B4 HORiE PAULINA. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 



I. The argument of this epistle in some measure proves 

 its antiquity. It will hardly be doubted, but that it was writ 

 tnn while the dispute concerning the circumcision of G entile 

 converts was fresh in men's minds ; for, even supposing it to 

 have been a forgery, the only credible motive that can be 

 assigned for the forgery, was to bring the name and author- 

 ity of the apostle into this controversy. No design could be 

 so insipid, or so unlikely to enter into the thoughts of any 

 man, as to produce an epistle written earnestly and pointedly 

 upon one side of a controversy, when the controversy itself 

 was dead, and the question no longer interesting to any 

 description of readers whatever, Now the controversy con- 

 cerning the circumcision of the Gentile Christians was of 

 such a nature, that, if it arose at all, it must have arisen in 

 the beginning of Christianity. As Judea was the scene of 

 the Christian history — as the Author and preachers of Chris- 

 tianity were Jews — as the religion itself acknowledged and 

 was founded upon the Jewish religion, in contradistinction 

 from every other religion then professed among mankind, it 

 was not to be wondered at, that some of its teachers should 

 carry it out in the world rather as a sect and modification of 

 Judaism, than as a separate original revelation ; or that they 

 should invite their proselytes to those observances in which 

 they lived themselves. This was likely to happen; but if 

 it did not happen at first — if, while the religion was in the 

 hands of Jewish teachers, no such claim was advanced, no 

 euch condition was attemj)ted to be imposed, it is not prob- 

 able that the doctrine would be started, much less that it 

 should prevail in any future period, I likewise think, that 

 those pretensions of Judaism were much more likely to be 

 insisted upon while the Jews continued a nation, than aftei 



