“Broad, obvious, and explicit agreements prove little; because it may be suggested, that the insertion of such is the ordinary expedient of every forgery; and though they may occur, and probably will occur, in genuine writings, yet it cannot be proved that they are peculiar to these. Thus what St. Paul declares in chap. xi. of 1 Cor. concerning the institution of the eucharist, ‘For I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for you; this do in remembrance of me,’ though it be in close and verbal conformity with the account of the same transaction preserved by St. Luke, is yet a conformity of which no use can be made in our argument; for if it should be objected that this was a mere recital from the Gospel, borrowed by the author of the epistle, for the purpose of setting off his composition by an appearance of agreement with the received account of the Lord’s supper, I should not know how to repel the insinuation. In like manner, the description which St. Paul gives of himself in his epistle to the Philippians (iii. 5.)—‘Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless’—is made up of particulars so plainly delivered concerning him, in the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistle to the Romans, and the Epistle to the Galatians, that I cannot deny but that it would be easy for an impostor, who was fabricating a letter in the name of St. Paul, to collect these articles into one view. This, therefore, is a conformity which we do not adduce. But when I read, in the Acts of the Apostles, that ‘when Paul came to Derbe and Lystra, behold a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman which was a Jewess;’ and when, in an epistle addressed to Timothy, I find him reminded of his ‘having known the Holy Scriptures from a child,’ which implies that he must, on one side or both, have been brought up by Jewish parents: I conceive that I remark a coincidence which shews, by its very obliquity, that scheme was not employed in its formation.”
“An assertion in the Epistle to the Colossians, viz. that ‘Onesimus was one of them,’ is verified by the Epistle to Philemon; and is verified, not by any mention of Colosse, any the most distant intimation concerning the place of Philemon’s abode, but singly by stating Onesimus to be Philemon’s servant, and by joining in the salutation Philemon with Archippus, for this Archippus, when we go back to the Epistle to the Colossians, appears to have been an inhabitant of that city, and, as it should seem, to have held an office of authority in that church. The case stands thus. Take the Epistle to the Colossians alone, and no circumstance is discoverable which makes out the assertion, that Onesimus was ‘one of them.’ Take the Epistle to Philemon alone, and nothing at all appears concerning the place to which Philemon or his servant Onesimus belonged. For any thing that is said in the epistle, Philemon might have been a Thessalonian, a Philippian, or an Ephesian, as well as a Colossian. Put the two epistles together and the matter is clear. The reader perceives a junction of circumstances, which ascertains the conclusion at once. Now, all that is necessary to be added in this place is, that this correspondency evinces the genuineness of one epistle, as well as of the other. It is like comparing the two parts of a cloven tally. Coincidence proves the authenticity of both.”
Paley.
[23]. See Lardner, vol. xii. p. 22.
[24]. Lardner, vol. ii. p. 598.
[25]. See Lardner’s Recapitulation, vol. xii, p. 53.
[26]. See Lardner’s Recapitulation, vol. xii. p. 53.
[27]. Lardner, vol. ii. p. 808.