SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 183 



In these two articles we have a journey referred to, 

 which must have taken place suhsequently to the conclusion 

 of St. Luke's history, and of course after St. Paul's liberation 

 from his first imprisonment. The epistle, therefore, which 

 contains this reference, since it appears from other parts oi 

 it to have been written while St. Paul was a prisoner at 

 Rome, proves that he had returned to that city again, and 

 undergone there a second imprisonment. 



I do not produce these particulars for the sake of the 

 support which they lend to the testimony of the fathers con- 

 cerning St. Paul's second imprisonment, but to remark their 

 consistency and agreement with one another. They are al) 

 resolvable into one supposition ; and although the supposi- 

 tion itself be in some sort only negative, namely, that the 

 epistle was not written during St. Paul's first residence at 

 Rome, but in some future imprisonment in that city, yet is 

 the consistency not less worthy of observation ; for the epis- 

 tle touches upon names and circumstances connected with 

 the date and with the history of the first imprisonment, and 

 mentioned in letters WTitten during that imprisonment, and 

 so touches upon them as to leave what is said of one con- 

 sistent wdth what is said of others, and consistent also wdth 

 what is said of them in different epistles. Had one of these 

 circumstances been so described as to have fixed the date of 

 the epistle to the first imprisonment, it would have involved 

 the rest in contradiction. And when the number and par- 

 ticularity of the articles which have been brought together 

 under this head are considered, and when it is considered 

 also that the comparisons we have formed among them were 

 in all probability neither provided for, nor thought of, by the 

 writer of the epistle, it will be deemed something very like 

 the effect of truth, that no invincible repugnancy is perceived 

 between them. 



11. In the Acts of the Apostles, in the sixteenth chaptei 

 and at the first verse, we are told that Paul " came to Derbe 

 and Lystra: and behold, a certain disciple was there, named 



