(e) Epistles of the Imprisonment. — The Epistles written up to this point belong to the years during which the Apostle was engaged in his missionary travels. There follow four to which has been given the common title of the Epistles of the Imprison- ment, because they were written during the years, subsequent to his arrest at Jerusalem, when he was in the custody of the Roman authorities. In those years he was moved from prison to prison, but at two places — Csesarea and Rome — he experienced periods of imprisonment, lasting in each case about two years. Some of these letters may have been composed at the one place, some at the other ; but the usual opinion has been that they were all written at Rome.
In one of his prisons St. Paul was visited by Epaphras, a minister from Colossae, a town in the Lycus Valley not far from Ephesus, who had come to consult him about the condition of the church over which he presided and to solicit from him a letter to the members, in order that these might be persuaded by the authority of au apostle to abandon errors into which tliey were falling and return to the simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus. The new heresy was not that already so thoroughly confuted by'St. Paul in Gal. and Bom., but a kind of speculation such as he had already encountered in some degree among the Corinthians, and which was destined to spread througli the churches till it came to be known in history, after the Apostolic Age, under the sinister name of Gnosticism. It had its principal hold in the Gentile, as the earlier heresy had had in the Jewish, section of the Church. As yet, indeed, it
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M'a-s only inciiiient ; but Epaiiliras was afraid of it, ami lie "liail little ililliiulty iii i-oiiiiiuinicaliiij,' liis fears to Uiu Apostle ; so tliat he secured and carried back to liis flock what is now known us the Epistle to the Colo.isians.
The anxieties awakened in the mind of the prisoner by what he had heard from Ci)lossn[> may easily have extended to other cinirolies in the same quarter, and impelled him to write in the same strain to them also. Indeed, in the Epistle to the Colossians itself reference is made (4"*) to a letter he had written to the Jjaodiceans, the signilicant request beinj; added that the Colossian Kpistle be read also at Laoilicea, and the Lao- dicean one at Colossa?. This may have suggested theiileaof a circular letter to all the churches in that jMirtiun of Asia Minor; and the ojiinion has been held by not a few that what is now known as the Epistle to the Ephesians was originally a docu- ment of this description. This would account for the absence from it of the usual greetings at the end, which might have been expected to be more than usually [uofuse when he was writing to a church in tlie founding of which he had spent three years of his life. It might account also for an abstract and impersonal tone which undoubtedly clings to this Epistle. It is written at a great height above the common earth, and it may easily embody the ruminations of one who had long been in the solitude of a prison. It comes down, indeed, before it ends, to practical things, giving a more complete sketch of what may be called the ethics of Christianity than any other of tlie Epistles ; but even in this portion of it there is something of the same abstract and distant tone, the author being less concerned with the duties themselves than with the motives out of which the discharge of these is to spring. To him the whole cosmical history of Christ is a source of motives, which he is constantly seeking to evoke in those whose spiritual welfare is his care. There is not much to commend the procedure of Mofiatt (LNT, p. 375) when he accepts Colossians as from St. Paul but rejects Ephesians ; Bacon, though also prone to negative criticism, is here leil by a truer instinct, feeling the spiritual power of the text with which he is dealing (op. cit. p. '29S tt'. ). It is obvious that both the thought and the phraseology of Colossians and Ephesians are largely alike ; but every writer of letters is aware that he sometimes ]iuts the same facts, thoughts, and even words into letters written about the same time ; and this was speci- ally liable to happen when one of the letters had the general character belonging to Ephesians. The estimate of tliis Epistle by S. T. Coleridge as 'one of the divinest compositions of man' (T<tble Talk, 25tli May 1830) has commended itself to multitudes not unworthy to hold an opinion on such matters ; and this raises the question, by whom the Epistle could have been written, if it be not to St. Paul we owe it. Coleridge considered the Epistle to the Colossians to be the overflowing of St. Paul's mind upon the subjects already treated in Ephesians; but the present writer in- clines to conceive the relation between tliem as the reverse. It is impossible, however, to do more than guess.
In Colossians there is a reference to one Onesimus (4'), who is described as a faithful and beloved brother and a member of the Colossian Church ; and the same is the name of an escajied slave who is the subject of the Epistle to Philemon. It would appear that he had defrauded his master and run away to the capital of the world, wlierc, through some providence to us unknown, he was thrown into the company of St. Paul, through whom he was converted. St. Paul would willingly have retained him, since he appeared to Ijc a