18 HOR^ PAULINiE. 



visit to Corinth which he promised in his former 2pistle ,' 

 we find also, in the passages now quoted from it, that a 

 contribution was going on in Macedonia at the same time 

 with, or soon however following, the contribution which was 

 made in Achaia ; but for whom the contribution was made 

 does not appear in this epistle at all : that information must 

 be supplied from the first epistle. 



Here therefore, at length, but fetched from three different 

 writings, we have obtained the several circumstances we 

 inquired after, and which the epistle to the E-omans brings 

 together, namely, a contribution in Achaia for the Christians 

 of Jerusalem, a contribution in Macedonia for the same, and 

 an approaching journey of St. Paul to Jerusalem. We have 

 these circumstances — each by some hint in the passage in 

 which it is mentioned, or by the date of the writing in which 

 the passage occurs — fixed to a particular time ; and we have 

 that time turning out, upon examination, to be in all the 

 sa??ie, namely, towards the close of St. Paul's second visit 

 to the peninsula of G reece. This is an instance of conform- 

 ity beyond the possibility, I will venture to say, of random 

 \^Titing to produce ; I also assert, that it is in the highest 

 degree improbable that it should have been the effect of 

 contrivance and design. The imputation of desigoi amounts 

 to this : that the forger of the epistle to the Uomans inserted 

 in it the passage upon which our observations are founded, 

 for the purpose of giving color to his forgery by the appear- 

 ance of conformity with other writings which v/ere then 

 extant. I reply, in the first place, that if he did this to 

 countenance his forgery, he did it for the purpose of an argu- 

 ment which would not strike one reader in ten thousand. 

 Coincidences so circuitous as this answer not the ends of 

 forgery ; are seldom, I believe, attempted by it. In the 

 second place, I observe that he must have had the Acts of 

 the Apostles and the two epistles to the Corinthians before 

 him at the time. In the Acts of the Apostles — I mean that 

 part of the Acts which relates to this period — he would have 



