EPiyiLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 163 



Imprisonment, agree with this account of its cause and origin, 

 we have already seen. 



11. Chap. ^4 : 10, 11 : " Aristarchus, my fellow-prisoner, 

 saluteth you, and Marcus, sister's son to Barnabas, (touching 

 whom ye received commandments : if he come unto you, 

 receive him,) and Jesus, which is called Justus, who are oi 

 the circumcision." 



We fuid Aristarchus as a companion of our apostle in the 

 nineteenth chapter of the Acts and the twenty-ninth verse : 

 "And the whole city" of Ephesus "was filled with confu- 

 sion : and having caught Gains and Aristm'chus, men of Mac- 

 edonia, PauVs compaiiions in travel, they rushed with one 

 accord into the theatre." And we find him upon his jour- 

 ney with St. Paul to Rome, in the twenty-seventh chapter 

 and the second verse : " And when it was determuied that 

 we should sail into Italy, they delivered Paul and certain 

 other prisoners unto one named Julius, a centurion of Augus- 

 tus' band. And entering into a ship of Adramyttium, we 

 launched, meaning to sail by the coasts of Asia ; one Aris- 

 tarchus, a Macedonian of Thessalonica, being ivith us "' 

 But might not the author of the epistle have consulted the 

 history; and, observing that the historian had brought Aris- 

 tarchus along with Paul to E-ome, might he not for that 

 reason, and without any other foundation, have put down 

 his name among the salutations of an epistle purporting to 

 be written by the apostle from that place ? I allow so much 

 of possibility to this objection, that I should not have pro- 

 posed this in the number of coincidences clearly undesigned, 

 had Aristarchus stood alone. The observation that strikes 

 me in reading the passage is, that together with Aristarchus, 

 whose journey to PLome we trace in the history, are joined 

 Marcus and Justus, of w^iose coming to Rome the history 

 says nothing. Aristarchus alone appears in the history, and 

 Aristarchus alone would have appeared in the epistle, if the 

 author had regulated himself by that conformity. Or if you 

 talie it the other way — if you suppose the history to have 



HoTR» raul. 22 



