enough, in the mere balance of probabilities, to cause us to place this hypothesis far before all others which have as yet been treated. Still there are some circumstances to be taken into account, which rather weaken its probability. One of these is that, various as are the notices. of the Epistle from early Alexandrine writers, we find no hint of its having been addressed to their own church, no certain tradition concerning its author. Another arises from the absence of all positive history of the church there in apostolic times, by which we might try, and verify, the few historic notices occurring in the Epistle. Indeed as far as the more personal of those notices are concerned, the same objections lie against Alexandria, as have before been urged against Palestine: the difficulty of assigning a reason for the salutation from those from Italy, and of imagining, within the limits which must be set to the date of the Epistle, any such relation of Timotheus to the readers, as is supposed in ch. xiii. 23.

24. These objections would lead us, at all events, to pass on to the end of our list before we attempt to pronounce on the preponderance of probability, and take into consideration the claims of ROME herself. These were in part put forward by Wetstein, and have recently been urged in Holzmann's article in the Studien u. Kritiken for 1859. 25. They may be briefly explained to be these: 1) The fact of the church at Rome being just such an one, in its origin and composition, as this Epistle seems to presuppose. It has been already seen (par. 7) that when, as we are compelled, we give up the idea of its having been addressed to a church exclusively consisting of Judæo-Christians, we necessarily are referred to one in which the Jewish believers formed a considerable portion, and that the primary stock and nucleus, of the church. Now this seems to have been the case at Rome, from the indications furnished us in the Epistle to the Romans. "The Jew first, and also the Gentile," is a note frequently struck in that Epistle; and the Church at Rome seems to be the only one of those with which St. Paul had been concerned, which would entirely answer to such a description.

26. 2) The great key to the present question, the historical notice, ch. ii. 3, fits exceedingly well the circumstances of the church of Rome. That church had arisen, not from the preaching of any Apostle among them, but from a confluence of primitive believers, the first having arrived there probably not long after our Lord's Ascension: see Acts ii. 10. In Rom. i. 8, written in all probability in the year 58 A.D., St. Paul states, " Your faith is spoken of in the whole world:" and in xvi. 19, "Your obedience hath come unto all men :" the inferences from which, and their proper limitation, I have discussed in the Introd. to that Epistle. And in Rom. xvi. 7, we find a salutation to Andronicus and Junias, Jews (see note there), " who are of note among the Apostles,

who also were in Christ before me." So that here we have a church the only one of all those with which St. Paul and his companions were concerned, of which it could be said, that the Gospel was confirmed to us by them that heard [Him]: the Apostle himself not having arrived there till long after such confirmation had taken place.

27. Again 3) it was in Rome, and Rome principally, that Judaistic Christianity took its further development and forms of error: it was there, not in Jerusalem and Palestine, that at this time the various and strange doctrines, against which the readers are warned, ch. xiii. 9, were springing up. "As soon as the gloom of the earliest history begins to clear a little, we find face to face at Rome Valentinians and Marcionites, Praxeas and the Montanists (Proclus), Hegesippus and the Elcesaites, Justin, and Polycarp. Here it was that there arose in the second half of the 2nd century the completest exposition of theosophic Judaism, the Clementines, the literary memorial of a manœuvre which had for its aim the absorption of the whole Roman Church into JudæoChristianity"." We have glimpses of the beginning of this state of Judaistic development even in St. Paul's lifetime, at two distinct periods; when he wrote the Epistle to the Romans, about A.d. 58, compare Rom. xiv. xv. to ver. 13,—and later, in that to the Philippians, about A.D. 63 (see Introd. to that Epistle); and Phil. i. 14—17: again in the bitterness conveyed in "beware of the concision," and the following verses, Phil. iii. 2 ff.

28. It is also to be remarked 4) that the personal notices found in our Epistle agree remarkably well with, the hypothesis that it was addressed to the Church at Rome. The information respecting Timotheus could not come amiss to those who had been addressed in the words, "Timotheus my fellow-worker saluteth you," Rom. xvi. 21; who had been accustomed to the companionship of " Paul and Timotheus" among them, Phil. i. 1; Col. i. 1; Philem. 1: and the words, they from Italy salute you, of ch. xiii. 24, receive a far more likely interpretation than that conceded as possible above, § i. par. 126, if we believe the Writer to be addressing his Epistle from some place where were present with him Christians from Italy, who would be desirous of sending greeting to their brethren at home. If he was writing e. g, at Alexandria, or at Ephesus, or at Corinth, such a salutation would be very natural. And thus we should be giving to the phrase they from its most usual New Test. meaning, of persons who have come from the place indicated: see Matt. xv. 1; Acts vi. 9; x. 23. Even Bleek, who holds our Epistle to have been addressed to the church in Palestine, takes this view, and assigns as its place of writing, Ephesus or Corinth. But then, what sense would it have, to send greeting to Palestine from they from Italy?

9 Holzmann.

29. Another set of important notices which this hypothesis will illustrate is found, where past persecution, and the death of eminent men in the church, are alluded to. These have ever presented, on the Palestine view, considerable difficulties. Any assignment of them to known historical occurrences would put them far too early for any probable date of our Epistle: and it has been felt that the deaths by martyrdom of St. Stephen, St. James the Great, and the like, were far from satisfying the expression, the decease of your leaders, which they were commanded to imitate: and though the time during which the Epistle must have reached Jerusalem was indeed one of great and unexampled trouble and disorganization, we know of no general persecution of Christians as such, since that which arose on account of Stephen, which was hardly likely to have been in the Writer's mind.

30. But on the Roman hypothesis, these passages are easily explained. About 49 or 50, Claudius, as Suetonius tells us, "expelled from Rome the Jews, who were continually stirring up tumults under the instigation of Chrestus." This time may well be alluded to by the expression, remember the former days, in ch. x. 32; for under the blundering expression, "at the instigation of Chrestus," it is impossible not to recognize troubles sprung from the rising of the Jews against the Christian converts. Thus also will the fact of the sympathy with prisoners receive a natural interpretation, as imprisonments and trials would necessarily have accompanied these "continual tumults," before the final step of expulsion took place: and the taking with joy the spoiling of their goods may be easily understood, either as a result of the tumults themselves, or of the expulsion, in which they had occasion to test their knowledge that they had for themselves a better and abiding possession.

31. It is true there are some particulars connected with this passage, which do not seem so well to fit that earlier time of trouble, as the Neronian persecution nearly fifteen years after. The only objection to taking that event as the one referred to, would be the expression the former days, and the implication conveyed in the assertion, that they then suffered affliction after they were enlightened: considering that we cannot go beyond the destruction of Jerusalem, at the latest eight years after, for the date of our Epistle. Still it is not impossible that both these expressions might be used. A time of great peril passed away might be thus alluded to, even at the distance of five or six years: and it might well be, that the majority of the Roman Jewish Christians had become converts during the immediately preceding imprisonment of St. Paul, and by his means.

32. On this supposition, still more light is thrown on this passage, and on the general tenor of the martyrology in the eleventh chapter.

Thus the great fight of afflictions is fully justified: thus, the being made a spectacle of in reproaches and tribulations, which finds almost an echo in the expression of Tacitus, that mockery was added to the sufferings of the dying Christians, and is so exactly in accord, when literally taken, with the cruel exposures and deaths in the circus. The prisoners and the spoiling too, on this supposition, would be matters of course. And I own, notwithstanding the objection stated above, that all this seems to fit the great Neronian persecution, and in the fullest sense, that only.

33. To that period also may we refer the notice in ch. xiii. 7; "Remember your leaders, who spoke to you the word of God, of whom regarding the end of their conversation, imitate their faith." It may

be indeed, that this refers simply to a natural death in the faith of Christ: but it is far more probable, from the terms used, that it points to death by martyrdom: faith having been so strongly illustrated in ch. xi., as bearing up under torments and death.

34. On this hypothesis, several other matters seem also to fall into place. The setting at liberty of Timotheus may well refer to the termination of some imprisonment of Timotheus consequent upon the Neronian persecution, from which perhaps the death of the tyrant liberated him. Where this imprisonment took place, must be wholly uncertain. I shall speak of the conjectural probabilities of the place indicated by the words if he come shortly, when I come to treat of the time and place of writing'.

35. The use evidently made in our Epistle of the Epistle to the Romans, above all other of St. Paul's 2, will thus also be satisfactorily accounted for. Not only was the same church addressed, but the Writer had especially before him the matter and language of that Epistle, which was written in all probability from Corinth, the scene of the labours of Paul and Apollos.

36. The sort of semi-anonymous character of our Epistle, already treated of when we ascribed the authorship to Apollos, will also come in here, as singularly in accord with the circumstances of the case, and with the subsequent tradition as regards the Epistle, in case it was addressed to the church in Rome. Supposing, as we have gathered

1 See below, § iii. par. 4.

2 This has been noticed by many; and may be established by consulting those Commentators and writers, who have drawn up tables of verbal coincidence with a view of proving the Pauline authorship. There is reason for thinking that the peculiar form of the quotation, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," in ch. x. 30, agreeing neither with the Hebrew text of Deut. xxxii. 35, nor with the Septuagint version there, is owing to its having been taken direct from Rom. xii. 19. And the whole form of exhortation in our ch. xiii. 1-6, reminds us forcibly of that in Rom. xii. 1--21. See also Rom. xiv. 17, as compared with Heb. xiii. 9, in § iv. par. 1, note.

from the notices of Apollos in 1 Cor., that he modestly shrunk from being thought to put himself into rivalry with St. Paul, and that after the death of the Apostle he found it necessary to write such an Epistle as this to the Church in the metropolis, what more likely step would he take with regard to his own name and personality in it, than just that which we find has been taken: viz., so to conceal these, as to keep them from having any prominence, while by various minute personal notices he prevents the concealment from being complete? And with regard to the relation evidently subsisting between the Writer and his readers, all we can say is that, in defect of positive knowledge on this head connecting Apollos with the church at Rome, it is evidently in the metropolis, of all places, where such a relation may most safely be assumed. There a teacher, whose native place was Alexandria, and who had travelled to Ephesus and Corinth, was pretty sure to have been there many of his Christian friends would be found: there alone, in the absence of positive testimony, could we venture to place such a cycle of dwelling and teaching, as would justify the expression, restored to you, of our ch. xiii. 19: in the place whither was a general confluence of all, and where there is ample room for such a course after the decease of St. Paul.

37. And what more likely fate to befall the Epistle in this respect, than just that which did befall it in the Roman Church: viz., that while in that church, and by a contemporary of Apollos, Clement, we find the first use made of our Epistle, and that the most familiar and copious use, its words are never formally cited, nor is any author's name attached? And was not this especially likely to be the case, as Clement was writing to the Corinthians, the very church where the danger had arisen of a rivalry between the fautors of the two teachers?

38. And as time goes on, the evidence for this hypothesis seems to gather strength, in the nature of the traditions respecting the authorship of our Epistle. While in Africa and the East they are most various and inconsistent with one another, and the notion of a Pauline origin is soon suggested, and gains rapid acceptance, it is in the church of Rome alone, and among those influenced by her, that we find an ever steady and unvarying assertion, that it was not written by St. Paul. By whom it was written, none ventured to say. How weighty the reasons may have been, which induced silence on this point, we have now lost the power of appreciating. The fact only is important for us, that the few personal notices which occur in it were in course of time overborne, as indications of its author, by the prevalent anonymous character: and that the same church which possessed as its heritage the most illustrious of St. Paul's own epistles, was ever unanimous in disclaiming, on the part of the Apostle of the Gentiles, the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews.