(5) In I Tim. i :20, mention is made of Hy menxus as a heretic, whom the writer makes Paul say he had excommunicated ; but this is a mis take, for in 2 Tim. ii :17, we find Hymenwus still a member of the church at Ephesus, and such a mistake could not have been made by Paul. Here, however, it is assumed without proof, (1) that the Hymenxus of the one epistle is the same as the Hymenicus of the other ; (2) that being the same, he was still a member of the same church ; and (3) that it was impossible for him, though excommunicated, to have returned as a penitent to the church, and again to have become a plague to it. Here are three hypotheses on which we may account for the fact referred to, and until they be all excluded it will not follow that any blunder is chargeable upon the writer of this epistle.
(6) In i Tim. vi :13, the writer refers to our Lord's good confession before Pontius Pilate. Now of this we have a record in John's Gospel ; but as this was not written in Paul's time, it is urged that this epistle must be ascribed to a later writer. It is easy to obviate any force that may appear to be in this remark by the consideration that all the prominent facts of our Lord's life, and espe cially the circumstances of his death, were famil iarly known by oral communication to all the Christians before the Gospels were written. Though, then, John's Gospel was not extant in Paul's time, the facts recorded by John were well known, and might therefore be very naturally re ferred to in an epistle from one Christian to an other. Of our Lord's confession before Pilate we may readily suppose that Paul, the great advo cate of the spirituality of the Messiah's kingdom, was especially fond of making use.
(7) The writer of this epistle, it is affirmed, utters sentiments in favor of the law which are not Pauline, and teaches the efficacy of good works in such a way as to be incompatible with Paul's doctrine of salvation by grace. This as sertion we may safely meet with a pointed denial. The doctrine of this epistle concerning the law is, that it is good if it be used voiltilcos, as a law, for the purposes which a moral law is designed to serve ; and what is this but the doctrine of the epistle to the Romans and Galatians, where the apostle maintains that in itself and for its own ends the divine law is holy, just, and good, and becomes evil only when put out of its proper place, and used for purposes it was never designed to serve? (Rom. vii :7-t2 ; Gal. iii:2I, etc.) What the writer here teaches concerning good works is also in full harmony with the Apostle Paul's teaching in his acknowledged epistles (comp. Rom. xii, Eph. v and vi, etc.) ; and if in this epistle
there is no formal exposition of the Gospel scheme, but rather a dwelling upon practical du ties, the reason may easily be found in the pe culiar character of this as a pastoral epistle—an epistle of official counsels and exhortations to a minister of Christianity.
(8) De Wette asserts that I Tim. iii :16, bears marks of being a quotation from a confession or symbol of the church, of which there were none in Paul's day. But what marks of this does the passage present ? The answer is, the use of the word honzologonienos, a technical word, and the word used by the ecclesiastical writers to desig nate something in accordance with orthodox doc trine. This is true; but as technical words are first used in their proper sense, and as the proper sense of holnologomenos perfectly suits the pas sage in question, there is no reason for supposing any such later usage as De Wette suggests. Be sides, his argument tells both ways, for one may as well assert that the ecclesiastical usage arose from the terms of this passage, as affirm that the terms of this passage were borrowed from ecclesiastical usage.
(9) The writer of this epistle quotes as a part of Scripture a passage which occurs only in Luke x:7; hut as Luke had not written his Gospel at the time Paul is supposed to have written this epistle, and as it is not the habit of the New Tes tament writers to quote from each other in the way they quote from the Old Testament, we are bound to suppose that this epistle is the produc tion of a later writer. But does this writer quote Luke x :7, in the manner alleged? The passage referred to is in ch. v :18, where we have first a citation from Deut. xxv :4, introduced by the usual formula, 'The Scripture saith;' and then the writer adds, as further confirmatory of his posi tion, the saying of our Lord, which is supposed to be quoted from Luke's Gospel. Now we are not bound to conclude that this latter was ad duced by the writer as a part of Scripture. It may be regarded as a remark of his own, or as some proverbial expression, or as a well-known saying of Christ's, by which he confirms the doc trine he is establishing. \Ve are under no neces sity to extend the formula with which the verse is commenced so as to include in it all that the verse contains. The Kat by itself will not justify this; indeed we may go further, and affirm that the use of Kai alone rather leads to an opposite conclusion, for had the writer intended the latter clause to be regarded as a quotation from Scrip ture as well as the former, he would probably have used some such formula as Kat ircatv (comp. Heb. :13).