But there are two or three features of resemblance between the style of St. Peter's first epistle and the second which support strongly the genuineness of the latter. The First Epistle has a large proportion of words found nowhere else in the New Testament. There are a score of such words in this short composition. Now the Second Epistle presents us with the same peculiarity in rather larger abundance. There are twenty-four words there which appear in no other New Testament writing. It seems to have been a peculiarity of the writer of both letters to use somewhat uncommon and striking words. Now take the Second Epistle to have been the work of an imitator. He would be sure to notice such a characteristic, and sure also to repeat, for the sake of connexion, some distinctive expressions of the first letter in the second. But the case is much otherwise. There is the same abundance of unusual words in both epistles, but not a single repetition; the same peculiarity is manifest, but displays itself in entirely new material. This is an index of authorship, not of imitation.
There are one or two differences between the two epistles which in their way are of equal interest. The first letter was one of encouragement and consolation; the second is full of warning. Hence, though the coming of the Lord is dwelt on alike in the two, in the former it is set forth as a _revelation_ (1 Peter i. 5), as a day for which believers were looking, and in which their hopes would be realised, and their afflictions at an end; in the second letter the same event is called a coming (παρουσία), an appearing, a presence, but one which will usher in the great and terrible day of the Lord, and be the prelude of judgement to them that have fallen away.
Again, the sufferings of Christ are a theme much dwelt on in the First Epistle, where they are pointed to as the lot which Christians are to expect, and the Lord is the pattern which they are to imitate; in the Second they are hardly noticed. But was there not a cause for such reticence? Was it a time to urge on men the imitation of Christ when the danger was great that they would deny Him altogether?
No doubt many other points of evidence, which are lost to us, were presented to the Fathers of the Laodicæan Council, and with the result that the Second Epistle of St. Peter was received into the Canon side by side with the first. But the three centuries of want of acknowledgement have left their mark on its subsequent history, and many earnest minds have treated it as of less authority than other more accepted portions of the New Testament. Among these is Luther, who speaks of the First Epistle as one of the noblest in the New Testament, but is doubtful about the claims of the Second. Similar was the judgment of Erasmus and of Calvin.
We cannot, however, go back to the evidence produced at Laodicæa. Time has swept that away, but, while doing so, has left us the result thereof; and the acceptance of the Epistle by the Fathers there assembled will be judged by most men to stand in lieu of the evidence. No court of law would permit a decision so authenticated and of such standing to be disturbed or overruled.
And we ourselves can observe some points still which draw to the same conclusion. The letter harmonises in tone with the other New Testament writings, and some of its linguistic peculiarities are strikingly in accord with the universally accepted letter of St. Peter. We are therefore not unwilling, though we have not the early testimony which we could desire, and though the primitive Church held its genuineness for doubtful, to believe that ere this second letter was classed with the other New Testament writings these doubts were cleared away, and would be cleared away for us could we hear all the evidence tendered before those who fixed the contents of the Canon.