A similar attempt has been made to give to the sacraments a preponderant place in his thinking and to connect these with similar rites practised in pagan days by those who subsequently came over to Christianity. But such a notion has still less to justify it. St. Paul said (1 Co 1") : ' Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel ' ; and, had occasion arisen, he would have added, with the same downrightness : 'Jesus sent me not to administer the other sacrament, but to preach the gospel. ' He was not a dispenser of sacraments, but a preacher of the gospel. His own conversion was complete, and the gospel involved in it had been revealed to his understanding, before he was him- self baptized. He was, indeed, baptized there- upon ; but the rite was only a means of emphasizing
that wliioli liail already taken i>lace. He did not believe in sacraments as ellecting anythinj; apart from faith in the mind of the recipient. His careful account of the Lord's Supper proves how lii^hlv he honoured that sacrament and how tirmly he helieved in its etticacy. Hut to him there was nothing; niap;ical in the administration. No kind of virtue was communicated through it which is incommunicable through other means. It was only the seal or signature affixed to the testimony of the preached Word. Not the faintest glimpse of the genius of the man lias been vouchsafed to any who can believe him an apostle of salvation through forms and ceremonies ; and little credit is done to his thinking capacity by those who believe him cap- able of preaching sometimes a salvation of this sort and at other times a salvation through grace and faith.
{b) Later Paidini.tm. — The title proposed by Wernle for the later Paulinism is Gnosis ; but the present writer would prefer Wisdom ; because, in English at least, Gnosis has a derogatory sound. To account for the rise of this phase in St. Paul's thinking there cannot be cited any crisis equal in distinction to the conversion in the earlier part of his life. In fact, the peculiarity of his later e.vperience to which his later teaching is traceable is rather the absence of crisis. The crisis was long past, with its exciting experiences and startling effects ; and there had supervened the monotony of middle life. What was there now to make up for the glow and energy of the earlier period ? Perhaps, indeed, this hardly required to be asked in regard to St. Paul himself, whose enthusiasm never cooled ; but it was certainly a critical question for the generality of his converts. Of these St. Paul had probablj' at one time thought as being all like himself— not less prompt in decision or le.ss endur- ing in conviction. Thej' had, as well as he, gone through a crisis of conversion ; and he expected this to supply them with motives potent enough to last the rest of their lives. But in ordinary souls first love is apt to cool, and human nature to recur to its normal proclivities ; and, in course of time, he became well aware that in none of his clmrches were there wanting gross abuses or glaring sins. What was there in Christianity to provide for a chronic necessity such as this ? This is the Christian problem of middle life.
In the lirst period there had been vouchsafed to him, immediately after his conversion, the resi- dence in Arabia, during which, it is believed, he ■worked out in his own mind the fundamental principles of his gospel. And something of the same kind may be recognized, also, at the com- mencement of the later stage of his life ; because he spent, in imprisonment at Ceesarea, a jieriod hardly less prolonged than that passed in Arabia. This enforced leisure was a providential opportunity for revising his beliefs and combining with them any new experiences afforded by the external course of his history. Nor was this spur to medi- tation lacking ; because, from more quarters than one, he heard of the rise among his converts of what is now known as incipient Gnosticism ; and this furnished him with food for thought.
As interpreted by Liglitfoot, in his well-kno^vn dissertation on the Colossian Heresy {Colossians and Philemon, new ed., 1879, p. 73 ff.), this incipient Gnosticism had for its root-idea an aversion to matter, which it looked upon as a principle opposed to God and as the cause of sin in human beings. It was, therefore, to be avoided and overcome ; but, in the endeavour to do so, different Gnostics chose different paths. On the one hand, some practised asceticism in regard to food, marriage, and other bodily enjoyments, thinking that the best way to overcome matter was to have as little to do with
it as possible. Others, on the contrary, adopted a bolder course. Sensual desires, it seemed to them, were natural and inevitable, and the only way to overcome them was by glutting them with that for which they craved. Desire would be extin- guished by exiiaustion ; and then they would be able to cease thinking about the objects with which fancy had been obsessed.
These opposite tendencies occupy a prominent place in St. Paul's later writings ; and it is easy to imagine with how much pain and annoyance it was that he became aware of their prevalence among his churches. He may, however, have been con- scious that both i)artic3 were able to appeal to doctrines of his own, which occupy a prominent place in his earlier writings. In discussing the question of meats offered in sacrifice to idols, he had counselled the strong to adopt the magnaniraous attitude of abstinence for the sake of the weak, though not conceding that the scruples of the weak had any justification. The weak, however, have a strength of tlieir own, and they sometimes turn concessions thus m.ade to them into tyrannical rules binding upon all. At all events, the exhorta- tions to defer to the weak do not recur in the later Epistles ; but asceticism is strongly repudiated, and the principle enforced that ' every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it be received with thanksgiving : for it is sanctified through the word of God and prayer' (1 Ti i*- °).