; but in reality, everything that concerns Dionysius the Areopagite, is utterly unknown; and not one of these impudent inventions can be traced back further than the sixth century.
After this tolerably hopeful beginning of the gospel in Athens, Paul left that city, and went southwestward to Corinth, then the most splendid and flourishing city of all Greece, and the capital of the Roman province of Achaia. It was famous, beyond all the cities of the world, for its luxury and refinement,——and the name of “Corinthian” had, long before the time of Paul, gone forth as a proverbial expression for what was splendid in art, brilliant in invention, and elegant in vice.Here first arose that sumptuous order of architecture that still perpetuates the proverbial elegance of the splendid city of its birth, and the gorgeously beautiful style of the rich Corinthian column, “waving its wanton wreath,”——may be taken as an aptly expressive emblem of the general moral and internal, as well as external characteristics of this last home of true Grecian art. Here longest tarried the taste, art and refinement, which so eminently marked the first glories of Greece, and when the triumphs of that ancient excellence were beginning to grow dim in its brighter early seats in Attica and in Ionian Asia, they flashed out with a most dazzling beauty in the splendid city of the Isthmus,——but alas!——in a splendor that was indeed only a passing flash,——a last brilliant gleam from this glorious spot, before the lamp of Hellenic glory in art, went out forever. In the day ofthe apostle’s visit however, it was in its most “high and palmy state,”——the queen of the Grecian world. It was glorious too, in the dearest recollections of the patriotic history of Greece; for here was the center of that last brilliant Achaian confederacy, which was cherished by the noble spirits of Aratus and Philopoemen; and here too was made the last stand against the all-crushing advance of the legions of Rome: and when it fell at last before that resistless conquering movement,——“great was the fall of it.” The burning of Corinth by Mummius, (B. C. 144, the year of the fall of Carthage,) is infamous above all the most barbarous acts of Roman conquest, for its melancholy destruction of the works of ancient art, with which it then abounded. But from the ashes of this mournful ruin, it rose soon after, under the splendid patronage of Roman dominion, to a new splendor, that equalled, or perhaps outwent the glories of its former perfection, which had been ripening from the day when, as recorded by old Homer, in the freshness of its early power, it sent forth its noble armaments to the siege of Troy, or set afloat the earliest warlike navy in the world, or was made, through a long course of centuries, the center of the most brilliant of Grecian festivals, in the celebration of the Isthmian games before its walls. The Roman conquerors, as if anxious to make to this ancient seat of Grecian splendor, a full atonement for the barbarous ruin with which they had overwhelmed it, now showered on it all the honors and favors in their power. It was rebuilt as a Roman colony,——endowed by the munificence of senates, consuls, and emperors, and made the capital of the Roman province of Achaia, until the dismemberment of the empire. Shining in its gaudy fetters, it became what it has been described to be in the apostolic age, and was then beyond all doubt the greatest Grecian city in Europe, if not in the world. Athens was then mouldering in more than incipient decay——“the ghost of its former self;” for even Cicero, long before this, describes it as presenting everywhere spectacles of the most lamentable ruin and decline; but Corinth was in the highth of its glory,——its luxury,——its vice,——its heathen wickedness,——and may therefore be justly esteemed the most important scene of labor into which apostolic enterprise had ever yet made its way, and to have been well worthy of the attention which it ever after received from him, to the very last of his life, being made the occasion and object of a larger and a more splendid portion of his epistolary labors, than all with which he ever favored any otherplace in the world; nor can this protracted notice of its condition and character be justly blamed for its intrusion on this hurried narrative.
After this tolerably hopeful beginning of the gospel in Athens, Paul left that city, and went southwestward to Corinth, then the most splendid and flourishing city of all Greece, and the capital of the Roman province of Achaia. It was famous, beyond all the cities of the world, for its luxury and refinement,——and the name of “Corinthian” had, long before the time of Paul, gone forth as a proverbial expression for what was splendid in art, brilliant in invention, and elegant in vice.
Here first arose that sumptuous order of architecture that still perpetuates the proverbial elegance of the splendid city of its birth, and the gorgeously beautiful style of the rich Corinthian column, “waving its wanton wreath,”——may be taken as an aptly expressive emblem of the general moral and internal, as well as external characteristics of this last home of true Grecian art. Here longest tarried the taste, art and refinement, which so eminently marked the first glories of Greece, and when the triumphs of that ancient excellence were beginning to grow dim in its brighter early seats in Attica and in Ionian Asia, they flashed out with a most dazzling beauty in the splendid city of the Isthmus,——but alas!——in a splendor that was indeed only a passing flash,——a last brilliant gleam from this glorious spot, before the lamp of Hellenic glory in art, went out forever. In the day ofthe apostle’s visit however, it was in its most “high and palmy state,”——the queen of the Grecian world. It was glorious too, in the dearest recollections of the patriotic history of Greece; for here was the center of that last brilliant Achaian confederacy, which was cherished by the noble spirits of Aratus and Philopoemen; and here too was made the last stand against the all-crushing advance of the legions of Rome: and when it fell at last before that resistless conquering movement,——“great was the fall of it.” The burning of Corinth by Mummius, (B. C. 144, the year of the fall of Carthage,) is infamous above all the most barbarous acts of Roman conquest, for its melancholy destruction of the works of ancient art, with which it then abounded. But from the ashes of this mournful ruin, it rose soon after, under the splendid patronage of Roman dominion, to a new splendor, that equalled, or perhaps outwent the glories of its former perfection, which had been ripening from the day when, as recorded by old Homer, in the freshness of its early power, it sent forth its noble armaments to the siege of Troy, or set afloat the earliest warlike navy in the world, or was made, through a long course of centuries, the center of the most brilliant of Grecian festivals, in the celebration of the Isthmian games before its walls. The Roman conquerors, as if anxious to make to this ancient seat of Grecian splendor, a full atonement for the barbarous ruin with which they had overwhelmed it, now showered on it all the honors and favors in their power. It was rebuilt as a Roman colony,——endowed by the munificence of senates, consuls, and emperors, and made the capital of the Roman province of Achaia, until the dismemberment of the empire. Shining in its gaudy fetters, it became what it has been described to be in the apostolic age, and was then beyond all doubt the greatest Grecian city in Europe, if not in the world. Athens was then mouldering in more than incipient decay——“the ghost of its former self;” for even Cicero, long before this, describes it as presenting everywhere spectacles of the most lamentable ruin and decline; but Corinth was in the highth of its glory,——its luxury,——its vice,——its heathen wickedness,——and may therefore be justly esteemed the most important scene of labor into which apostolic enterprise had ever yet made its way, and to have been well worthy of the attention which it ever after received from him, to the very last of his life, being made the occasion and object of a larger and a more splendid portion of his epistolary labors, than all with which he ever favored any otherplace in the world; nor can this protracted notice of its condition and character be justly blamed for its intrusion on this hurried narrative.
“Corinth.——There is scarcely any one of the seats of ancient magnificence and luxury, that calls up more vivid and powerful associations, than are awakened by the name of this once opulent and powerful city. Corinth, ‘the prow and stern of Greece,’ the emporium of its commerce, the key and bulwark of the Peloponnesus, was proverbial for its wealth as early as the time of Homer. Its situation was so advantageous for the inexperienced navigation of early times, that it became of necessity the center of trade. The first naval battle on record was fought between Corinth and its colony Corcyra, about 657 B. C. ‘Syracuse, the ornament of Sicily, Corcyra, some time sovran of the seas, Ambracia in Epirus, and several other cities more or less flourishing, owe their origin to Corinth.’ (Travels of♦Anacharsis,vol. III.c. 37.) Thucydides states, that the Corinthian ship-builders first produced galleys with three benches of oars. The circumnavigation of the peninsula was tedious and uncertain to a proverb; while at the Isthmus, not only their cargoes, but, if requisite, the smaller vessels might be transported from sea to sea. By its port of Cenchreae, it received the rich merchandise of Asia, and by that of Lechaeum, it maintained intercourse with Italy and Sicily. The Isthmian Games, by the concourse of people which they attracted at their celebration, contributed not a little to its immense opulence; and the prodigality of its merchants rendered the place so expensive, that it became a saying, ‘It is not for every one to go to Corinth.’ Even after its barbarous destruction by the Romans, it must have been an extremely magnificent city. Pausanias mentions in and near the city, a theater, an odeum, a stadium, and sixteen temples. That of Venus possessed above a thousand female slaves. ‘The women of Corinth are distinguished by their beauty; the men by their love of gain and pleasure. They ruin their health by convivial debauches, and love with them is only licentious passion. Venus is their principal deity.... The Corinthians, who performed such illustrious acts of valor in the Persian war, becoming enervated by pleasure, sunk under the yoke of the Argives; were obliged alternately to solicit the protection of the Lacedaemonians, the Athenians, and the Thebans; and are at length reduced to be only the wealthiest, the most effeminate, and the weakest state in Greece.’” (Anacharsis.) (Modern Traveler,pp.160, 161.)
♦“Anarchasis” replaced with “Anacharsis”
♦“Anarchasis” replaced with “Anacharsis”
♦“Anarchasis” replaced with “Anacharsis”
The Hebrew stranger, entering without despondency, this new scene of labor, passed on unnoticed, and looking about for those with whom he might be bold to communicate, on the score of national and religious sympathies, he found among those who like himself were strangers, a Jew, by name Aquilas, who with his wife Priscilla had lately arrived from Italy, whence they had just been driven by a vexatious decree of Claudius Caesar, which, on some groundless accusation, ordered all the Jews to depart from Rome. Aquilas, though lately a resident in Italy, was originally from Pontus in the northern part of Asia Minor, not very far from Paul’s native province; and this proximity of origin joined to another circumstance arising out of it, drew the strangers together, in this foreign city. In Pontus even at this day is carried on that same famous manufacture of camlet articles for which Cilicia was also distinguished and proverbial, and it is therefore perfectly reasonable to suppose that in that age also, this business was common in the same region, because the variety of goat which producesthe material, has always been confined within those limits. Being of the same trade, then, and both of them friendless strangers, seeking employment and support, Paul and Aquilas fell into one another’s company and acquaintance, and getting work at the same time, they seem to have set up a kind of partnership in their trade, living together, and working in the same way, from day to day. This, of course, gave constant opportunity for the freest communication on all subjects of conversation; and Aquila would not be long in finding out the great object, which had led Paul away from his country and friends, to a place where his necessities drove him to the laborious exercise of an occupation, which a person of his rank and character could not originally have acquired with any intention of gaining his livelihood thereby. That this was the sole motive of his present application to his tedious business, is abundantly testified in the epistles, which he afterwards wrote to this same place; for he expressly says, that he “was chargeable to no man,” but “labored with his own hands.” Yet the diligent pursuit of this laborious avocation, did not prevent him from appearing on the sabbath, in the synagogue, as a teacher of divine things; nor would the noble principles of Jewish education permit any man to despise the stranger on account of his necessitous and apparently humble circumstances. His weekly ministry was therefore pursued without hindrance, and with success; for “he persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.” Among those who received the most eminent advantage from his apostolic labors, was his fellow-workman Aquilas, who with his wife Priscilla, here imbibed such a portion of Christian knowledge, as ever after made both him and her, highly useful as teachers of the new faith, to which they were at this time converted. It would seem, however, that Paul did not, during the first part of his ministrations, very openly and energetically proclaim the grand doctrine of the faith; for it was not till after the arrival of Silas and Timothy from Macedonia, that he “pressed on in the word, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.” As had usually been the case, whenever he had proclaimed this solemn truth to his own countrymen, he was met by the Corinthian Jews, for the most part, with a most determined and scornful opposition; so that renouncing their fellowship in the expressive gesture of an Oriental,——shaking his raiment,——he declared——“Your blood be on your own heads:——I am clean. Henceforth, I will go to the Gentiles.” Leaving their company,he then went into the house of a religious friend, close to the synagogue, and there took up his abode. But not all the Jews were involved in the condemnation of this rejection. On the contrary, one of the most eminent men among them, Crispus, either then or formerly the ruling elder of the synagogue, professed the faith of Jesus, notwithstanding its unpopularity. Along with him his whole family were baptized, and many other Corinthians received the word in the same manner. In addition to these nobly encouraging results of his devoted labors, his ardor in the cause of Jesus received a new impulse from a remarkable dream, in which the Lord appeared to him, uttering these words of high consolation,——“Fear not, but speak, and hold not thy peace; for I am with thee, and no one shall hurt thee. I have many people in this city.” Under the combined influence of both natural and supernatural encouragements, he therefore remained zealously laboring in Corinth, and made that city his residence, as Luke very particularly records, for a year and six months.
The Hebrew stranger, entering without despondency, this new scene of labor, passed on unnoticed, and looking about for those with whom he might be bold to communicate, on the score of national and religious sympathies, he found among those who like himself were strangers, a Jew, by name Aquilas, who with his wife Priscilla had lately arrived from Italy, whence they had just been driven by a vexatious decree of Claudius Caesar, which, on some groundless accusation, ordered all the Jews to depart from Rome. Aquilas, though lately a resident in Italy, was originally from Pontus in the northern part of Asia Minor, not very far from Paul’s native province; and this proximity of origin joined to another circumstance arising out of it, drew the strangers together, in this foreign city. In Pontus even at this day is carried on that same famous manufacture of camlet articles for which Cilicia was also distinguished and proverbial, and it is therefore perfectly reasonable to suppose that in that age also, this business was common in the same region, because the variety of goat which producesthe material, has always been confined within those limits. Being of the same trade, then, and both of them friendless strangers, seeking employment and support, Paul and Aquilas fell into one another’s company and acquaintance, and getting work at the same time, they seem to have set up a kind of partnership in their trade, living together, and working in the same way, from day to day. This, of course, gave constant opportunity for the freest communication on all subjects of conversation; and Aquila would not be long in finding out the great object, which had led Paul away from his country and friends, to a place where his necessities drove him to the laborious exercise of an occupation, which a person of his rank and character could not originally have acquired with any intention of gaining his livelihood thereby. That this was the sole motive of his present application to his tedious business, is abundantly testified in the epistles, which he afterwards wrote to this same place; for he expressly says, that he “was chargeable to no man,” but “labored with his own hands.” Yet the diligent pursuit of this laborious avocation, did not prevent him from appearing on the sabbath, in the synagogue, as a teacher of divine things; nor would the noble principles of Jewish education permit any man to despise the stranger on account of his necessitous and apparently humble circumstances. His weekly ministry was therefore pursued without hindrance, and with success; for “he persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.” Among those who received the most eminent advantage from his apostolic labors, was his fellow-workman Aquilas, who with his wife Priscilla, here imbibed such a portion of Christian knowledge, as ever after made both him and her, highly useful as teachers of the new faith, to which they were at this time converted. It would seem, however, that Paul did not, during the first part of his ministrations, very openly and energetically proclaim the grand doctrine of the faith; for it was not till after the arrival of Silas and Timothy from Macedonia, that he “pressed on in the word, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.” As had usually been the case, whenever he had proclaimed this solemn truth to his own countrymen, he was met by the Corinthian Jews, for the most part, with a most determined and scornful opposition; so that renouncing their fellowship in the expressive gesture of an Oriental,——shaking his raiment,——he declared——“Your blood be on your own heads:——I am clean. Henceforth, I will go to the Gentiles.” Leaving their company,he then went into the house of a religious friend, close to the synagogue, and there took up his abode. But not all the Jews were involved in the condemnation of this rejection. On the contrary, one of the most eminent men among them, Crispus, either then or formerly the ruling elder of the synagogue, professed the faith of Jesus, notwithstanding its unpopularity. Along with him his whole family were baptized, and many other Corinthians received the word in the same manner. In addition to these nobly encouraging results of his devoted labors, his ardor in the cause of Jesus received a new impulse from a remarkable dream, in which the Lord appeared to him, uttering these words of high consolation,——“Fear not, but speak, and hold not thy peace; for I am with thee, and no one shall hurt thee. I have many people in this city.” Under the combined influence of both natural and supernatural encouragements, he therefore remained zealously laboring in Corinth, and made that city his residence, as Luke very particularly records, for a year and six months.
“xviii.5.συνείχετο τῳ λόγω,&c.The common reading isπνεύματι. Now sinceσυννέχεσθαι, among other significations, denotesangi,maerore corripi, (see Luke♦xii.50, and the note on Matthew ♦iv.24,) many Commentators, as Hammond, Mill, and Wolf, explain, “angebatur Paulus animo, dum docebat Judaeos, Jesum esse Messiam;”viz.“since he could produce no effect among them.” And they compare verse 6. But this interpretation is at variance with the context.
♦“12” replaced with “xii” and“4” replaced with “iv” for consistency
♦“12” replaced with “xii” and“4” replaced with “iv” for consistency
♦“12” replaced with “xii” and“4” replaced with “iv” for consistency
“Now this verb also signifies toincite,urge; as in 2 Corinthiansv.14. Hence Beza, Pricaeus, and others, explain: ‘intus et apud se aestuebat prae zeli ardore;’ which interpretation I should admit, if there were not reason to suppose, from the authority ofMSS.and Versions, that the true reading, (though the more difficult one,) isλύγῳ, of which the best interpretation, and that most suitable to the context, is the one found in the Vulgate ‘instabat verbo.’ Forσυνέχεσθαιdenotes also to beheld, occupied byanything; as in Sappho 17, 20. Herodotus 1, 17, 22. Aelian, Varia Historia, 14, 22. This♦signification of the word being admitted, the sense will be: ‘When they had approached whom Paul (who knew thatcombinedstrength is most efficacious) had expected as his assistants in promulgating the Christian doctrine, and of whom, in so large and populous a city there was need,thenheapplied himself closelyto the work of teaching.’ Kuinoel. (Bloomfield’s Annotations,p.593.)
♦“significaiion” replaced with “signification”
♦“significaiion” replaced with “signification”
♦“significaiion” replaced with “signification”
HIS EPISTLES WRITTEN FROM CORINTH.The period of his residence in this city is made highly interesting and important in the history of the sacred canon, by the circumstance that here he wrote some of the first of those epistles to his various missionary charges, which constitute the most controverted and the most doctrinal portion of the New Testament. In treating of these writings, in the course of the narrative of his life, the very contracted limits now left to his biographer, will make it necessary to be much more brief in his literary history, than in that of those other apostles, whose writings have claimed and received so full a statement, under their respectivelives. Nor is there so much occasion for the labors of the apostolic historian on this part of the history of the apostolic works, as on those already so fully treated; for while the history of the writings of Peter, John, Matthew, James and Jude, has so seldom been presented to the eyes of common readers, the writings of Paul, which have always been the great storehouse of Protestant dogmatism, have been discussed and amplified in their history, scope, character, and style, more fully than all the rest of the Bible, for common readers; but in the great majority of instances, proving such a comment on the sadly prophetical words of Peter on these very writings, that the apostolic historian may well and wisely dread to immerse himself in such a sea of difficulties as presents itself to view; and he therefore cautiously avoids any intermeddling with discussions which will possibly involve him in the condemnation pronounced by the great apostolic chief, on those “unlearned and unstable,” who even in his time had begun to “wrest to their own destruction, the things hard to be understood in the epistles of his beloved brother Paul;” a sentence which seems to have been wholly overlooked by the great herd of dogmatizing commentators, who, very often, without either the “learning” or the “stability,” which Peter thought requisite for the safe interpretation of the Pauline epistles, have rushed on to the task of vulgarizing these noble and honest writings, to suit the base purposes of some popular system of mystical words and complex doctrines. If then, the “unlearned and unstable” have been thus distinctly warned by the highest apostolic authority, against meddling with these obscure and peculiar writings; and since the whole history of didactic theology is so full of melancholy comments on the undesignedly prophetical force of Peter’s denunciation,——it is no more than prudent to decline the slightest interference with a subject, which has been on such authority declared to require the possession of so high a degree of learning and stability, for its safe and just treatment. The few things which may be safely stated, will merely concern the place, time and immediate occasion of the writing of each of these epistles.In the first place, as to theorderin which these works of Paul are arranged in the common New Testament canon, it should be observed that it has reference neither to date, subject, nor anything whatever in their character or object, except the very arbitrary circumstance of therankandimportanceof the places and persons that were the original objects of their composition. Theepistle to the Romans is always placed first, because the imperial city to which it was directed was beyond all question the greatest in the world. The epistles to the Corinthians are next, because that city was the nearest in rank and importance to Rome, of all those which were the objects of Paul’s epistolary attentions. The epistle to the Galatians is next, because it was directed to a great province, inferior indeed in importance, to the two great cities before mentioned, but vastly above any of the other places to which Paul wrote. The epistle to the Ephesians comes next, because Ephesus ranked far above any of the cities which follow. Philippi wassupposed, by those who arranged the canon, greater than Colosse and Thessalonica, because it was thought to have been a capital city. Thus all those epistles which are addressed to whole churches, are placed first; and those which are addressed to individuals in the same manner, form a class by themselves; that to Timothy being placed first of these, because he was the most eminent of all the apostle’s assistants,——Titus being inferior to him in dignity, and Philemon, a person of no account at all, except from the bare circumstance, that he was accidentally the subject of Paul’s notice. The epistle to the Hebrews is last of all, because it is altogether peculiar in its character, addressed neither to churches, nor to an individual, but to a whole nation, being published and circulated for their general benefit. The circumstance also that it was long denied a place in the canon, and considered as a spurious writing, improperly attributed to Paul, probably caused it to be put last of all his writings, when in the course of time, it was at length allowed a place in the canon.FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS.That epistle which the great majority of all modern critics consider as the earliest of all those writings of Paul that are now preserved, is the first to the Thessalonians. It is directed to them from Paul, Silvanus, (or Silas,) and Timothy, which shows that it was written after Paul had been joined by these two brethren, which was not until some time after his arrival in Corinth. It appears by the second and third chapters, that the apostle, having been hindered by some evil agency of the wicked, from visiting Thessalonica, as he had earnestly desired to do, had been obliged to content himself with sending Timothy to the brethren there, to comfort them in their faith, and to inquire whether they yet stood fast in their first honorable profession; forhe declares himself to have been anxious to know whether by some means the tempter might not have tempted them, and his labor have thus been in vain. But he now informs them how he has lately been greatly comforted by the good news brought from them by Timothy, who had assured the apostle of their faith and love, and that they had great remembrance of him always, desiring much to see him, as he them. Making known to them the great joy which these tidings had caused in him, he now affectionately re-assures them of his high and constant regard for them, and of his continued remembrance of them in his prayers. He then proceeds briefly to exhort them to a perseverance in the Christian course, in which they had made so fair an outset, urging upon them more especially, those virtues which were peculiarly rare among those with whom they were daily brought in contact,——purity of life, rigid honesty in business transactions, a charitable regard for the feelings of others, a quiet, peaceable, inoffensive deportment, and other minuter counsels, according to the peculiar circumstances of different persons among them. The greater portion of this brief letter, indeed, is taken up with these plain, practical matters, with no reference to any deep doctrinal subjects, the whole being thus evidently well-suited to the condition of believers who had but just begun the Christian course, and had been in no way prepared to appreciate any learned discussion of those obscure points which in later periods were the subject of so much controversy among some of Paul’s converts. Their dangers hitherto had also been mainly in the moral rather than in the doctrinal way, and the only error of mere belief, to which he makes reference, is one which has always been the occasion of a great deal of harmless folly among the ignorant and the weak minded in the Christian churches, from the apostolic age to this day. The evil however, was considered by the apostle of so much importance, that he thought it worth while to briefly expose its folly to the Thessalonians, and he accordingly discourses to them of the day of judgment, assuring them that those who might happen to be alive at the moment of Christ’s coming, would derive no peculiar advantage from that circumstance, because those who had died in Christ should rise first, and the survivors be then caught up to meet the Lord in the air. But as for “the times and the seasons,”——those endless themes for the discursive nonsense of the visionary, even to the present day and hour,——he assures them that there was no need at all that he shouldwrite to them, because they already well knew that the day of the Lord should come as a thief in the night, according to the words of Jesus himself. The only practical benefit which they could expect to derive then, from this part of their faith, was the conviction of the necessity of constantly bearing in mind the shortness and uncertainty of their earthly stay, and the importance of watchfulness and sobriety. After several sententious moral exhortations, he concludes with affectionate salutations, and with an earnest, solemn charge, that the letter should be read to all the brethren of the church.It will be observed, that at the conclusion of the epistle is a statement that it was written fromAthens,——an assertion perfectly absurd, and rendered evidently so by the statements contained in the epistle itself, as above shown. All the similar statements appended to his other epistles are equally unauthorized, and most of them equally false;——being written by some exceedingly foolish copyists, who were too stupid to understand the words which they transcribed. Yet these idle falsehoods are gravely given in all copies of the English translation, and are thus continually sent abroad to mislead common readers, many of whom, seeing them thus attached to the apostolic writings, suppose them to be also of inspired authority, and are deceived accordingly. And they probably will continue to be thus copied, in spite of their palpable and mischievous falsehood, until such a revolution in the moral sense of common people takes place, that they shall esteem a new negative truth more valuable and interesting, than an old, groundless blunder.For some time after the writing of the first epistle to the Thessalonians, with these triumphs and other encouragements, Paul and his faithful helpers appear to have gone on steadily in their apostolic labors, with no special obstacle or difficulty, that is commemorated in the sacred record. But at last their old difficulties began to manifest themselves in the gradually awakened enmity of the Jews, who, though at his first distinct public ministrations they had expressed a decided and scornful opposition to the doctrine of a crucified Savior, yet suffered the new teachers to go on, without opposing them any farther than by scornful verbal hostility, blasphemy and abuse. But when they saw the despised heresy making such rapid advances, notwithstanding the contempt with which it was visited, they immediately determined to let it no longer take advantage of their inefficiency in resisting itsprogress. Of course, deprived themselves, of all political power, they had not the means of meeting the evil by physical violence, and they well knew that any attempt on their part to raise an illegal commotion against the strangers, would only bring down on the exciters of the disturbance, the whole vengeance of their Roman rulers, who were unsparing in their vengeance on those that undertook to defy the forms of their laws, for the sake of persecution, or any private ends; and least of all would a class of people so peculiar and so disliked as the Jews, be allowed to take any such treasonable steps, without insuring them a most dreadful punishment. These circumstances therefore compelled them to proceed, as usual, under the forms of law; and their first step against Paul therefore, was to apprehend him, and take him, as a violator of religious order, before the highest Roman tribunal,——that of the proconsul.The proconsul of Achaia, holding his supreme seat of justice in Corinth, the capital of that Roman province, was Lucius JuniusGallio, a man well known to the readers of one of the classic Latin writers of that age,——Seneca,——as one of the most remarkable exemplifications of those noble virtues which were the great theme of this philosopher’s pen. Out of many beautiful illustrations which may be drawn from Roman and Jewish writers, to explain and amplify the honest and faithful apostolic history of Luke, there is none more striking and gratifying than the aid here drawn from this fine philosophical classic, on the character of the noble proconsul, who by his upright, wise, and clement decision, against the mean persecutors of Paul,——and by his indignant refusal to pervert and degrade his vice-regal power to the base ends of private abuse, has acquired the grateful regard and admiring respect of all Christian readers of apostolic history. The name of Lucius Junius Gallio, by which he is known to Roman writers as well as in apostolic history, was not his original family designation, and therefore gives the reader no idea of his interesting relationship to one of the finest moralists of the whole period of the Roman empire. His original family name was Marcus Annaeus Novatus Seneca,——which appellation he exchanged for his later one, on being adopted by Lucius Junius Gallio, a noble Roman, who being destitute of children, adopted, according to a very common custom of the imperial city, one of a family that had already given promise of a fine reward to those who should take its offspring as theirs. The famous philosopher before mentioned,——LuciusAnnaeus Seneca,——was his own brother; both of them being the sons of Marcus Annaeus Seneca, a distinguished orator and rhetorician of the Augustan age. A strong and truly fraternal affection always continued to hold the two brothers together, even after they had been separated in name by the adoption of the older into the family of Gallio; and the philosopher often commemorates his noble brother, in terms of high respect; and dedicated to him one of the most perfect of those moral treatises which have immortalized the name of Seneca.The philosopher Seneca, after having been for many years banished from Rome by Claudius, was at length recalled by that emperor in the ninth year of his reign, corresponding to A. D. 49. He was immediately made a senator, and was still further honored by being intrusted with the education of Domitius, the son of Agrippina, afterwards adopted by Claudius as heir to the throne, to which he succeeded on the emperor’s death, under the name ofNero, by which he has now become so infamous wherever the Roman name is known. Being thus elevated to authority and great influence with the emperor, Seneca made use of his power, to procure for his brother Gallio such official honors as his talents and character justly claimed. In the eleventh year of Claudius he was made consul, as is recorded in the Fasti Consulares; and was soon after sent into Greece, as proconsul of Achaia. Arriving at Corinth in the year 53, he was immediately addressed by the Jewish citizens of that place in behalf of their plot against Paul; for they naturally supposed that this would be the best time for the attempt to bend the new governor to their purposes, when he was just commencing his administration, and would be anxious to please the subjects of his power by his opening acts. But Gallio had no disposition to acquire popularity with any class of citizens, by any such abuse of power, and by his conduct on this occasion very fairly justifies the high character given him by his brother Seneca. When the Jews came dragging Paul before the proconsular tribunal, with the accusation——“This fellow persuades men to worship God in a manner contrary to the ritual,”——before Paul could open his mouth in reply, Gallio carelessly answered——“If it were a matter of crime or misdemeanor, ye Jews! it would be reasonable that I should bear with you; but if it be a question of words and names, and of your ritual, look ye to it; for I do not wish to be a judge of those things.” With this contemptuous reply, he cleared the court of them. The Jews thusfound their fine scheme of abusing Paul under the sanction of the Roman tribunal, perfectly frustrated; nor was their calamity confined to this disappointment; for all the Greeks who were present at the trial,——indignant at the scandalous character of the proceeding,——took Sosthenes, the ruling elder of the synagogue, who had probably been most active in the persecution of Paul, as he was the regular legal chief of the Jews, and gave him a sound threshing in the court, before he could obey the orders of the Proconsul, and move off from the tribunal. Gallio was so far from being displeased at this very irregular and improper outbreak of public feeling, that he took no notice of the action whatever, though it was a shameful violation of the dignity of his tribunal; and it may therefore be reasonably concluded that he was very much provoked against the Jews, and was disposed to sympathize with Paul; otherwise he would have been apt to have punished the outrage of the Greeks upon Sosthenes.
HIS EPISTLES WRITTEN FROM CORINTH.
The period of his residence in this city is made highly interesting and important in the history of the sacred canon, by the circumstance that here he wrote some of the first of those epistles to his various missionary charges, which constitute the most controverted and the most doctrinal portion of the New Testament. In treating of these writings, in the course of the narrative of his life, the very contracted limits now left to his biographer, will make it necessary to be much more brief in his literary history, than in that of those other apostles, whose writings have claimed and received so full a statement, under their respectivelives. Nor is there so much occasion for the labors of the apostolic historian on this part of the history of the apostolic works, as on those already so fully treated; for while the history of the writings of Peter, John, Matthew, James and Jude, has so seldom been presented to the eyes of common readers, the writings of Paul, which have always been the great storehouse of Protestant dogmatism, have been discussed and amplified in their history, scope, character, and style, more fully than all the rest of the Bible, for common readers; but in the great majority of instances, proving such a comment on the sadly prophetical words of Peter on these very writings, that the apostolic historian may well and wisely dread to immerse himself in such a sea of difficulties as presents itself to view; and he therefore cautiously avoids any intermeddling with discussions which will possibly involve him in the condemnation pronounced by the great apostolic chief, on those “unlearned and unstable,” who even in his time had begun to “wrest to their own destruction, the things hard to be understood in the epistles of his beloved brother Paul;” a sentence which seems to have been wholly overlooked by the great herd of dogmatizing commentators, who, very often, without either the “learning” or the “stability,” which Peter thought requisite for the safe interpretation of the Pauline epistles, have rushed on to the task of vulgarizing these noble and honest writings, to suit the base purposes of some popular system of mystical words and complex doctrines. If then, the “unlearned and unstable” have been thus distinctly warned by the highest apostolic authority, against meddling with these obscure and peculiar writings; and since the whole history of didactic theology is so full of melancholy comments on the undesignedly prophetical force of Peter’s denunciation,——it is no more than prudent to decline the slightest interference with a subject, which has been on such authority declared to require the possession of so high a degree of learning and stability, for its safe and just treatment. The few things which may be safely stated, will merely concern the place, time and immediate occasion of the writing of each of these epistles.
In the first place, as to theorderin which these works of Paul are arranged in the common New Testament canon, it should be observed that it has reference neither to date, subject, nor anything whatever in their character or object, except the very arbitrary circumstance of therankandimportanceof the places and persons that were the original objects of their composition. Theepistle to the Romans is always placed first, because the imperial city to which it was directed was beyond all question the greatest in the world. The epistles to the Corinthians are next, because that city was the nearest in rank and importance to Rome, of all those which were the objects of Paul’s epistolary attentions. The epistle to the Galatians is next, because it was directed to a great province, inferior indeed in importance, to the two great cities before mentioned, but vastly above any of the other places to which Paul wrote. The epistle to the Ephesians comes next, because Ephesus ranked far above any of the cities which follow. Philippi wassupposed, by those who arranged the canon, greater than Colosse and Thessalonica, because it was thought to have been a capital city. Thus all those epistles which are addressed to whole churches, are placed first; and those which are addressed to individuals in the same manner, form a class by themselves; that to Timothy being placed first of these, because he was the most eminent of all the apostle’s assistants,——Titus being inferior to him in dignity, and Philemon, a person of no account at all, except from the bare circumstance, that he was accidentally the subject of Paul’s notice. The epistle to the Hebrews is last of all, because it is altogether peculiar in its character, addressed neither to churches, nor to an individual, but to a whole nation, being published and circulated for their general benefit. The circumstance also that it was long denied a place in the canon, and considered as a spurious writing, improperly attributed to Paul, probably caused it to be put last of all his writings, when in the course of time, it was at length allowed a place in the canon.
FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS.
That epistle which the great majority of all modern critics consider as the earliest of all those writings of Paul that are now preserved, is the first to the Thessalonians. It is directed to them from Paul, Silvanus, (or Silas,) and Timothy, which shows that it was written after Paul had been joined by these two brethren, which was not until some time after his arrival in Corinth. It appears by the second and third chapters, that the apostle, having been hindered by some evil agency of the wicked, from visiting Thessalonica, as he had earnestly desired to do, had been obliged to content himself with sending Timothy to the brethren there, to comfort them in their faith, and to inquire whether they yet stood fast in their first honorable profession; forhe declares himself to have been anxious to know whether by some means the tempter might not have tempted them, and his labor have thus been in vain. But he now informs them how he has lately been greatly comforted by the good news brought from them by Timothy, who had assured the apostle of their faith and love, and that they had great remembrance of him always, desiring much to see him, as he them. Making known to them the great joy which these tidings had caused in him, he now affectionately re-assures them of his high and constant regard for them, and of his continued remembrance of them in his prayers. He then proceeds briefly to exhort them to a perseverance in the Christian course, in which they had made so fair an outset, urging upon them more especially, those virtues which were peculiarly rare among those with whom they were daily brought in contact,——purity of life, rigid honesty in business transactions, a charitable regard for the feelings of others, a quiet, peaceable, inoffensive deportment, and other minuter counsels, according to the peculiar circumstances of different persons among them. The greater portion of this brief letter, indeed, is taken up with these plain, practical matters, with no reference to any deep doctrinal subjects, the whole being thus evidently well-suited to the condition of believers who had but just begun the Christian course, and had been in no way prepared to appreciate any learned discussion of those obscure points which in later periods were the subject of so much controversy among some of Paul’s converts. Their dangers hitherto had also been mainly in the moral rather than in the doctrinal way, and the only error of mere belief, to which he makes reference, is one which has always been the occasion of a great deal of harmless folly among the ignorant and the weak minded in the Christian churches, from the apostolic age to this day. The evil however, was considered by the apostle of so much importance, that he thought it worth while to briefly expose its folly to the Thessalonians, and he accordingly discourses to them of the day of judgment, assuring them that those who might happen to be alive at the moment of Christ’s coming, would derive no peculiar advantage from that circumstance, because those who had died in Christ should rise first, and the survivors be then caught up to meet the Lord in the air. But as for “the times and the seasons,”——those endless themes for the discursive nonsense of the visionary, even to the present day and hour,——he assures them that there was no need at all that he shouldwrite to them, because they already well knew that the day of the Lord should come as a thief in the night, according to the words of Jesus himself. The only practical benefit which they could expect to derive then, from this part of their faith, was the conviction of the necessity of constantly bearing in mind the shortness and uncertainty of their earthly stay, and the importance of watchfulness and sobriety. After several sententious moral exhortations, he concludes with affectionate salutations, and with an earnest, solemn charge, that the letter should be read to all the brethren of the church.
It will be observed, that at the conclusion of the epistle is a statement that it was written fromAthens,——an assertion perfectly absurd, and rendered evidently so by the statements contained in the epistle itself, as above shown. All the similar statements appended to his other epistles are equally unauthorized, and most of them equally false;——being written by some exceedingly foolish copyists, who were too stupid to understand the words which they transcribed. Yet these idle falsehoods are gravely given in all copies of the English translation, and are thus continually sent abroad to mislead common readers, many of whom, seeing them thus attached to the apostolic writings, suppose them to be also of inspired authority, and are deceived accordingly. And they probably will continue to be thus copied, in spite of their palpable and mischievous falsehood, until such a revolution in the moral sense of common people takes place, that they shall esteem a new negative truth more valuable and interesting, than an old, groundless blunder.
For some time after the writing of the first epistle to the Thessalonians, with these triumphs and other encouragements, Paul and his faithful helpers appear to have gone on steadily in their apostolic labors, with no special obstacle or difficulty, that is commemorated in the sacred record. But at last their old difficulties began to manifest themselves in the gradually awakened enmity of the Jews, who, though at his first distinct public ministrations they had expressed a decided and scornful opposition to the doctrine of a crucified Savior, yet suffered the new teachers to go on, without opposing them any farther than by scornful verbal hostility, blasphemy and abuse. But when they saw the despised heresy making such rapid advances, notwithstanding the contempt with which it was visited, they immediately determined to let it no longer take advantage of their inefficiency in resisting itsprogress. Of course, deprived themselves, of all political power, they had not the means of meeting the evil by physical violence, and they well knew that any attempt on their part to raise an illegal commotion against the strangers, would only bring down on the exciters of the disturbance, the whole vengeance of their Roman rulers, who were unsparing in their vengeance on those that undertook to defy the forms of their laws, for the sake of persecution, or any private ends; and least of all would a class of people so peculiar and so disliked as the Jews, be allowed to take any such treasonable steps, without insuring them a most dreadful punishment. These circumstances therefore compelled them to proceed, as usual, under the forms of law; and their first step against Paul therefore, was to apprehend him, and take him, as a violator of religious order, before the highest Roman tribunal,——that of the proconsul.
The proconsul of Achaia, holding his supreme seat of justice in Corinth, the capital of that Roman province, was Lucius JuniusGallio, a man well known to the readers of one of the classic Latin writers of that age,——Seneca,——as one of the most remarkable exemplifications of those noble virtues which were the great theme of this philosopher’s pen. Out of many beautiful illustrations which may be drawn from Roman and Jewish writers, to explain and amplify the honest and faithful apostolic history of Luke, there is none more striking and gratifying than the aid here drawn from this fine philosophical classic, on the character of the noble proconsul, who by his upright, wise, and clement decision, against the mean persecutors of Paul,——and by his indignant refusal to pervert and degrade his vice-regal power to the base ends of private abuse, has acquired the grateful regard and admiring respect of all Christian readers of apostolic history. The name of Lucius Junius Gallio, by which he is known to Roman writers as well as in apostolic history, was not his original family designation, and therefore gives the reader no idea of his interesting relationship to one of the finest moralists of the whole period of the Roman empire. His original family name was Marcus Annaeus Novatus Seneca,——which appellation he exchanged for his later one, on being adopted by Lucius Junius Gallio, a noble Roman, who being destitute of children, adopted, according to a very common custom of the imperial city, one of a family that had already given promise of a fine reward to those who should take its offspring as theirs. The famous philosopher before mentioned,——LuciusAnnaeus Seneca,——was his own brother; both of them being the sons of Marcus Annaeus Seneca, a distinguished orator and rhetorician of the Augustan age. A strong and truly fraternal affection always continued to hold the two brothers together, even after they had been separated in name by the adoption of the older into the family of Gallio; and the philosopher often commemorates his noble brother, in terms of high respect; and dedicated to him one of the most perfect of those moral treatises which have immortalized the name of Seneca.
The philosopher Seneca, after having been for many years banished from Rome by Claudius, was at length recalled by that emperor in the ninth year of his reign, corresponding to A. D. 49. He was immediately made a senator, and was still further honored by being intrusted with the education of Domitius, the son of Agrippina, afterwards adopted by Claudius as heir to the throne, to which he succeeded on the emperor’s death, under the name ofNero, by which he has now become so infamous wherever the Roman name is known. Being thus elevated to authority and great influence with the emperor, Seneca made use of his power, to procure for his brother Gallio such official honors as his talents and character justly claimed. In the eleventh year of Claudius he was made consul, as is recorded in the Fasti Consulares; and was soon after sent into Greece, as proconsul of Achaia. Arriving at Corinth in the year 53, he was immediately addressed by the Jewish citizens of that place in behalf of their plot against Paul; for they naturally supposed that this would be the best time for the attempt to bend the new governor to their purposes, when he was just commencing his administration, and would be anxious to please the subjects of his power by his opening acts. But Gallio had no disposition to acquire popularity with any class of citizens, by any such abuse of power, and by his conduct on this occasion very fairly justifies the high character given him by his brother Seneca. When the Jews came dragging Paul before the proconsular tribunal, with the accusation——“This fellow persuades men to worship God in a manner contrary to the ritual,”——before Paul could open his mouth in reply, Gallio carelessly answered——“If it were a matter of crime or misdemeanor, ye Jews! it would be reasonable that I should bear with you; but if it be a question of words and names, and of your ritual, look ye to it; for I do not wish to be a judge of those things.” With this contemptuous reply, he cleared the court of them. The Jews thusfound their fine scheme of abusing Paul under the sanction of the Roman tribunal, perfectly frustrated; nor was their calamity confined to this disappointment; for all the Greeks who were present at the trial,——indignant at the scandalous character of the proceeding,——took Sosthenes, the ruling elder of the synagogue, who had probably been most active in the persecution of Paul, as he was the regular legal chief of the Jews, and gave him a sound threshing in the court, before he could obey the orders of the Proconsul, and move off from the tribunal. Gallio was so far from being displeased at this very irregular and improper outbreak of public feeling, that he took no notice of the action whatever, though it was a shameful violation of the dignity of his tribunal; and it may therefore be reasonably concluded that he was very much provoked against the Jews, and was disposed to sympathize with Paul; otherwise he would have been apt to have punished the outrage of the Greeks upon Sosthenes.
“The name of this proconsul was Marcus Annaeus Novatus, but being adopted by Lucius Junius Gallio, he took the name of his adopted father; he was brother to the famous Seneca, tutor to Nero. That philosopher dedicated to Gallio his book, ‘De Vita Beata.’ The Roman historians concur in giving him the character of a sweet disposition, an enemy to all vice, and particularly a hater of flattery. He was twice made proconsul of Achaia, first by Claudius, and afterwards by Nero. As he was the sharer of his brother’s prosperity, so he was of his misfortunes, when he fell under Nero’s displeasure, and was at length put to death by the tyrant, as well as his brother.” (Calmet’s Commentary. Poole’s Annotations. Williams on Pearson.)
“In Actsxviii.12–16, we find Paul is brought before Gallio by the Jews, but this proconsul refused to judge any such matters, as not coming within his jurisdiction. The character for justice, impartiality, prudence, and mildness of disposition, which this passage gives to Gallio, is confirmed by Seneca, his brother, in these words:——Solebam tibi dicere, Gallionem fratrem meum (quem nemo non parum amat, etiam qui amare plus non potest,) alia vitia non nosse, hoc etiam, (i. e. adulationem,) odisse.——Nemo enim mortalium uni tam dulcis est, quam hic omnibus. Hoc quoque loco blanditiis tuis restitit, ut exclamares invenisse te inexpugnabilem virum adversus insidias, quas nemo non in sinum recipit.(Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Natural Questions,lib. iv.in preface, op.tom. iv.p.267, edited by Bipont.) In our translation Gallio is styled thedeputy, but the real Greek word isΑνθυπατευοντος,proconsul. The accuracy of Luke in this instance is very remarkable. In the partition of the provinces of the Roman empire, Macedonia and Achaia were assigned to the people and Senate of Rome. In the reign of Tiberius they were, at their own request, made over to the emperor. In the reign of Claudius, (A. U. C. 797. A. D. 44,) they were again restored to the Senate, after which time proconsuls were sent into this country. Nero afterwards made the Achaians a free people. The Senate therefore lost this province again. However, that they might not be sufferers, the emperor gave them the island of Sardinia, in the room of it. Vespasian made Achaia a province again. There is likewise a peculiar propriety in the name of the province of which Gallio was proconsul. The country subject to him was all Greece; but the proper name of the province among the Romans was Achaia, as appears from various passages of the Roman historians, and especially from the testimony of Pausanias.Καλουσι δε ουχ’ Ἑλλαδος, αλλα’♦Αχαιας ἡγεμονα οἱ Ῥωμαιοι διοτι εχειρωσαντο Ἑλληνας δε Αχαιων, τοτε του Ἑλληνικου προεστηκοτων.(Pausanias Description of Greece.lib. vii.p.563. Lardner’s Works, 4to.vol. I.p.19.)