SECT. 13.] EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. rig
any of his writings, and that every thing (considering the matter and nature of it, the Person in whose name he spake, and those to whom he wrote) is expressed as it ought to be for the end proposed, and not otherwise. And hence it is that, because of the variety of the subject-matter treated of, and difference among the persons to whom he wrote, there is also variety in his way and manner of express- ing himself in sundry of his epistles; and in many of them there is such a discovery and manifestation of solid eloquence and pure elegancy of speech, that the observation of them in any writing is far from having any weight to prove it none of his,
13. It may, then, be granted, though it be not proved, that there is some dissimilitude of style between this and the rest of the epistles of St Paul; and the reasons of it are sufficiently manifest. The argument treated of in this Epistle is diverse from that of most of the others; many circumstances in those to whom he wrote sin- gular; the spring of his reasonings and way of his arguings pecu- liarly suited unto his subject-matter and the condition of those unto whom he wrote. Besides, in the writing of this Epistle there was in him an especial frame and incitation of spirit, occasioned by many eccurrences relating unto it. His intense love and near relation in the flesh unto them to whom he wrote, affectionately remembered by himself, and expressed in a manner inimitable, Rom, ix. 1-3, did doubtless exert itself in his treating about their greatest and nearest concernment. The prejudices and enmity of some of them against him, recorded in several places of the Acts, and remembered by him- self in some other of his epistles, lay also under his consideration. Much of the subject that he treated about was matter of controversy, which was to be debated from the Scripture, and wherein those with ' whom he dealt thought they might dissent from him without any pre- judice to their faith or obedience. Their condition also must needs greatly affect him. They were now not only under present troubles, dangers, and fears, but “positi inter sacrum et saxum,” at the very door of ruin, if not delivered from the snare of obstinate adherence unto Mosaical institutions. Now, they who know not what alterations in style and manner of writing these things will produce, in those who have an ability to express the conceptions of their minds and the af- fections wherewith they are attended, know nothing of this matter. And other differences from the rest of Paul’s epistles, but what may evidently be seen to arise from these and the like causes, none have yet discovered, nor can so do. And notwithstanding the elegancy of the style pretended, that it is as full of Hebraisms as any other epistle of the same author, we shall discover in our passage through it; which certainly a person of that ability in the Greek tongue as the writer of this Epistle discovers himself to be might have avoided, if le had thought meet so to do.
78 AUTHOR OF THE [BXERC. IL.
14, Neither is it to be omitted that there is such a coincidence in many phrases, use of words and expressions, between this Epistle and the rest of St Paul’s, as will not allow us to grant such a dis- crepancy in style as some imagine. They have many of them been gathered by others, and therefore I shall only point unto the places from whence they are taken. See chap. i. 1, 2, compared with 2 Cor. xii. 8. Chap. ii, 14, with Gal. i. 16; Eph. vi. 12. Chap. i. 11, with Eph. v. 26. Chap. i. 1, with Phil. in, 14; 2 Tim. 1.9. Chap. iii. 6, with Rom. v. 2. Chap. v. 14, with 1 Cor. ii. 6; Phil. i. 15; Eph. iv. 13. Chap. v. 13, with 1 Cor. ui. 2. Chap. vi. 11, with Col. ii. 2; 1 Thess. 1.5. Chap. vii. 18, with Rom. viii. 3; Gal. iv. 9. Chap. viii. 6, 7, with Gal. ii. 19, 20; 1 Tim. i, 5. Chap. x. 1, with Col. i. 17. Chap. x. 22, with 2 Cor. vii. 1. Chap. x. 23, a phrase peculiar to St Paul, and common with him. Chap. x. 33, with 1 Cor. iv. 9. Chap. x. 36, with Gal. ii. 22. Chap. x 39, with. 1 Thess. v. 9; 2 Thess. 11. 13. Chap. xii. 1, with 1 Cor. ix. 24 Chap. xiii. 10, with 1 Cor. ix. 13, x. 18. Chap. xii 15, 16, with Rom. xii. 1; Phil. iv. 18. Chap. xiii, 20, with Rom. xv. 33, xvi. 20; 2 Cor. xii 11; Phil. iv. 9; 1 Thess. v. 28. Many of which places having before been observed by others, they are all of them collected in this order by Spanheim; and many more of the like nature might be added unto them, but that these are suffi- cient to outbalance the contrary instances of some words and ex- presstons nowhere else used by St Paul, which perhaps may be observed of every other epistle in like manner. And upon all these considerations it appears how little force there is in this objec- tion.