COiNCLUSiON. 205 



any degree, rest upon the judgment oi character of the 

 author making such reference. Proceeding by this rule, we 

 have, concerning the first epistle to the Corinthians in par- 

 ticular, within forty years after the epistle was written, evi- 

 dence not only of its being extant at Corinth, but of its 

 being known and read at Rome, Clement, bishop of that 

 city, writing to the church of Corinth, uses these words : 

 " Take into your hands the epistle of the blessed Paul the 

 apostle. What did he at first write unto you in the begin- 

 ning of the gospel ? Verily he did by the Spirit admonish 

 you concerning himself, and Cephas, and ApoUos, because 

 that even then you did form parties. "=* This was written 

 at a time when probably some must have been living at 

 Corinth who remembered St. Paul's ministry there and the 

 receipt of the epistle. The testimony is still more valuable. 

 as it shows that the epistles were preserved in the churches 

 to which they were sent, and that they were spread and 

 propagated from them to the rest of the Christian commu- 

 nity. Agreeably to which natural mode and order of their 

 publication, TertuUian, a century afterwards, for proof of the 

 integrity and genuineness of the apostolic writings, bids " any 

 one, who is willing to exercise his curiosity profitably in the 

 business of their salvation, to visit the apostohcal churches, 

 in which their very authentic letters are recited — ipsae au- 

 thenticse literse eorum recitantur." Then he goes on : " I? 

 Achaia near you ? You have Corinth. If you are not fav 

 firom Macedonia, you have Philippi, you have Thessalonica. 

 If you can go to Asia, you have Ephesus ; but if you are 

 near to Italy, you have Ilome."t I adduce this passage to 

 show, that the distinct churches or Christian societies, to 

 which St. Paul's epistles were sent, subsisted for some agr?a 

 afterwards ; that his several epistles were all along resp(!C- 

 lively read in those churches ; that Christians at large re- 

 ceived them from those churches, and appealed to those 

 ftlmrches for their originality and authenticity. 



* See Lardner, vol. 12, p. 22. t Lardner, vol. 2, p. nya 



