SUBSCRIPTIONS OF THE EPISTLES. 201 



allow us to suppose that St. Paul, after lie had reached Cor- 

 inth, went back to Athens. 



V. The first epistle to Timothy the subscription assertii 

 to have been sent from Laodicea ; yet when St. Paul writes, 

 " I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus," 7ropaj6[ievog ek 

 ^aKsSovtav, "when I set out for Macedonia," the reader is 

 naturally led to conclude that he wrote the letter upon his 

 arrival in that country. 



VI. The epistle to Titus is dated from Nicopolis in Mac- 

 edonia, w^hile no city of that nac'e is known to have existed 

 in that province. 



The use, and the only use which I make of these obser- 

 vations, is to show how easily errors and contradictions steal 

 in, where the writer is not guided by original knowledge. 

 There are only eleven distinct assignments of date to St. 

 Paul's epistles — for the four written from Rome may be con- 

 sidered as plainly contemporary — and of these, six seem to 

 be erroneous. I do not attribute any authority to these sub- 

 scriptions. I believe them to have been conjectures founded 

 sometimes upon loose traditions, but more generally upon a 

 consideration of some particular text, without sufficiently 

 comparing it with other parts of the epistle, with different 

 epistles, or with the history. Suppose, then, that the sub- 

 scriptions had cooie down to us as authentic parts of the 

 epistles, there would have been more contrarieties and diffi- 

 cuhies arising out of these final verses than from all the rest 

 of the volume. Yet, if the epistles had been forged, the 

 whole must have been made up of the same elements as 

 those of which the subscriptions are composed, namely, tra- 

 dition, conjecture, and inference ; and it would have remaineii 

 to bo accounted for, how, while so many errors were crowded 

 int ) the concluding clauses of the letters, so much consis 

 tei'.cy should be preserved in other parts. 



The same reflection arises from observing the ove;sighlH 

 and mistakes which learned men have committed, when 

 arguing upon alkisions which relate to time and place, or 



FJcre l'»ul. 24 "^ 



