The result of this investigation is greatly to increase our confidence in the genuineness of this letter and of all three Pastoral Epistles. We began by treating them as veritable writings of the great Apostle, and a closer acquaintance with them has justified this treatment. Doubts may be raised about everything; but reasonable doubts have their limits. To dispute the authenticity of the Epistles to the Corinthians, Romans, and Galatians is now considered to be a sure proof that the doubter cannot estimate evidence; and we may look forward to the time when the Second Epistle to Timothy will be ranked with those four great Epistles as indisputable. Meanwhile let no student of this letter doubt that in it he is reading the touching words in which the Apostle of the Gentiles gave his last charge to his beloved disciple, and through him to the Christian Church.
[97] Salmon's _Historical Introduction to the New Testament_, p. 426, 3rd ed., to which the writer of this exposition is under great obligations. The book should be in the hands of every student of the N. T.
[98] The striking parallel to this request afforded by that of William Tyndale is pointed out in Farrar's _St. Paul_, ii. p. 571. Tyndale writes from his prison in the Castle of Vilvorden to ask, "idque per Dominum Jesum," for warmer clothing, and above all for his Hebrew Bible, grammar, and dictionary.
_THE APOSTLE FORSAKEN BY MEN BUT STRENGTHENED BY THE LORD.--THE MISSION TO THE GENTILES COMPLETED.--THE SURE HOPE, AND THE FINAL HYMN OF PRAISE._
"At my first defence no man took my part, but all forsook me: may it not be laid to their account. But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me; that through me the message might be fully proclaimed, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. The Lord will deliver me from evil work, and will save me unto His heavenly kingdom: to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen."--2 TIM. iv. 16-18.
There is a general agreement at the present time that Eusebius is in error, when, in a well-known passage in his Ecclesiastical History (II. xxii. 2-7), he refers this "first defence" and the "deliverance out of the lion's mouth" to the first Roman imprisonment and the release which put an end to it, probably A.D. 63. The deliverance does not mean release from prison following upon acquittal, but temporary rescue from imminent danger. Eusebius makes a second mistake in this chapter which is the result of the first error; but an avoidance of the second would have preserved him from the first. He says that the Apostle shows in the Second Epistle to Timothy that only Luke was with him when he wrote, but at his former defence not even he. Now during the first Roman imprisonment St. Paul was not alone, and one of the persons who was with him was Timothy himself, as we see from the opening of the letter to the Philippians. It is, therefore, highly improbable that the Apostle would think it worth while to tell Timothy what took place at the trial which ended the first imprisonment, seeing that Timothy was then in Rome. And even if Timothy had left Rome before the trial came on, which is not very likely, he would long since have heard what took place, both from others and from the Apostle himself. It is obvious that in the present passage St. Paul is giving his disciple information respecting something which has recently taken place, of which Timothy is not likely to have heard.
The value of the witness of Eusebius is not, however, seriously diminished by this twofold mistake. It is clear that he was fully convinced that there were two Roman imprisonments; one early in Nero's reign, when the Emperor was more disposed to be merciful, and one later; and that he was convinced of this on independent grounds, and not because he considered that the genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles would be untenable without the hypothesis of a second imprisonment.