EPJSTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 97 



There can be no doubt but that " the temptation which 

 was m the flesh," mentioned in the ep.'stle to the Galatians^ 

 and " the thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to bullet 

 him," mentioned in the epistJe to the Corinthians, were in. 

 tended to denote the same thing. Either therefore it was, 

 what we pretend it to have been, the same person in both, 

 alluding, as the occasion led him, to some bodily infirmity 

 under which he labored — that is, we are reading the real 

 letters of a real apostle ; or it was, that a sophist who had 

 seen the circumstance in one epistle, contrived, for the sake 

 of correspondency, to bring it into another ; or, lastly, it wa? 

 a circumstance in St. Paul's personal condition, supposed tc 

 be well known to those into whose hands the epistle was 

 likely to fall, and for that reason introduced into a Avriting 

 designed to bear his name. I have extracted the quotations 

 at length, in order to enable the reader to judge accurately 

 of the manner in which the mention of this particular comes 

 in, in each ; because that judgment, I think, will acquit the 

 author of the epistle of the charge of having studiously insert- 

 ed it, either with a view of producing an apparent agreement 

 between them, or for any other purpose whatever. 



The context, by which the circumstance before us is 

 introduced, is in the two places totally difiercnt, and without 

 any mark of imitation ; yet in both places does the circum- 

 stance rise aptly and naturally out of the context, and that 

 context from the train of thought carried on in the epistle. 



The epistle to the Galatians, from the beginning to the 

 end, runs in a strain of angry complaint of their defection 

 from the apostle, and from the principles which he had 

 taught them. It was very natural to contrast with this 

 conduct, the zeal with which they had once received him ; 

 and it was not less so to mention, as a proof of their former 

 disposition towards him, the indulgence which, while he was 

 among them, they had shown to his infirmity : " My temp 

 tation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected ; 

 but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus, 

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