170 llORAl PAULINA. 



the allusion be admitted; for I am not ignorant that many 

 expositors understand the passage in the second epistle as 

 referring to some forged letters which had been produced in 

 St. Paul's name, and in which the apostle had been made to 

 say that the coming of Christ was then at hand. In defence, 

 however, of the explanation which we propose, the reader :s 

 desired to observe, 



1. The strong fact, that there exists a passage in the 

 first epistle to which that in the second is capable of being 

 referred, that is, which accounts for the error the writer is 

 solicitous to remove. Had no other epistle than the second 

 been extant, and had it under these circumstances come to 

 be considered, whether the text before us related to a forged 

 epistle or to some misconstruction of a true one, many con- 

 jectures and many probabilities might have been admitted in 

 the inquiry, which can have little v»^eight when an epistle is 

 produced containing the very sort of passage we were seek- 

 ing, that is, a passage liable to the misinterpretation which 

 the apostle protests against. 



2. That the clause which introduces the passages in the 

 second epistle bears a particular affinity to what is found in 

 the passage cited from the first epistle. The clause is this : 

 " We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus 

 Christ, and by our gathering together ttnto him.'' Now, in 

 the first epistle the description of the coming of Christ is 

 accompanied with the mention of this very circumstance of 

 his saints being collected round him : " The Lord himself 

 shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of 

 the archangel, and with the trump of God ; and the dead 

 in Christ shall rise first : then we which are alive and re- 

 main shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, 

 to meet the Lord in the air." 1 Thess. 4:16, 17. This 

 I suppose to be the "gathering together unto him," intended 

 in the second epistle ; and that the author, when he used 

 these words, retained in his thoughts what he had written 

 on the subject before. 



