literaryhistoryo02crut - Carmel Apologetics

"
356 THE APOLOGISTS.
are your eyes for tliey see, and your ears for lliey hear.'
And since these words (as is well known) are (
quoted l)y
S. Paul in tlie First Ei)istle to the Corinthians/ it has been
argued tliat Hegesii)pus is attacking the Apostle's interpretation
of them and betraying an Ebionite or anti-Pauline
tendency. The great authority of Baur lent for a while
plausibihty to this view, but it will not bear examination.
In tlie first place, the quotation is not given in the form in
which S. Paul gives it, the words " the just " being substituted
for " them that love him," a very significant change.
And in the second place, we know from Hippolytus that
the Gnostic teachers were peculiarly addicted to
the use of
this text," applying it, not as S. I'aul does, to the condition
of the religious world before the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit, but to the condition of those Christians who did not
Ljain the advantage of the Gnostic sacrament of initiation.^
On so slender a ground as this, it is quite unwarrantable to
charge Hegesippus with hostility to S. Paul. The same
suspicion with which the Tiibingen school regard Papias,
from his testimony to the early date of
unity of
the Gospels and the
the faith, has biassed their judgment in the case of
Hegesippus also. And the reply is in both cases the same.
The object of these men's hostility was not S. Paul or the
Pauline school of theology, but tlie Gnostic misinterpreters
of Scripture and perNcrters of Catholic truth.
The activity of Hege8ipi)us, it will thus be seen, falls at or
aljout
tlie middle of the second century, almost contem}»orary
witli that of Justin. From liis Palestinian training, liow-