EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 2J 



fruit; 1 will come by you into Spain." Tliis fiom the 

 epistle. 



''Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through 

 Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying. After 1 

 have been there, I must also see Rome." This from the 

 Acts. 



If the passage in the epistle was taken from that in the 

 Acts, why was Spain put in ? If the passage in the Acts 

 was taken from that in the epistle, why was Spain left out ? 

 If the two passages were unknown to each other, nothing 

 can account for their conformity but truth. Whether we 

 suppose the history and the epistle to be alike fictitious, oi 

 the history to be true but the letter spurious, or the letter 

 to be genuine but the history a fable, the meeting with thi? 

 circumstance in both, if neither borrowed it from the other, 

 is, upon all these suppositions, equally inexplicable. 



IV. The following quotation I offer for the purpose oi 

 pointing out a geographical comcidence, of so much impor- 

 tance, that Dr. Lardner considered it as a confirmation oi 

 the whole history of St. Paul's travels : 



Chap. 15:19: "So that from Jerusalem, and round 

 about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the go.spel oi 

 Christ." 



I do not think that these words necessarily import that 

 St. Paul had penetrated into Illyricum, or preached the gos- 

 pel in that province ; but rather that he had come to the 

 confines of Illyricum, {iJi£xpi rov WivpLKov^) and that these con- 

 fines were the external boundary of his travels. St. Paul 

 considers Jerusalem as the centre, and is here viewing the 

 jircumference to which his travels extended. The ibnn of 

 expression in the original conveys this idea : a-Ko 'lepovaa?.^fi 

 xal Kv.'i^o) fiExpi Tov 'WjvpLKov. Illyricum was the part of this 

 circle which he mentions in an epistle to the Romans, be- 

 cause it lay in a direction from Jerusalem towards that city, 

 md poL-ited out to the Roman readers the nearest place to 

 them to which his travels from Jerusalem had brought hirn 



