10. to the end. you speak of is the high priest I know not, i. e. I do not own or recognize him to be From Acts i. such, because he obtained that station in the church by very indirect means." Or suppose the apostle to speak ironically," I did not know, i. e. I did not apprehend that a person so far enraged, as to order a prisoner at the bar, when going to make his defence, to be smitten on the mouth,' could possibly be the high priest. This was a thing so little becoming his grave and venerable character, that I verily took him for some common man, and accordingly treated him with such language as the rudeness of his insult deserved: But since you now inform me that he is in reality the high priest, I beg pardon, because, be he what he will, we are not to speak evil of the ru ler of the people." [The plain matter of fact, however, is, that Ananias was not then the high priest. He was high priest during the famine which took place in the fourth year of Claudius, mentioned in the eleventh chapter of the Acts. St Paul, who took a journey to Jeru salem at that period, could not have been ignorant of Ananias's being then in possession of the high priesthood; but soon after the holding of the apostolical council at Jerusalem, Ananias was dispossessed of his office, and sent prisoner to Rome, whence he was afterwards released, and returned to Jerusalem. Now during that period he could not be called high priest in the proper sense of the word, though Josephus has sometimes given him the title of appeur, taken in the more extensive meaning of a priest, who had a seat and voice in the Sanhedrim; and Jonathan, though we are not acquainted with the circumstances of his elevation, had been raised, in the mean time, to the supreme dignity in the Jewish church. Jonathan was murdered by the order of Felix, and between his death and the high priesthood of Ismael, who was invested with that office by Agrippa, elapsed an interval in which the dignity continued vacant. Now it happened precisely in this interval that St Paul was apprehended in Jerusalem; and the Sanhedrim being destitute of a president, Ananias undertook of his own authority the discharge of that office, which he executed with the greatest tyranny. It is proba ble therefore that St Paul, who had been only a few days in Jerusalem, might be ignorant that Ananias, whom he knew to have been dispossessed of the priesthood, had taken upon himself an office to which he was not entitled; and if so, he might naturally exclaim" I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest !" Admitting him, on the other hand, to have been acquainted with the fact, the expression must be considered as an indirect reproof, and a tacit refusal to recognise usurped authority.] So that in whatsoever view we take of St Paul's conduct, there was nothing incongruous in his not knowing Ananias to be the high priest, which he certainly was not in reality, nor any thing abject in what is called the retractation of his words to him. יין (a)" They that waited at the altar, in the Jewish church, were partakers of the altar; even so hath the Lord ordained, in the Christian church, that they who preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel; but I have used none of these things" (says St Paul); and so far were the rest of the apostles from making any property of the money collected and laid at their feet, that we find them instituting the office of deacons, whose appointed business it was to see the regular distribution of it among the poor; which they never would have done had they preached the Gospel for the sake of the advantage they made of these contributions. The truth is, the ministers of God, in those days, had no respect to the secular emoluments of their vocation. They could shew (b) "hands that had ministered to their necessities, and to them that were with them." They made it their glory, and the chief of their (c) reward, that "when they preached the Gospel they made the Gospel of Christ without charge ;" and St Paul, in particular, had it in his power to tell the Corinthians, that (d)" when he was present with them he was charge Ann. Dom. 98. &c. A. M. 4012, able to no man." Considering then the narrowness of his circumstances, and the bash&c. or 9055. fulness of his temper, we may be apt to think that St Paul might be tempted to leave some small matters at Troas, in order to satisfy his host, rather than be (a) burdensome to any; but then the misfortune is, that this pexing does not always signify a cloak. (b) The other things which St Paul desires Timothy to bring with him are books and parchments. The books are generally supposed to be the sacred Scriptures of the Old Tes tament; but as these were constantly read in all Christian, as well as Jewish assemblies, there was no occasion for sending so far as Troas for what might have been had any where; and therefore we rather think that they were some choice books of human literature, in which we find our apostle a great proficient, and that the parchments were his adversaria, or common-place books, wherein he wrote down whatever, in the course of his reading, he found worthy of his observation. Now if, (e) according to some interpreters, the word exóns signifies a piece of parchment folded up, it will be indeed the same thing with the μsubparai, which St Paul afterwards mentions; but then, in this sense, it not only makes his directions to Timothy of a piece, as relating to things all of one kind, but makes the adverb para (which, without this supposition, we could not so well account for) highly pertinent in this place: "The parchments which I left at Troas, with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with, thee, and the books, but especially the parchments;" where the words but especially, seem naturally to refer to something mentioned before, . But suppose, that this pexime does properly signify a cloak; yet who can tell but that this was the very penula, or cloak which St Paul's father received from the Romans, and transmitted to his son, as a mark and ensign of his being a Roman citizen, and which (now that St Paul was at Rome) he was obliged, upon all occacions, (to conciliate the good esteem of the people) to appear in. Nay, suppose that it was a common cloak, or garment made on purpose to defend him from the injuries of the weather; yet, now that the winter was approaching, we can see no incongruity in his sending for what he had left behind him in the hot season of the year, to keep him warm in the cold; though we cannot but admire (d) the modest poverty of so great an apostle, who, rather than be chargeable to any, orders Timothy to bring him a poor cloak, which he could not well want, from so remote a place as Troas. That which makes it more difficult to resolve, what the contest between Michael and the devil, concerning the body of Moses, does properly mean, is, that this piece of history, to which St Jude alludes, is no where recorded in the Old Testament. We read indeed, in the prophet Zechariah, of (e) " Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right-hand (which was the place of him that impleaded another) to resist him;" and that the matter of controversy between them, was the re-edifying the temple, and restoring the service of God among the Jews, at Jerusalem, which Satan opposed : and hence (ƒ) some have argued, that as the Christian church is frequently styled the body of Christ, by parity of reason, the Jewish church might be called the body of Moses, and that this is the whole that St Jude means. But that the Jews, and their service, should be called the body of Moses, or that the words in St Jude are to be referred to those in Zechariah, seems not very probable, because in that prophet there is no mention of Michael, or of the body, or death of Moses. The death of Moses, and his burial, are thus related in the book of Deuteronomy. (g) "So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died in the land of Moab, and he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor; but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day:" From whence (h) others have argued, that as Michael was (a) 2 Cor. xii. 14. (b) Bishop Bull's Sermons, vol. ii. (c) Hammond's Annotations on 2 Tim. iv. 13. (g) Deut. xxxiv. 5, 6. (d) Grotius, in locum. (e) Zech. iii. 1. Pool, &c. in locum. (f) Hammond on Jude. 10. to the end. appointed by God to bury the body of Moses in a place so secret, that the Jews should From Acts i. never find it out, the devil opposed the angel in this office, desiring to have his sepulchre known, that in process of time it might become a snare to a people who were so very prone to idolatry. This is the most obvious, and considering what work the devil has made in the world with the body of the saints and martyrs ever since, may well be esteemed the truest sense of the passage. St Paul's fighting with beasts at Ephesus, is a passage likewise which is neither mentioned in the history of the Acts, nor in (a) the catalogue of his afflictions; and therefore some have imagined, that this fight of his was nothing else but the scuffle he had with Demetrius the silversmith, and his companions, savage men, who might better deserve the name of beasts. But (b) what ruins this opinion, is the date of the epistle wherein this transaction is mentioned, which was written a year before the sedition that Demetrius occasioned at Ephesus; and therefore others have taken the words in their literal sense, and so asserted, that St Paul was really exposed to wild beasts at Ephesus, but delivered from them by a miracle. And for the support of this, they relate a story out of an apocryphal book of St Paul's travels, frequently mentioned by the ancients, viz. That when Jerome, governor of Ephesus, had condemned the apostle to the wild beasts, at his coming upon the theatre a lion was let loose at him, which came and lay down at his feet, as did several other wild creatures; that at the same time there fell so violent a storm of hail as killed many of the spectators; and that upon the conviction of two such miracles, the governor himself was converted and baptized. However this be, the silence of the apostolic history can be no just exception to the literal interpretation, since (c) we find our apostle, in his second epistle to the Corinthians, relating certain sufferings, (the same in all probability with his fighting with beasts at Ephesus) (d)" wherein he was pressed above measure, and above strength, despaired of life, and had the sentence of God within him ;" and yet we meet with no thing of this in the whole compass of the Acts of the Apostles. The like is to be said of the thorn in the flesh, and the messenger of Satan, to which St Paul, for his greater humiliation, was submitted, that we have not the least intimation of them in all the sacred history. This only we may learn from the figurative expression, that as (e) the pricking brier, and grieving thorn do, in the prophetic style, denote a sore calamity; so may the expression here signify some sharp affliction sent upon St Paul, to keep his mind humble in the midst of the many revelations which God vouchsafed him. But then the question is, of what kind this affliction was? Some are of opinion, that this "thorn in the flesh, and messenger of Satan," taking them both for one thing, were (f) the motions of concupiscence, and suggestions of lust, arising frequently in St Paul: But the apostle himself contradicts this interpretation, in telling us, that he had the gift of continence, and that in so high a degree, that he wished all Christians, in this respect, like himself. He was at this time, according to the computation of chronologers, about sixty years old, and therefore it would be a foul slur to so great and holy an apostle to imagine, that he should burn in so frozen an age, which uses to extinguish, or at least to allay, those flames in the most unclean persons. We are told, moreover, that (g) " God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man ;" and therefore since St Paul acquaints us, that this thorn in the flesh (be it what it will) was (h) given him by God, and that it was one of (i) those infirmities wherein he took pleasure, and chose to glory; as it would have been the greatest impiety for him to have gloried in his impure motions and desires, so we cannot see how the apostle, by confessing such impure motions, could have defended his A. M. 4102, reputation against the attacks of his adversaries, which it is his chief design in the lat&c. or 5509. ter part of this epistle more especially to do. Ann. Dom. 98, &c. Others therefore observing, that this infirmity in the flesh happened to St Paul, after the visions and revelations whereof he speaks; that it was such an infirmity as obstructed the efficacy of his preaching, and made his ministry less grateful and acceptable to others; and that himself complains of such of the Corinthians, and false apostles among them, as represented his (a) bodily presence weak and mean, and his (b) speech or utterance contemptible, have supposed, that St Paul had some kind of impediment in his speech, which God, at this time, was pleased to send upon him, and which these false apostles (whom he calls the messengers of Satan), to his great sorrow and disconsolation made the subject of their scorn and ridicule. But, after all, the most general, and indeed the most obvious interpretation is, that it was some bodily disease, very grievous and painful to him, which he aptly calls a thorn, for its sharpness and pungency, and a thorn in the flesh, for the seat of it, which was his body; and this (according to Scripture-phraseology) the apostle calls likewise a messenger of Satan, because all distempers are in Scripture supposed to be the punishments of God, which (as it is represented in Job's case) he permits Satan, as the common executioner on these occasions, to inflict. 66 It may seem a little too nice, perhaps, to define the particular kind of this disorder; whether it was the gout, the stone, a violent head ach, or the falling-sickness, as several of the ancients have variously conjectured: But this we know from his own information, that his distemper was visible and manifest to all that conversed with him, such as had an influence over his speech, and was a great disadvantage to him in preaching the Gospel; and therefore he tells the Galatians, (c) " Ye know, how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the Gospel to you at first, and my temptation, which was in the flesh, ye despised not, nor rejected;" for (d)" I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling," as he tells the Corinthians. (e) From all which it seems to be very plain, that St Paul had some notorious visible infirmity in his body, such as might have exposed him to contempt with those who looked no farther than the outward ap pearance, and such as God designed for a means to keep him humble. There is but one obscurity more remarked in the writings of St Paul, viz. concerning the MAN OF SIN, the Son of Perdition; and that is a great obscurity indeed. The whole passage runs thus, (f) "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, nor be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter, as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand: Let no man deceive you by any means; for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that MAN OF SIN be revealed, the Son of Perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he is as God, sitting in the temple of God, and shewing himself that he is God:" For the better understanding of which words, we must remember, that St Paul, in his former epistle to the Thessalonians, speaking of the resurrection of the dead, had expressed himself in this manner:-(g)" This we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we, who are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them who are asleep: For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we, who are alive, and remain, shall be caught up, together with them, in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall ever be with him. But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need 10. to the end. that I write unto you; for yourselves know perfectly, that the day of the Lord so From Acts. i cometh as a thief in the night." From these words, some false teachers, and pretended prophets among them, took occasion to infer, that the day of judgment was at hand; that it would certainly come while the apostles were yet alive, and before that generation was passed; which was a doctrine of such dangerous consequence to the peace and tranquillity of mens minds, that the apostle, in this part of his second epistle, sets himself solemnly to refute it. "I beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him;" where we may observe, that this is the same coming which he had described in his former epistle, by" Christ's descending from heaven with a shout," &c. and the same gathering together which he had specified, by "our being caught up together," with saints newly raised, " in the clouds ;" and that, consequently, all the pains which some writers have taken to shew, that this man of sin is to be interpreted of Simon Magus and the Gnostics, Mahomet and his followers, or the Pope and his clergy, &c, are to be looked upon as indications of their prejudices rather than any discoveries of the truth. Before the coming of antichrist, we are told that there must be a great falling away, which, though some interpret it of national revolts from the Roman empire, is more properly to be understood of a general defection from the Christian faith; but as this defection has not yet prevailed, we may adventure to say, that this Son of Perdition is not yet come. The true spirit of Christianity, indeed, in a great measure, is departed from us; but we are not come yet to make an open renunciation of our Christian profession, which is the apostacy here spoken of. Mahomet was a great oppressor of the Christians, and his successors compelled vast numbers to abjure the name of Jesus; but neither is he the man of sin here intended, since it is now above eleven hundred years from the time of his first appearing in the world, and yet (a) "all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation," notwithstanding the Scripture ANTICHRIST was to precede (and not at so vast a distance to be sure) the coming of our Lord to judgment, Without concerning ourselves, then, with the many * fabulous accounts which some of the ancients have given us of the origin of Antichrist, the nature of his kingdom, or the manner of his extinction; we may, in some measure, gather from Scripture-" That, toward the conclusion of the world, some mighty prince or other will arise, a man monstrous for his wickedness and impiety, who, by the power of his arms, will conquer a great part of the world, and, by the violence of his persecutions, cause great defections (a) 2 Pet. iii. 4. To this purpose they tell us, that this Man of Sin, or Antichrist, will be born of a Jewish family, and come out of the tribe of Dan, which, as they imagine, is still subsisting in Babylonia; that being born in Babylonia, he will there lay the foundations of his empire, and the Jews, mistaking him for their Messiah, will be the first who will declare for him, acknowledge his dominion, and enjoy the chief employments in his government; that, as soon as he appears, he will begin with attacking the Roman empire, which at that time will be divided among ten powerful kings; and having subdued Egypt, Ethiopia, and Libya, will then march to Jerusalem, and there fix the seat of his kingdom; that, having made himself master of the eastern and western empire, he will turn all his thoughts towards the destruction of Christ's kingdom, and the persecution of good men, by which means great numbers will apostatize from the Christian faith, and pay their adoration to him; that the righteous, under his persecution, will retire to the Mount of Olives, where they will soon be at- They who would know more particu- |