The life and work of St. Paul

746 APPENDIX.
Paul is still the writer. There are Sashes of the deepest feeling, outbursts of the most
intense expression. There is rhythmic movement and excellent majesty in the doxo-
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logics, and the ideal of a Christian pastor is drawn not only with an unfaltering hand, but
'with a beauty, fulness, and simplicity, which a thousand years of subsequent experience
have enabled no one to equal, much less to surpass. In these Epistles direct logical
controversy is to a great extent neglected as needless. All that the Apostle had to say
In the way of such reasoning had probably been said to his correspondents, in one form
or other, again and again. For them, as entrusted with the supervision of important
Christian communities, it was needless to develop doctrines with which they were
familiar. It was far more necessary to warn them respecting the fatal moral tendencies
in which heresies originated, and the fatal moral aberrations in which they too often
issued.
And while we are on this subject of style, how much is there which we must at once
see to be favourable to the authenticity of these writings I Take the First Epistle to
Timothy alone, which is more seriously attacked than the other two, and which is
supposed to drag down its companions by the evidence of its spuriousness. Do we not
find in it abundant traces of a familiar style ? Is it even conceivable that a forger would
have actually begun with an anakolutlwn or unfinished construction? Such sentences
abound in the style of St. Paul, and to imitate them with perfect naturalness would be
no easy task. But even supposing the possibility of imitation, would a forger have
started off with one ? Again, it would be very easy to caricature or clumsily imitate the
digressive manner which we have attributed to familiarity and age ; but to reproduce it
so simply and naturally as it here appears would require supreme literary accomplishment.
Would an imitator have purposely diverged from St. Paul's invariable salutation
by the insertion of " mercy" between " grace " and " peace " ? It is easy to understand
on psychological grounds that St. Paul might call himself " the chief of sinners " (i. 15) ;
but would a devoted follower have thus written of him ? Would he purposely and con-
, tinuatty have lost the main thread of his subject as at ii. 3, 7 ? A writer with a firm grasp
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of truths which he knows to be complementary to each other would never hesitate at any
merely apparent contradiction of his previous opinions ; still less would he hesitate to
modify those opinions in accordance with circumstances ; but would a forger have been
so bold as apparently to contradict in ii. 15 what St. Paul had taught in 1 Cor. vii. ?
Would he be skilful enough to imitate the simple and natural manner in which, more
than once, the Apostle has resumed his Epistle after seeming to be on the point of ending
it, as at iii. 14, 15 ? St. Paul, like most supremely noble writers, is quite indifferent to
confusion of metaphors ; but would an imitator be likely to follow him with such lordly
indifference as at vi. 19 ? In writing to familiar friends, nothing is more natural than the
perfectly casual introduction of minute and unimportant particulars. There is nothing
like this in St. Paul's other letters, not even in that to Philemon, and therefore a forger
would have had no model to copy. How great a literary artist, then, must have been the
forger who writing with some theory of inspiration, and under the shadow of a great
name, and with special objects in view could furnish accidental minutiae so natural, sa
interesting, and even so pathetic as that in 1 Tim. v. 23, or introduce, by way of precaution,
such particulars "unexampled in the Apostle's other writings, founded on no incident,
tending to no result" as the direction to Timothy to bring with him to Rome "the
cloak which I left at Troas with Carpus, and the books, especially the parchments." It
eems to me that forgery, even under the dominant influence of one impressive personality
and one supreme idea, is by no means the extraordinarily easy and simple thing which it
appears to be to the adherents of the Tubingen criticism. It is a comparatively simple
matter to pass off imitations of a Clemens Komanus or an Ignatius, but it is hardly likely
that the world would be long deceived by writings palmed off upon it as those of a Milton
till less of a St. Paul.