ર or that is worshipped; fo that he as God "fitteth in the temple of God, fhewing ❝himself that he is God. Remember ye not, "that WHEN I WAS YET WITH YOU I TOLD

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YOU THESE THINGS? and now ye know "what withholdeth, that he might be revealed "in his time; for the mystery of iniquity doth

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already work, only he that now letteth will "let, until he be taken out of the way; and "then shall that wicked be revealed, whom "the Lord fhall confume with the spirit of "his mouth, and fhall destroy with the

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brightness of his coming." It were fu-' perfluous to prove, because it is in vain to deny, that this paffage is involved in great obfcurity, more especially the claufes diftinguished by italics. Now the obfervation I have to offer is founded upon this, that the paffage expressly refers to a converfation which the author had previously holden with the Theffalonians upon the same subject: "Remember ye not, that when I was 66 yet with you I told you these things? And

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now ye know what withholdeth." If fuch converfation actually paffed; if, whilst he was yet with them, " he told them those things,"

things," then it follows that the epiftle is authentic. And of the reality of this converfation it appears to be a proof, that what is faid in the epiftle might be understood by those who had been present to fuch converfation, and yet be incapable of being explained by any other. No man writes unintelligibly on purpose. But it may easily happen, that a part of a letter which relates to a subject, upon which the parties had conversed together before, which refers to what had been before said, which is in truth a portion or continuation of a former difcourfe, may be utterly without meaning to a ftranger, who fhould pick up the letter upon the road, and yet be perfectly clear to the person to whom it is ́directed, and with whom the previous communication had paffed. And if, in a letter which thus accidentally fell into my hands, I found a paffage exprefsly referring to a former converfation, and difficult to be explained without knowing that converfation, I fhould confider this very difficulty as a proof that the converfation had actually paffed, and confequently that the letter contained

2

tained the real correfpondence of real per

fons.

No. II.

Chap. iii. ver. 8. "Neither did we eat any "man's bread for nought, but wrought with "labour night and day, that we might not "be chargeable to any of you: not because "we have not power, but to make ourselves "an enfample unto you to follow."

In a letter, purporting to have been written to another of the Macedonic churches, we find the following declaration:

"Now ye, Philippians, know also that in "the beginning of the gofpel, when I de"parted from Macedonia, no church commu"nicated with me as concerning giving and "receiving, but ye only."

The conformity between thefe, two paffages is ftrong and plain. They confine the transaction to the fame period. The epiftle to the Philippians refers to what paffed “ in "the beginning of the gospel," that is to say, during the first preaching of the gospel on that fide of the Ægean fea. The epistle to the Theffalonians fpeaks of the apoftle's con

duct

duct in that city upon "his firft entrance in "unto them," which the hiftory informs us was in the courfe of his firft vifit to the peninfula of Greece.

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"that

As St. Paul tells the Philippians,
no church communicated with him, as
concerning giving and receiving, but they

only," he could not, confiftently with the truth of this declaration, have received any thing from the neighbouring church of Theffalonica. What thus appears by general implication in an epistle to another church, when he writes to the Theffalonians themselves, is noticed exprefsly and particularly; "neither did we eat any, man's "bread for nought, but wrought night and

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day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you."

The texts here cited farther also exhibit a mark of conformity with what St. Paul is made to fay of himself in the Acts of the Apoftles. The apoftle not only reminds the Theffalonians that he had not been chargeable to any of them, but he ftates likewife the motive which dictated this referve; "not because we have not power, but

"to

"to make ourselves an enfample unto you "to follow us," (ch. iii. ver. 9.) This conduct, and what is much more precife, the end which he had in view by it, was the very fame as that which the history attributes to St. Paul in a discourse, which it reprefents him to have addreffed to the elders of the church of Ephefus; "Yea, ye your"felves alfo know that these hands have "ministered unto my neceffities, and to "them that were with me. I have showed

you all things, how that fo labouring ye "ought to fupport the weak." Acts, ch. xx. ver. 34. The fentiment in the epistle and in the speech is in both parts of it so much alike, and yet the words which convey it fhow fo little of imitation or even of refemblance, that the agreement cannot well be explained without fuppofing the speech and the letter to have really proceeded from the fame perfon.

No. III.

Our reader remembers the paffage in the first epistle to the Theffalonians, in which St. Paul spoke of the coming of Chrift: