There is good reason for believing tliat St. Paul became sensible in later life that even his own doctrine of the righteousness of God was capable of being construed in a sense totally different from that intended by him, and with pernicious results. In the Epistle to the Galatians he had attacked the Law with ferocity, and he had drawn no distinc- tion between ceremonial and moral law. But experience was to teach him that freedom from law can be adopted as a watchw'ord by unsteady spirits, who convert it into licence. In Germany, a generation after the death of Luther, justifica- tion by faith alone had been converted into such an idol that in many quarters there was no longer any dread of certain forms of moral corruption ; and the wiser of Luther's followers had to recog- nize that there is a use of the Law even for the regenerate, to instruct them as to what the will of God is, when once tliey have, through grace, been made willing to do it. St. Paul had never been unaware of this ; but he states it with more clearness and urgency in his later Epistles, where the standard set up tor all who call themselves by the name of Christ is that they be ' furnished com- pletely unto every good work (2 Ti 3").
If the Lutheran Church had to learn by experi- ence that its favourite doctrine could be turned into lasciviousness, the Reformed or Calvinistic Church had no less to learn, in the centurj- after the Reformation, that its favourite doctrine was capable of misuse. Now, election is one of St. Paul's doctrines also ; and he sometimes gives to it very strong expression indeed, as, e.g., in the paragraph about Jacob and Esau in the latter half of the Epistle to the Romans. Nor does he abandon it in his later writings ; but he states it more cautiously, laying emphasis on the choice of God on the part of man which is necessary to salvation as well as the choice of man on the part of God. In the Pastoral Epistles there is a uni- versalism of the Divine love and of the death of Christ (1 Ti Z^-' 4'", 2 Ti 1», Tit 2'-) ; but it is care- fully balanced by the ethical requirementsaddressed to those who hear the gospel.
It may be that the prominent place given in the later Pauline letters to the doctrine of the Church is traceable to the same c:onsiderations and anxieties. This new development is in two direc-
tions : on the one hand, there is a very exalted conception of the Church, ciihiiiiiating in the iiuajje, in Kphesians, of the hiide of Christ, who is to he iiresciitcd to the Bridegroom wilhout spot or wrinkle or any such thing ; and. on the other liand, there is the organization of olhces, elahorated in tlie Pastoral Epistles. Why was St. Tuul so anxious that sucli a lofty view of its own constitu- tion should possess the mind of the Church ? And wliy did he provide that it should be so thoroughly organized ? Is not tlie explanation to be sought in liis growing sense of the perils to which his con- verts were exposed through contact with surround- ing paganism, and especially the orgies connected with the idol-festivals ? Refuge from these tempta- tions of a corrupt society could be found only in a pure society ; and he desired the Church to be a place so attractive that those who had left the world tor it might feel that they had made a good exchange.
There was another aspect of incipient Gnosticism which gave a direction to the Apostle's thinking of Avhich note must be taken. In its dread of matter it instinctively separated the Deity from it as much as possible. Hence fully developed Gnosticism attributed the creation of the material universe to an inferior deity, whom it termed the Demiurge ; and even incipient Gnosticism inter- posed between the Deity and matter a multitude of fantastic creations of the fancy, sometimes con- ceived of as abstractions but at other times im- personated as angels of different ranks. This causes St. Paul, in his later writings, to speak of Jesus Christ as both the author and the end of the universe — ' Of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things' (Ro ll*")— and it is probably this also which leads him to celebrate the Son of God as the Lord of angels and of all the denizens of the spiritual world. Out of such references to supernatural beings there was constructed by Dionysius Areopagiticus an elaborate system of angelology, which was adopted by the theologians of the Middle Ages and deeply attected the cos- mical conceptions of both Dante and Milton. But it is open to question whether St. Paul intended these references to be taken so seriously. AH he intended may have been to say that, whatever principalities and powers there may exist any- where, they are all under the dominion of the Son of God. It is, however, in one of the least polem- ical of his writings that we come upon the ripest expression of such meditations on the transcendence of Christ, viz. Ph 2*''^-, where we read of one 'who, being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men ; and, being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Where- fore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name ; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father' — a passage which, though it presents to scholarship not a few difficulties, has done, and ever will do, much to steady the faith of the Church, in the glory of her Lord.