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"that if we attended to the long parentheses that 

 St. Paul makes, and in which his energy and 

 warmth sometimes seem to carry him away, we 

 might easily connect the chain of his argument. 

 But," said he, " there are other causes of occa- 

 sional obscurity. One is the nature of epistolary 

 composition, leading the writer to refer to per- 

 sonal and local circumstances, and particularly 

 to conversations, which were well known to those 

 whom he addressed, and therefore not needing 

 explanation to them. Another arises from the 

 many allusions to peculiar laws and customs that 

 were familiar to his readers, but requiring much 

 research to comprehend them now. There is 

 a third, and a very important circumstance, 

 which is a source of frequent perplexity to com- 

 mentators, and which, in some degree, affects all 

 the writings of the New Testament, particularly 

 those parts where doctrines are taught rather 

 than facts detailed. Our great philosopher, 

 Locke, alludes to this difficulty: he somewhere 

 observes, that the subjects treated of in the 

 Epistles are so wholly new, and their doctrines 

 so different from the notions that mankind had 

 previously adopted, that many of the most im- 

 portant terms have a different signification from 

 what the same Greek words bear in the heathen 

 authors. Indeed it is obvious that the common 

 Greek language of the day could not furnish 

 accurate expressions for doctrines either entirely 



