Epistles Sentence Examples

A great disappointment, his repulse for the mastership of Balliol, also in 1854, appears to have roused him into the completion of his book on The Epistles of St Paul.

From the epistles of Paul, who thanked God that he spake with tongues more than all or any of his Corinthian converts, we can gather a just idea of how he regarded this gift and of what it really was.

His extant commentaries (those on Canticles, on the Prophets, on the book of Psalms and on the Pauline epistles - the last the most valuable) are among the best performances of the fathers of the church.

Authorities.-St Augustine, Epistles; Codex Theodosianus, edited by Th.

There is little evidence of the imposition of fines as ecclesiastical penalties; but there are references to the practice in the epistles of St Gregory the Great, notably in his instructions to St Augustine.

Let us rather read the Epistles and Gospels.

His first work was an inquiry into the authorship of the Commentary on St Paul's Epistles and the Treatise on Biblical Questions, ascribed to Ambrose and Augustine respectively.

In the salutations of various epistles, he mentions and commends women.

The three epistles mentioned are written to men rather than churches, and to men appointed to certain pastoral work.

They include his "Harangues" and "Remonstrances," the Epistles, the Memoire to Charles IX., a Traite de la reformation de la justice, and his will.

These are the Epistles of James and Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, the Apocalypse of John, and the Epistle to the Hebrews.

The authorship of the epistles is in many cases a matter of subordinate importance; at least for Protestants or for those surrendering Bible infallibility, which Rome can hardly do.

All Cyprian's literary works were written in connexion with his episcopal office; almost all his treatises and many of his letters have the character of pastoral epistles, and their form occasionally betrays the fact that they were intended as addresses.

I also read Tibullus, Catullus, Propertius, Horace (with Dacier's and Torrentius's notes), Virgil, Ovid's Epistles, with l"leziriac's commentary, the Ars amandi and the Elegies; likewise the Augustus and Tiberius of Suetonius, and a Latin translation of Dion Cassius from the death of Julius Caesar to the death of Augustus.

He had previously written his commentaries on the epistles to the Galatians (1865), Philippians (1868) and Colossians (1875), the notes to which were distinguished by sound judgment and enriched from his large store of patristic and classical learning.

Before Lightfoot's time commentaries, especially on the epistles, had not infrequently consisted either of short homilies on particular portions of the text, or of endeavours to enforce foregone conclusions, or of attempts to decide with infinite industry and ingenuity between the interpretations of former commentators.

He continued to work at his editions of the Apostolic Fathers, and in 1885 published an edition of the Epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp, collecting also a large store of valuable materials for a second edition of Clement of Rome, which was published after his death (1st ed., 1869).

His defence of the authenticity of the Epistles of Ignatius is one of the most important contributions to that very difficult controversy.

From this, in the same year, he extracted the versions of the Gospels and Epistles "a l'usage du diocese de Meaux."

A complete translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (he had published six books with the Heroic Epistles some years previously) followed in 1697.

The name of Catholic Epistles is given to those letters (two of Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude) incorporated in the New Testament which (except 2 and 3 John) are not, like those of St Paul, addressed to particular individuals or churches, but to a larger and more indefinite circle of readers.

In one of his epistles he describes how he recovered Quintilian, part of Valerius Flaccus, and the commentaries of Asconius Pedianus at St Gall.

Much of the wisdom of Maecenas probably lives in the Satires and Epistles of Horace.

It has fallen to the lot of no other patron of literature to have his name associated with works of such lasting interest as the Georgics of Virgil, the first three books of Horace's Odes, and the first book of his Epistles.

He goes so far as to say that "the writings of ancient men, who were the founders of the sect" referred to by Philo, may very well have been the Gospels and Epistles (which were not yet written).

It appears to have drawn its title, "To the Ephesians," from one of the churches for which it was intended, perhaps the one from which a copy was secured when Paul's epistles were collected, shortly before or after the year ioo.

Yet the two epistles do not follow the same course of thought, and their contents cannot be successfully exhibited in a common synoptical abstract.

But it must remain possible that contact with new scenes and persons, and especially such controversial necessities as are exemplified in Colossians, stimulated Paul to work out more fully, under the influence of Alexandrian categories, lines of thought of which the germs and origins must be admitted to have been present in earlier epistles.

It cannot be maintained that the ideas of Ephesians directly contradict either in formulation or in tendency the thought of the earlier epistles.

He is equally full in his quotations from the New Testament, for he quotes from all the books except the epistle to Philemon, the second epistle of St Peter, and the epistle of St James, and he quotes from The Shepherd of Hermas, and the epistles of Clemens Romanus and of Barnabas, as inspired.

The only work published by Copernicus on his own initiative was a Latin version of the Greek Epistles of Theophylact (Cracow, 1509).

Aphraates cites two passages from 3 Corinthians as words of the apostle, and Ephraem expounded them in his commentary on the Pauline Epistles.

The genuineness of this epistle stands or falls with that of the Ignatian epistles.

Pauline Epistles to the Laodiceans and the Alexandrians.- The first of these is found only in Latin.

Thus St Ignatius in writing to the Romans never refers to any presiding bishop, and somewhat earlier Clement of Rome in his epistles to the Corinthians uses the terms presbyter and episcopus interchangeably.

His last published work was his Epistles, in 5 vols.

Amongst other important codices are the Jorddnszky Codex (1516-1519), an incomplete copy of the translation of the Bible made by Ladislaus Batori, who died about 1456; and the Dobrentei or Gyulafehervdr Codex (1508), containing a version of the Psalter, Song of Solomon, and the liturgical epistles and gospels, copied by Bartholomew Halabori from an earlier translation (KSrnyei, A Magyar nemzeti irodalomtortenet vdzlata, 1861, p. 30).

Among the most noteworthy works of Bared are the Uj mertekre vett kulomb versek (Kassa, 1777), comprising hexameter verses, Horatian odes, distichs, epistles and epigrams; the Paraszti Majorsag (Kassa, 1779-1780), an hexameter version of Vaniere's Praedium rusticum; and an abridged version of "Paradise Lost," contained in the Koltemenyes munkaji (Komarom, 1802).

The " classical " school reached its highest state of culture under Virag, whose poetical works, consisting chiefly of Horatian odes and epistles, on account of the perfection of their style, obtained for him the name of the " Magyar Horace."

The history of the Peshitta rendering of the Acts and Epistles is less clear; apparently the earliest Syrian writers used a text somewhat different from that which afterwards became the standard.'

He was the author of many commentaries, homilies, epistles, canons and hymns.

Timothy I., catholicus 779-823, wrote synodical epistles and other works bearing on church law.'

He based his teaching on the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, repudiating other scriptures; and taking the Pauline name of Silvanus, organized churches in Castrum Colonias and Cibossa, which he called Macedonia, after Paul's congregation of that 1 In the Armenian Letterbook of the Patriarchs (Tiflis, 1901), p. 73.

He edited and revised Matthew (the 9th ed., 1897), Mark and Luke (the 9th ed., 1901), John (the 9th ed., 1902), Romans (the 9th ed., 1899), the Epistles to Timothy and Titus (the 7th ed., 1902), Hebrews (the 6th ed., 1897), the Epistles of John (the 6th ed., 1900).

That neither this, nor any other, companion of Paul can have been the author of the whole work is supposed to follow both from its theological temper and from discrepancies between its statements and those of the Pauline Epistles on matters of fact.

Indeed it is easier to explain some of the differences between the Acts and St Paul's Epistles on this assumption than on that of authorship by a writer who would have felt more dependent upon the information which might be gathered from those Epistles, and who would have been more likely to have had a collection of them at hand, if his work was composed c. A.D.

Philippians is thus the last extant letter we possess from Paul, unless some of the notes embedded in the pastoral epistles are to be dated subsequent to its composition.

The main argument for putting it earlier is derived from the admitted affinities between it and Romans, the Colossian and Ephesian epistles containing, it is held, a more advanced christology (so Lightfoot especially, and Hort, Judaistic Christianity, pp. 115-129).

Hence on the one hand it is unreal to lay stress on coincidences with Romans, as if these necessarily implied that both epistles must have been composed shortly after one another, while again the further stage of thought on Christ and the Church, which is evident in Colossians, does not prove that the latter must have followed the former.

Upon the whole, the internal evidence of the epistle strongly favours its position as the last of the captivity epistles.

The hiatus is striking, but it cannot be held to necessitate an editorial dovetailing of two separate epistles.

Of his Epistles there is one MS., viz.

The general results of the last fifty years of the first period (130 to 80) may be thus summed up. In poetry we have the satires of Lucilius, the tragedies of Accius and of a few successors among the Roman aristocracy, who thus exemplified the affinity of the Roman stage to Roman oratory; various annalistic poems intended to serve as continuations of the great poem of Ennius; minor poems of an epigrammatic and erotic character, unimportant anticipations of the Alexandrian tendency operative in the following period; works of criticism in trochaic tetrameters by Porcius Licinus and others, forming part of the critical and grammatical movement which almost from the first accompanied the creative movement in Latin literature, and which may be regarded as rude precursors of the didactic epistles that Horace devoted to literary criticism.

As Cicero tones down his oratory in his moral treatises, so Horace tones down the fervour of his lyrical utterances in his Epistles, and thus produces a style combining the ease of the best epistolary style with the grace and concentration of poetry - the style, as it has been called, of "idealized common sense," that of the urbanus and cultivated man of the world who is also in his hours of inspiration a genuine poet.

His arguments and exhortations may be gathered from many of his epistles and from his tract Adversus Helvidium, in which he defends the perpetual virginity of Mary against Helvidius, who maintained that she bore children to Joseph.

With the conclusion of these epistles the Apocalypse proper really begins.

The testimony which it affords to the Ignatian Epistles is so striking that those scholars who regard these letters as spurious are bound to reject the Epistle of Polycarp altogether, or at any rate to look upon it as largely interpolated.

The rehabilitation of the Ignatian letters in modern times has, however, practically destroyed the attack on the Epistles of Polycarp. The external evidence in its favour is of considerable weight.

It shows a fine combination of mildness with severity; the language is simple but powerful, and, while there is undoubtedly a lack of original ideas, the author shows remarkable skill in weaving together pregnant sentences and impressive warnings selected from the apostolic epistles and the first Epistle of Clement.

In these circumstances it would never have occurred to any one to doubt the genuineness of the epistle or to suppose that it had been interpolated, but for the fact that in several passages reference is made to Ignatius and his epistles."

Some modern scholars (among whom Harnack was formerly numbered, though he has modified his views on the point) feel a difficulty about the peremptory tone which Ignatius adopts towards Polycarp. There was some force in this argument when the Ignatian Epistles were dated about 140, as in that case Polycarp would have been an old and venerable man at the time.

For students of Latin literature, the chief interest of studying the fragments of Lucilius consists in the light which they throw on the aims and methods of Horace in the composition of his satires, and, though not to the same extent, of his epistles.

The first prominent French scholar to " preach Christ from the sources " was Jacques Lefebvre of Etaples, who in 1512 published a new Latin translation of the epistles of St Paul.

Besides The Didache and the Epistles of Clement it contains several spurious Ignatian epistles.

The whole work was in the hands of the writer of the seventh book of the Apostolic Constitutions, who embodies almost every sentence of it, interspersing it with passages of Scripture, and modifying the precepts of the second part to suit a later (4th-century) stage of church development; this writer was also the interpolator of the Epistles of Ignatius, and belonged to the Syrian Church.

In the beginning of 1519 he began a series of discourses on St Matthew's Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Pauline epistles; and with these it may be said that the Reformation was fairly begun in Zurich.

He had made a copy of St Paul's epistles and committed them to memory, and from this arsenal of Scripture he attacked the unrighteousness of the state no less than the superstition of the Church.

Epistles, show many preformations of Johannine phrases and ideas.

Its original members, those still best entitled to their name in any strict sense, are epistles, and in this respect also most akin to Apostolic writings.

But one and all are influenced by study of apostolic epistles, and witness to the impression which these produced on the men of the next generation.

These sub-apostolic epistles are veritable "human documents," with the personal note running through them.

This is what the Gospel of Christ aims chiefly at producing as its proper fruit; and the Apostolic Fathers would have desired no better record than that they were themselves genuine "epistles of Christ."

Some went so far as to give up their accustomed vocations, and with such Paul had to expostulate in his epistles to the Thessalonians.

The earliest distinct evidence of the organization of Churches under a single head is found in the Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch, which date from the latter part of the reign of Trajan (c. 116).

Documents of various kinds, including gospels and apostolic epistles, circulated widely.

It was thus that St Paul came to write his two epistles to the Thessalonians, the oldest Christian documents that we possess.

And these earliest epistles are just the substitute for his personal presence, advice which he took occasion to send to his converts after he had left them.

Both Epistles to the Thessalonians have for their object to calm somewhat the excited expectations of which we have spoken.

Nearest in character to the Thessalonian Epistles are the two to Corinth, which have perhaps an interval of a year and a half between them.

The development of doctrine in St Paul's epistles is due in part to the gradual subsiding of the eschatological temper, but even more to the growth of controversy.

It is to be noted that the chronological grouping of the epistles by minute comparison of style is apt to be deceptive; resemblances of this kind are due more to similarity of subject than to proximity in date.

It showed itself strongly in the epistles of the next group, especially Ephesians and Colossians.

These epistles took their form at once from a natural progression of thought and from a new phase of controversy, a sort of Gnosticizing theory, or theories, which perverted Christian practice and impaired the supremacy of Christ by placing other beings or entities by His side.

The predominance of this somewhat recondite teaching gave to these epistles even more the character of treatises, which in the case of Ephesians is further enhanced by the fact that it is probably a circular letter addressed not to a single church but to a group of churches.

The above sketch of the growth and general character of the Pauline Epistles is based upon the hypothesis that all thirteen are genuine.

But it should be admitted that, especially in regard to Ephesians and Pastorals, there is a perceptible difference, (a) in style, and (b) in characteristic subject matter, from the standard epistles.

It might well be believed that the change in the so-called Epistles of the Imprisonment from the earlier epistles was due in part to the physical effects of prolonged confinement, as compared with the free, varied and open life and exciting controversies of earlier years.

An argument in favour of the genuineness of the epistles may be derived from the fact that each of the doubtful epistles is connected with others that are not doubtful by subtle links both of style and thought.

If the reasons suggested above are not adequate, then we must set down the questioned epistles to some disciple of St Paul, who has carried the ideas and principles of his master a step farther or has applied them to a different set of problems and conditions.

The Catholic Epistles were so called in the first instance from their wider and more indefinite address; they were intended for Christians generally, or over some wide area, rather than for a particular church or individual.

As applied to a class of epistles, the title dates from Eusebius, early in the 4th century; the epithet is given to single epistles by Origen, and is found as far back as the end of the 2nd century.

This group of epistles practically continues and supplements the work of the epistles of St Paul.

The three Johannine epistles may be more conveniently treated under the next head.

Even in the case of the two more important epistles, i Peter and James, we have to add the qualification " if genuine," but rather perhaps because of the persistence with which they are challenged than because of inherent defect of attestation.

Perhaps the position of these two epistles might be described as not unlike that of Colossians and Ephesians.

The Gospel and Epistles that bear the name of John, and the Apocalypse, form a group of writings that stand very much by themselves and are still the subject of active discussion.

Can the writer of the Apocalypse be the same as the writer of the Gospel and Epistles ?

It is fortunate that this should be so clearly marked in his epistles, because it enables us to argue by analogy to the other writers.

The earliest example of this tendency is in the case of the Pauline Epistles.

The list recognized four Gospels, Acts, thirteen epistles of Paul, two epistles of John, Jude, Apocalypse of John and (as the text stands) of Peter; there is no mention of Hebrews or (apparently) of 3 John or Epistles of Peter, where it is possible - we cannot say more - that the silence as to t Peter is accidental; the Shepherd of Hermas on account of its date is admitted to private, but not public, reading; various writings associated with Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides and Montanus are condemned.

This Church at first acknowledged only the Gospel (in the form of Tatian's Diatessaron), Acts and the Epistles of Paul.

In all other churches the four Gospels, Acts and Epistles of Paul are fixed, with the addition in nearly all of i Peter, i John.

He makes three classes; the first, including the Gospels, Acts, Epistles of Paul, i Peter, t John, is acknowledged; to these, if one likes, one may add the Apocalypse.

The first method distinguishes between uncial or majuscule, and cursive or minuscule; the second between papyrus, vellum or parchment, and paper (for further details see Manuscript and Palaeography); and the third distinguishes mainly between Gospels, Acts and Epistles (with or without the Apocalypse), New Testaments (the word in this connexion being somewhat broadly interpreted), lectionaries and commentaries.

The text is the best example of the so-called Neutral Text, except in the Pauline epistles, where it has a strong " Western " element.

It has, in the main, a Neutral text, less mixed in the Epistles than that of B, but not so pure in the Gospels.

The case for Alexandria depends partly on the orthography of B, which resembles Graeco-Coptic papyri, partly on the order of the Pauline epistles.

At present, both in N and B, Hebrews is placed after 2 Thess., but in B there is also a continuous numeration of sections throughout the epistles, according to which I to 58 cover Romans to Galatians, but Ephesians, the next epistle, begins with 70 instead of 59, and the omitted section numbers are found in Hebrews.

This older order of the epistles is only found elsewhere in the Sahidic version of the New Testament, and it was probably therefore the old Egyptian or Alexandrian order.

In the New Testament it has in the gospels a late text of Westcott and Hort's " Syrian " type, but in the epistles there is a strongly marked " Alexandrian " element.

It contains the whole of the Pauline epistles with a few lacunae, and has a famous stichometric list of books prefixed in another hand to Hebrews.

Palatinus (e) of the 5th century at Vienna, both of which are imperfect, especially k, which, however, is far the superior in quality; in the Acts and Catholic epistles by cod.

In the Catholic epistles it is found in cod.

In the Pauline epistles it is doubtful whether it is extant at all, though some have found it in the cod.

He did this fully and carefully in the gospels, but somewhat superficially in the epistles.

It seems certain that the Old Syriac version also contained the Acts and Pauline epistles, as Aphraates and Ephraem agree in quoting a text which differs from the Peshito, but no MSS.

It seems probable that the Old Syriac version did not contain the Catholic epistles, and as these are found in the Peshito they were presumably added by Rabbula.

A comparison of the Peshito with quotations in Aphraates and Ephraem shows that Rabbula revised the text of the Acts and Pauline epistles, but in the absence of MSS.

Hall's Williams MS. (Baltimore, 1886); in the European editions of the Syriac Bible so far as the minor Catholic epistles are concerned; in Hermathena, vol.

The general character of the version is late, but there are many places in which the Old Syriac basis can be recognized, and in the Acts and Epistles, where the Old Syriac is no longer extant, this is sometimes very valuable evidence.

Whatever view be taken of the provenance of Codex Vaticanus it is plain that its archetype had the Pauline epistles in a peculiar order which is only found in Egypt, and so far no one has been able to discover any non-Alexandrian writer who used the Neutral text.

The discoveries of papyri in Upper Egypt during recent years, containing original letters written by persons of various classes and in some cases contemporary with the Epistles of the New Testament, have immensely increased our knowledge of the Greek of the period, and have cleared up not a few difficulties of language and expression.

The new view clears away some manifest difficulties in the reconciliation of the Epistle and the Acts, and the early date for Galatians in relation to the other Pauline epistles is not so improbable as it may seem; but the chronology still appears more satisfactory on the older view, which enables the conversion to be placed at least three years later than on the alternative theory.

Here in 1 754 he became professor extraordinarius of theology, and three years later received an ordinary professorship. He lectured on dogmatics, church history, ethics, polemics, natural theology, symbolics, the epistles of Paul, Christian antiquities, historical theological literature, ecclesiastical law and the fathers, and took an active interest in the work of the Gottinger Societdt In 1766 he was appointed professor primarius.

The translation of these Gospels as well as of the Epistles referred to above is stiff and awkward, the translator being evidently afraid of any departure from the Latin text of his original.

A version of the Acts and the Catholic Epistles completes the number of the New Testament books translated in the northern parts of England.

Thus Richard Rolle's version of the Psalms was executed for a nun; so was in all likelihood the southern version of the epistles referred to above.

The text of the Gospels was extracted from the Commentary upon them by Wycliffe, and to these were added the Epistles, the Acts and the Apocalypse, all now translated anew.

To counteract and supersede all these unauthorized editions, Tyndale himself brought out his own revision of the New Testament with translations added of all the Epistles of the Old Testament after the use of Salisbury.

During this time he wrote several epistles which were dispersed in various parts of the kingdom.

The occasional coincidences between the pastorals and Barnabas or Clemens Romanus do not prove anything more than a common milieu of thought, but the epistles were plainly familiar to Polycarp, who alludes to i Tim.

Mani himself composed a large number of works and epistles, which were in great part still known to the Mahommedan historians, but are now mostly lost.

Besides these principal works, Mani also wrote a large number of smaller treatises and epistles.

The practice of writing epistles was continued by his successors.

Miller's translations includes a long extract of Mani's book called Schapurakan, parts of his Evangelium, and epistles, with liturgies, hymns and prayers, for Tatar Khans who espoused the faith in Khorasan.

A notable one was the Epistles of Phalaris, a late Greek forgery, demonstrated to be such by Bentley in a treatise which is a model of what such a demonstration should be.

His Commentaries on St John's Gospel (1881), on the Epistle to the Hebrews (1889) and the Epistles of St John (1883) resulted from his public lectures.

The Epistles of the New Testament contain no indications of the existence of any written record of the life and teaching of Christ.

We wait, however, for the Epistles of his captivity at Rome to find the full meaning of the idea of the church dawning u p on his imagination.

The fact of his being addressed by Ovid in one of the epistles Ex Ponto shows that he was alive long after Aemilius Macer.

Like the epistles to Timothy, the Epistle to Titus thus belongs to a phase of the apostle's life for which we possess no other contemporary evidence.

The common style of the epistles forbids any dispersion of them over a term of years.

Commonly, however, the epistle has been edited and criticized along with the epistles of Timothy.

While John's Apocalypse is distinctly eschatological, the Epistles and the Gospels often give these conceptions an ethical and spiritual import, without, however, excluding the eschatological.

His publications were connected with biblical criticism and interpretation, some of them being for popular use and others more strictly scientific. To the former class belong the Biblical Cyclopaedia, his edition of Cruden's Concordance, his Early Oriental History, and his discourses on the Divine Love and on Paul the Preacher; to the latter his commentaries on the Greek text of St Paul's epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians and Galatians, published at intervals in four volumes.

He was a passionate Ciceronian, and perhaps his chief contributions to scholarship are the corrected editions of Cicero's letters and orations, his own epistles in a Ciceronian style, and his Latin version of Demosthenes.

It is true that presbyters are not mentioned in the genuine Epistles of St Paul, but there are hints that similar officers existed in some of the churches founded by the apostle.

The first trace of this is to be found in the Epistles of Ignatius which prove that by the year 115 "the three orders" as they were afterwards called - bishop, presbyters and deacons - already existed, not indeed universally, but in a large proportion of the churches.

Next the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul are to be read, and finally the four Gospels by a deacon or a priest.

Consequently his commentary on the epistle to the Romans, mentioned by the historian Socrates, and his epistles, mentioned by Philostorgius and Photius, are no longer extant.

Pope's admirable imitations of Horace's Satires and Epistles had recently appeared, were in every hand, and were by many readers thought superior to the originals.

The earliest witness to a residence of Peter in Rome is probably I Peter, for (see Peter, Epistles Of) it is probable that the reference to Babylon ought to be interpreted as meaning Rome.

Even the silence of Paul in the epistles of the captivity proves nothing except that Peter was not then present; the same is true of 2 Tim.

His name is associated with that of Paul in the opening salutations of both epistles to the Thessalonians, the second epistle to the Corinthians, and those to the Philippians and Colossians.

On the basis of the epistles of Paul to Timothy, Timothy is traditionally represented as bishop of Ephesus, and tradition also tells that he suffered under Domitian.

Horace (Epistles, ii.) criticizes his old schoolmaster and describes him as plagosus (a flogger), and Orbilius has become proverbial as a disciplinarian pedagogue.

Thus their Syrian origin is manifest, the more so that in the Syriac, MS. they are appended to the New Testament, like the better-known epistles of Clement in the Codex Alexandrinus.

Probably these epistles did not originally bear Clement's name at all, but formed a single epistle addressed to ascetics among an actual circle of churches.

Such a view finds support also in the New Testament canon implied in these epistles.

During his residence there he published his Memoir of his father (185r), and completed his Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians (1855).

Olshausen's commentary, himself writing the volumes on the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Johannine Epistles, and Revelation.

The evidence to be collected from his epistles generally must not detain us here, but we may glance for a moment at this one letter, because it contains what appears to be the first mention of Jesus Christ in the literature of the world.

Besides he believed that he had been specially set apart to lecture on the Holy Scriptures, and he began by commenting on the Psalms and on the Epistles of St Paul.

Among his many theological works may be mentioned An Exposition of the Epistles to the Seven Churches of Asia (1877), The Spirits in Prison (1884), "The Book of Proverbs" (which he annotated in the Speaker's Commentary), the "Synoptic Gospels, Acts, and II.

The first volume contained the first three Gospels, synoptically arranged; the second, the Epistles and the book of Revelation.

Three Epistles on the death of Martin (ad Eusebium, ad Aurelium diaconum, ad Bassulam) complete the list of Severus' genuine works.

In this Baur attempts to prove that the false teachers mentioned in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus are the Gnostics, particularly the Marcionites, of the second century, and consequently that the Epistles were produced in the middle of this century in opposition to Gnosticism.

He next proceeded to investigate the Pauline Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles in the same manner, publishing his results in 1845 under the title Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi, sein Leben and Wirken, seine Briefe and seine Lehre.

In this he contends that only the Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians and Romans are genuinely Pauline, and that the Paul of Acts is a different person from the Paul of these genuine Epistles, the author being a Paulinist who, with an eye to the different parties in the Church, is at pains to represent Peter as far as possible as a Paulinist and Paul as far as possible as a Petrinist.

There is a Stoic element in the ethic of the Pauline epistles, but the theological affinity that the Johannine gospel, with its background of philosophic ideas, exhibits to Platonic and Neoplatonist teaching caused the effort at absorption to be directed rather in that direction.

He was appointed regent, or professor, of philosophy in the college of Montaigu; and there he was a contemporary of Erasmus, who in two epistles has spoken of him in the highest terms. When William Elphinstone, bishop of Aberdeen, was laying his plans for the foundation of the university of Aberdeen (King's College) he made Boece his chief adviser; and the latter was persuaded, after receipt of the papal bull erecting the university (1494), to be the first principal.

In our earliest sources - the epistles of St Paul - Christ is the pre-existent man from heaven, who had there existed in the form of God, and had come to earth by a voluntary act of self-humiliation.

With it, the Pauline Epistles are of priceless historical value; without it, they would remain bafflingly fragmentary and incomplete, often even misleading.

What is clear is that such lack of formal accord as here exists between Acts and the Epistles, tells against its author's dependence on the latter, and so favours his having been a comrade of Paul himself.

Volter, who applies this method to the other Pauline epistles, admits that Galatians,whether authentic or not, is substantially a literary unity (Paulus and seine Briefe, 1905, pp. 2 29-285).

The posthumous value placed on a great man's letters would naturally lead to the production of epistles, which might be written to set forth the views of a person or a school, either genuinely or as forgeries under some eminent name.

Pseudonymous epistles were especially numerous under the early Roman empire, and mainly attached themselves to the names of Plato, Demosthenes, Aristotle and Cicero.

Both letters and epistles have come down to us in considerable variety and extent from the ancient world.

Some of the letters of Cicero are rather epistles, since they were meant ultimately for the general eye.

It is less to be wondered at that we have a large collection of ancient epistles, especially in the realm of magic and religion, for epistles were meant to live, were published in several copies, and were not a difficult form of literary effort.

In the later Roman period and into the middle ages, formal epistles were almost a distinct branch of literature.

The ten books of Symmachus' Epistolae, so highly esteemed in the cultured circles of the 4th century, may be contrasted with the less elegant but more forceful epistles of Jerome.

The distinction between letters and epistles has particular interest for the student of early Christian literature.

The books bearing the names of James, Peter and Jude, together with the Pastorals (though these may contain fragments of genuine Pauline letters) and the Apocalypse, he regards as epistles.

In the following centuries we have the valuable epistles of Cyprian, of Gregory Nazianzen (to Cledonius on the Apollinarian controversy), of Basil (to be classed rather as letters), of Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine and Jerome.

The encyclical letters of the Roman Catholic Church are epistles, even more so than bulls, which are usually more special in their destination.

The Epistolae obscurorum virorum have to some extent a counterpart in the Epistles of Martin Marprelate.

Examples of the work in this direction of Ovid, Claudian, Ausonius and other late Latin poets have been preserved, but it is particularly those of Horace which have given this character to the epistles in verse which form so very characteristic a section of French poetry.

We pass the witty epistles of Scarron and Voiture, to reach those of Boileau, whose epistles, twelve in number, are the classic examples of this form of verse in French literature; they were composed at different dates between 1668 and 1695.

In England the verse-epistle was first prominently employed by Samuel Daniel in his "Letter from Octavia to Marcus Antonius" (1599), and later on, more legitimately, in his "Certain Epistles" (1601-1603).

He was supported by Ben Jonson, who has some fine Horatian epistles in his Forests (1616) and his Underwoods.

At the close of the 17th century Dryden greatly excelled in this class of poetry, and his epistles to Congreve (1694) and to the duchess of Ormond (1700) are among the most graceful and eloquent that we possess.

Among the epistles of Gay, one rises to an eminence of merit, that called "Mr Pope's welcome from Greece," written in 1720.

But the great writer of epistles in English is Pope himself, to whom the glory of this kind of verse belongs.

It is, however, to be noted that Shelley's "Letter to Maria Gisborne" (1820), Keats's "Epistle to Charles Clarke" (1816), and Landor's "To Julius Hare" (1836), in spite of their romantic colouring, are genuine Horatian epistles and of the pure Augustan type.

But Daniel employs rime royal and terza rima, while some modern epistles have been cast in short iambic rhymed measures or in blank verse.

From these works the contents of the Marcionite Gospel, and also the text of Paul's epistles in Marcion's recension, can be settled with tolerable accuracy.

The words and phrases which are common to the pastorals and the rest of the Pauline epistles are neither so characteristic nor so numerous as those peculiar to the former, and the data of style may be summed up in the verdict that they point to a writer who, naturally reproducing Paul's standpoint as far as possible, and acquainted with his epistles, yet betrays the characteristics of his later milieu in expressions as well as in ideas.'

Ngeli (Der Wortschatz des Apostels Paulus, 1905, pp. 85 seq.), whose opinion is all the more significant on this point that he refuses to admit any linguistic features adverse to the Pauline authorship of the other epistles.

A number of Latinisms, unexampled in the rest of Paul's epistles, occur within the pastorals; whole families of new words, especially composite words (often compounded with a-privative, BEO-, KaXo -, 5 awcPpo -, 4cXo -), emerge with others, e.g.

Nor can it be argued that the characteristics of the pastorals are those of private letters; they are not private, nor even semi-private as they stand; besides, the only private note from Paul's hand (Philemon) bears no traces of the special diction exhibited in the epistles to Timothy and Titus.

When the epistles were arranged for the canon, it was natural to put 2 Tim.

We may also mention Cupido Cruciatus, Cupid on the cross; Technopaegion, a literary trifle consisting of a collection of verses ending in monosyllables; Eclogarum Liber, on astronomical and astrological subjects; Epistolae, including letters to Paulinus and Symmachus; lastly, Praefatiunculae, three poetical epistles, one to the emperor Theodosius.

But the fact that Irenaeus thought of him as Polycarp's contemporary and "a man of the old time" (apXaaos avilp), together with the affinity between the religious tendencies described in Papias's Preface (as quoted by Eusebius) and those reflected in the Epistles of Polycarp and Ignatius, all point to his having flourished in the first quarter of the 2nd century.

They have none of the individuality and traits of personal character discernible in the persons addressed by Horace in his Satires and Epistles.

Perhaps the truest and most feeling human documents of the century are the five epistles written by Marianna Alcoforado (q.v.) known to history as the Letters of a Portuguese Nun.

The most considered poets of the day joined the Arcadia and Lyric individually wrote much excellent verse, but they Latin authors were the models they chose, and Gargao, the most prominent Arcadian, composed the Cantata de Dido, a gem of ancient art, as well as some charming sonnets to friends and elegant odes and epistles.

Later on, however, his own claim told on the Church's mind, when his epistles were read in church as a collection styled simply "the Apostle."

He is also wrongly described as a relative of Archbishop Abbot, from whom he acknowledges very gratefully, in the first of his epistles dedicatory of A Hand of Fellowship to Helpe Keepe out Sinne and Antichrist (1623, 4to), that he had "received all" his "worldly maintenance," as well as "best earthly countenance" and "fatherly incouragements."

The epistles, according to Chubb, contain errors of fact, false interpretations of the Old Testament, and sometimes disfigurement of religious truth.

The only tenable line of argument, in the present state of criticism, is to regard their phenomena as due to compilation, at the time when the canon (perhaps of Paul's epistles) was first formed.

To a church of this kind, in the capital of the Empire, Paul writes out his gospel more fully than in any other of his extant epistles.

Lightfoot's posthumous fragment (Notes on Epistles of St Paul, 18 95, pp. 2 37-3 0 5) unfortunately breaks off at vii.

He edited for Sebastian Gryphius, in the single year 1532, the medical Epistles of Giovanni Manardi, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, with the Ars Parva of Galen, and an edition of two supposed Latin documents, which, however, happened unluckily to be forgeries.

This, like the scandal concerning Margaret and Suffolk, is baseless; the tradition, however, continued and found expression in the Mirror for Magistrates and in Drayton's Heroical Epistles, as well as in Shakespeare's Henry VI.

Most of what the Fathers narrate of Cerdo's tenets has probably been transferred to him from his famous pupil Marcion, like whom he is said to have rejected the Old Testament and the New, except part of Luke's Gospel and of Paul's Epistles.

But he chanced upon some of Zwingli's works and Bullinger's commentaries on St Paul's epistles; and after some molestation in England and some correspondence with Bullinger on the lawfulness of complying against his conscience with the established religion, he determined to secure what property he could and take refuge on the continent.

Petrarch's inner life after this date is mainly occupied with the passion which he celebrated in his Italian poems, and with the friendships which his Latin epistles dimly reveal to us.

On his return to Avignon he engaged in public affairs, pleaded the cause of the Scaligers in their lawsuit with the Rossi for the lordship of Parma, and addressed two poetical epistles to Pope Benedict XII.

It is much to be regretted that Petrarch found the precious MS. so late in life, when the style of his own epistles had been already modelled upon that of Seneca and St Augustine.

Petrarch remained an incurable rhetori cian; and, while he stigmatized the despots in his ode to Italy and in his epistles to the emperor he accepted their hospitality.

It was in this capacity of an independent man of letters, highly placed and favoured at one of the most wealthy courts of Europe, that he addressed epistles to the emperor Charles IV.

For him the authors of the Greek and Latin world were living men - more real, in fact, than those with whom he corresponded; and the rhetorical epistles he addressed to Cicero, Seneca and Varro prove that he dwelt with them on terms of sympathetic intimacy.

His eclogues and epistles and the epic of Africa, on which he set such store, exhibit a comparatively limited command of Latin metre.

Twelve Eclogues and three books of Epistles in verse close the list.

That a learned man like Hippolytus should refer a work which contains quotations from the Epistles and Gospels to Simon Magus, who was probably older than Jesus Christ, shows the extent to which men can be blinded by religious bigotry.

It is at least an open question whether the superscription (connected with that of Jude) be not a later conjecture prefixed by some compiler of the catholic epistles, but of the late date implied in our interpretation of ver.

The prolonged effort, mainly of English scholarship, to vindicate the superscription, even on the condition of assuming priority to the Pauline epistles, grows only increasingly hopeless with increasing knowledge of conditions, linguistic and other, in that early period.

The connexions with the Pauline epistles are conclusive for a date later than the death of James; those with Clement and Hermas are perhaps sufficient to date it as prior to the former, and suggest Rome as the place of origin.

Duchesne, Bulletin critique, 1889, pp. 41-48; for the Epistles see Apocryphal Literature, sect.

Some of these pious epistles were printed by Izaak Walton.

Donne soon after formed part of the brilliant assemblage which Lucy, countess of Bradford, gathered around her at Twickenham; we possess several of the verse epistles he addressed to this lady.

His collected works appeared at Mainz in 1607, and include, besides his theologico-irenical pieces, a collection of Epistles, a treatise on education (first published in 1 533), and the Phaedrus, a defence of philosophy, written in 1538.

At least half of the canons are derived from earlier constitutions, and probably not many of them are the actual productions of the compiler, whose aim was to gloss over the real nature of the Constitutions, and secure their incorporation with the Epistles of Clement in the New Testament of his day.

The Codex Alexandrinus does indeed append the Clementine Epistles to its text of the New Testament.

Temple's praise of Phalaris led to an Oxford edition of the Epistles nominally edited by Charles Boyle.

Robertson's published works include five volumes of sermons, two volumes of expository lectures, on Genesis and on the epistles to the Corinthians, a volume of miscellaneous addresses, and an Analysis of "In Memoriam."

Henry also wrote epistles to Henry I.

A book, De miraculis, composed of extracts from Bede, was appended along with these three epistles to the later recensions of the Historia.

There are other books in the New Testament that bear the same impress, the epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians, and to a much greater degree the epistle to the Hebrews.

Traces of a Jewish Docetism are to be found in Philo; and in the Christian form it is generally supposed to be combated in the writings of John, 2 and more formally in the epistles of Ignatius.

The most extravagant estimate of all was that of Whiston, who calls them "the most sacred standard of Christianity, equal in authority to the Gospels themselves, and superior in authority to the epistles of single apostles, some parts of them being our Saviour's own original laws delivered to the apostles, and the other parts the public acts of the apostles" (Historical preface to Primitive Christianity Revived, pp. 85-86).

The third section consists of the Apostolic Canons already referred to, the last and most significant of which places the Constitutions and the two epistles of Clement in the canon of Scripture, and omits the Apocalypse.

Moreover, the spurious Ignatian epistles, which are also Syrian, depend throughout upon the Constitutions.

It was long ago noticed that PseudoClement bears a very close resemblance to Pseudo-Ignatius, the interpolator of the Ignatian Epistles in the longer Greek recension.

It seems clear then that the compiler was a Syrian, and that he also wrote the spurious Ignatian epistles; he was likewise probably a semi-Arian of the school of Lucian of Antioch.

He led the way in the task of discovering the origin of the Gospels, the Epistles, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse.

In later times, when Paulinism revived, the epistles spoke for themselves, though they were not always correctly understood.

Besides the teaching of Jesus (best preserved in the first three gospels) and the teaching of Paul (in six, ten, or thirteen epistles), the recent " science " of New Testament Contents of New theology finds other types of doctrine.

The Johannine Gospel and Epistles are later than Paulinism, and presuppose its leading or less startling positions.

Possibly the Pastoral Epistles show the same process.

On the same principle the four principal Pauline epistles were regarded as forgeries of the 2nd century.

The writer of Mark's gospel was "an Italian, at home both in Rome and Alexandiria"; that of Matthew's gospel "a Roman, nourished by the spirit of Seneca"; The Pauline epistles were written in the West in antagonism to the Paul of the Acts, and so on.

Of these views the former is the more catholic, more universally present in the Christian consciousness; the latter more deeply penetrates the mystery of the Atonement, as expounded in the Pauline epistles.

Odd afterwards translated the Psalms, and several devotional works of the day, Corvinus's Epistles, &c. He was made lawman of the north and west, and died from a fall in the Laxa in Kios, June 1556.

He at once began to expound the epistles of St Paul in the church of St Pierre, and after about a year was also elected preacher by the magistrates with the consent of the people, an office which he would not accept until it had been repeatedly pressed upon him.

The Novatian controversy can be advantageously studied in the Epistles of Cyprian.

The epistles of Pope Siricius (who wished to stand well with the people) are full of scorn for these ascetics, and the Leonine sacramentary contains prayers which severely denounce them.

The six epistles are also forgeries; they were used by the composer of the twelve epistles which bear the name of Aeschines.

According to Blass, the second and third epistles and the exordia are genuine.

Rollock wrote Commentaries on the Epistles tc the Ephesians (1590) and Thessalonians (1598) and Hebrews (1605), the book of Daniel (1591), the Gospel of St John (1599) and some of the Psalms (1598); an analysis of the Epistle to the Romans (1594), and Galatians (1602); also Questions and Answers on the Covenant of God (1596), and a Treatise on Effectual Calling (1597).

And the Pauline epistles are adopted almost bodily by Irenaeus, according to the ideas contained in them; his expositions often present the appearance of a patchwork of St Paul's ideas.

In the epistles of Symmachus and of Ambrose both the petition and the reply are preserved.

In John's Gospel and Epistles Satan is opposed to Christ.

On his return to England in 1496 he took orders and settled at Oxford, where he lectured on the epistles of St Paul, replacing the old scholastic method of interpretation by an exegesis more in harmony with the new learning.

A commentary on St Paul's epistles, "brief in words but weighty in matter," and valuable for the criticism of the Latin text of the New Testament, was long attributed to St Ambrose.

It became famous in connexion with the early history of Christianity through the two epistles addressed by St Paul to the community which he founded here; and in the later defence of the ancient civilization against the barbarian inroads it played a considerable part.

Hence those who were the followers of Peter and James anathematized him as the great apostate, and rejected his Epistles.

In texts such as the Epistles of the Ikhwan al-Safa ', it refers to the angels that rule the celestial spheres.

Epistles from other Yearly Meetings Britain Yearly Meeting receives epistles from other Yearly Meetings Britain Yearly Meeting receives epistles from a variety of other yearly meetings.

The catholic epistles all have for their subject, in some sense, the path through the world.

Now remember I told you that " godliness " is a key word in the pastoral epistles.

I've only just started reading the Black Sea Letters, the verse epistles published in the same Penguin volume.

Further, the epistles at least echo the faith of the apostolic kerygma.

That the passion which she inspired in him was tender, pure and fitted to raise to a higher level a nature which in some 1 The Journal for 1755 records that during that year, besides writing and translating a great deal in Latin and French, he had read, amongst other works, Cicero's Epistolae ad familiares, his Brutus, all his Orations, his dialogues De amicitia and De senectute, Terence (twice), and Pliny's Epistles.

The question of the authorship of Ephesians is less important to the student of the history of Christian thought than in the case of most of the Pauline epistles, because of the generalness of tone and the lack of specific allusion in the work.

Nowhere in his later epistles does this forecast of the future reappear.

At the same place, too, he wrote Quaestiones Hebraicae on Genesis, 2 and a series of commentaries on Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the Twelve Minor Prophets, Matthew and the Epistles of St Paul.

Phis epistle has of course been subjected to the same criticism as has been directed against the other epistles of Ignatius (see Ignatius).

Over and above the general criticism, which may now be said to have been completely answered by the investigations of Zahn, Lightfoot and Harnack, one or two special arguments have been brought against the Epistle to Polycarp. Ussher, for instance, while accepting the other six epistles, rejected this on the ground that Jerome says that Ignatius only sent one letter to Smyrna - a mistake due to his misinterpretation of Eusebius.

The short Epistle of Polycarp contains references or allusions to no less than nine out of the thirteen epistles, including 2 Thess., Eph., r and 2 Tim.

This is strong evidence for the view that the archetype of B came from Alexandria or the neighbourhood, and was older than the time of Athanasius, but it scarcely proves that B itself is Alexandrian, for the order of epistles which it gives is also that adopted by the council of Laodicea in A.D.

To the North Midlands or the North belongs further a complete version of the Pauline Epistles found in the unique MS. 32, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, of the 15th century.

The fact that different epistles are prefixed to the same work leads him to conjecture "that there were two editions made of the Acts of Peter (his usual title for the collection), but in course of time the one perished and that of Clement prevailed."

Gamaliel and his pupil St Paul are better representatives of the non-hypocritical Pharisee; and the Pauline Epistles or the writings of Philo are the best extant examples of the manner and matter of their teaching.

Another fact, now generally admitted, renders a 2nd-century date yet more incredible; and that is the failure of a writer devoted to Paul's memory to make palpable use of his Epistles.

His chief disciple, Antonio Ferreira (q.v.), a convinced classicist, went further, and dropping the use of Castilian, wrote sonnets much superior in form and style, though they lack the rustic atmosphere of those of his master, while his odes and epistles are too obviously reminiscent of Horace.

Next in importance rank the epistles and eclogues in Latin verse, the Italian poems and the rhetorical addresses to popes, emperors, Cola di Rienzi and some great men of antiquity.

But as regards the first of these, it is rather a case of condensed citation than of misinterpretation; the second is explained by the writer's carelessness as shown in other passages, and all are solved if a considerable interval of time elapsed between the compilation of the Constitutions and the spurious Ignatian epistles.

The influence of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is still more apparent in the Pauline Epistles and the Gospels, and the same holds true of Jubilees and the Assumption of Moses, though in a very slight degree.