FIRST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 177 



III. Chap. 3 : 2, 3 : "A bishop then must be blameless, 

 the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, 

 given to hospitality, apt to teach ; not given to wine, no 

 striker, not greedy of filthy lucre ; but patient ; not a brav^^l- 

 e\\ not covetous ; one that ruleth well his own house." 



"No striker:" that is the article which I single out 

 from the collection, as evincing the antiquity at least, if not 

 the genuineness of the epistle, because it is an article which 

 no man would have made the subject of caution who lived 

 in an advanced era of the church. It agreed with the in- 

 fancy of the society, and with no other state of it. After the 

 government of the church had acquired the dignified form 

 which it soon and naturally assumed, this injunction could 

 have no place. Would a person who lived under a hierar- 

 chy, such as the Christian hierarchy became when it had 

 settled into a regular establishment, have thought it neces- 

 sary to prescribe concerning the qualification of a bishop, 

 that "he should be no striker?" And this injunction would 

 be equally alien from the imagination of the writer, whethei 

 he wrote in his own character, or personated that of an 

 apostle. 



IV. Chap. 5 : 23 : " Drink no longer water, but use a 

 little wine for thy stomach's sake, and thine often infirmi 

 ties." 



Imagine an impostor sitting down to forge an epistle in 

 the name of St. Paul. Is it credible that it should come 

 into his head to give such a direction as this ; so remote 

 from every thing of doctrine or discipline, every thing of 

 public concern to the religion or the church, or to any sect, 

 order, or party in it, and from every purpose wdth which 

 §u?.h an epistle could be written? It seems to me, that 

 nothing but reality, that is, the real valetudinary situation 

 of a real person, could have suggested a thought of so domes- 

 tic a nature. 



But if the peculiarity of the advice be observable, the 

 place in which it stands is more so. The context is this: 



How Paul. 23 * 



