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  Ro 16:20,24 



      CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE EPISTLES TO THE THESSALONIANS.

 The First Epistle to the Thessalonians, it is generally agreed,
 was the earliest written of all St. Paul's epistles, whence we
 see the reason and propriety of his anxiety that it should be
 read in all the Christian churches of Macedonia--"I charge you
 by the Lord, that this Epistle be read unto all the holy
 brethren."  (ch. 5:27.)  "The existence of this clause,"
 observes Dr. Paley, "is an evidence of its authenticity;
 because, to produce a letter, purporting to have been publicly
 read in the church at Thessalonica, when no such letter had been
 read or heard of in that church, would be to produce an
 imposture destructive of itself....Either the Epistle was
 publicly read in the church of Thessalonica, during St. Paul's
 lifetime, or it was not.  If it was, no publication could be
 more authentic, no species of notoriety more unquestionable, no
 method of preserving the integrity of the copy more secure....If
 it was not, the clause would remain a standing condemnation of
 the forgery, and one would suppose, an invincible impediment to
 its success."  Its genuineness, however, has never been
 disputed; and it has been universally received in the Christian
 church, as the inspired production of St. Paul, from the
 earliest period to the present day.  The circumstance of this
 injunction being given, in the first epistle which the Apostle
 wrote, also implies a strong and avowed claim to the character
 of an inspired writer; as in fact it placed his writings on the
 same ground with those of Moses and the ancient prophets.  The
 second Epistle, besides those marks of genuineness and authority
 which it possesses in common with the others, bears the highest
 evidence of its divine inspiration, in the representation which
 it contains of the papal power, under the characters of "the Man
 of sin," and the "Mystery of iniquity."  The true Christian
 worship is the worship of the one only God, through the one only
 Mediator, the man Christ Jesus; and from this worship the church
 of Rome has most notoriously departed, by substituting other
 mediators, invocating and adoring saints and angels, worshipping
 images, adoring the host, etc.  It follows, therefore, that "the
 Man of sin" is the Pope; not only on account of the disgraceful
 lives of many of them, but by means of their scandalous
 doctrines and principles; dispensing with the most necessary
 duties, selling pardons and indulgences for the most abominable
 crimes, and perverting the worship of God to the grossest
 superstition and idolatry.  It was evidently the chief design of
 the Apostle, in writing to the Thessalonians, to confirm them in
 the faith, to animate them to a courageous profession of the
 Gospel, and to the practice of all the duties of Christianity;
 but to suppose, with Dr. Macknight, that he intended to prove
 the divine authority of Christianity by a chain of regular
 arguments, in which he answered the several objections which the
 heathen philosophers are supposed to have advanced, seems quite
 foreign to the nature of the epistles, and to be grounded on a
 mistaken notion, that the philosophers designed at so early a
 period to enter on a regular disputation with the Christians,
 when in fact they derided them as enthusiasts, and branded their
 doctrines as "foolishness."  In pursuance of his grand object,
 "it is remarkable," says Dr. Doddridge, "with how much address
 he improves all the influence which his zeal and fidelity in
 their service must naturally give him, to inculcate upon them
 the precepts of the gospel, and persuade them to act agreeably
 to their sacred character.  This was the grand point he always
 kept in view, and to which every thing else was made
 subservient.  Nothing appears, in any part of his writings, like
 a design to establish his own reputation, or to make use of his
 ascendancy over his Christian friends to answer any secular
 purposes of his own.  On the contrary, in this and in his other
 epistles, he discovers a most generous, disinterested regard for
 their welfare, expressly disclaiming any authority over their
 consciences, and appealing to them, that he had chose to
 maintain himself by the labour of this own hands, rather than
 prove burdensome to the churches, or give the least colour of
 suspicion, that, under zeal for the gospel, and concern for
 their improvement, he was carrying on any private sinister view.
 The discovery of so excellent a temper must be allowed to carry
 with it a strong presumptive argument in favour of the doctrines
 he taught....And, indeed, whoever reads St. Paul's epistles with
 attention, and enters into the spirit with which they were
 written, will discern such intrinsic characters of their
 genuineness, and the divine authority of the doctrines they
 contain, as will, perhaps, produce in him a stronger conviction
 than all the external evidence with which they are attended."
 These remarks are exceedingly well grounded and highly
 important; and to no other Epistles can they apply with greater
 force than the present most excellent productions of the
 inspired Apostle.  The last two chapters of the first epistle,
 in particular, as Dr. A. Clarke justly observes, "are certainly
 among the most important, and the most sublime in the New
 Testament.  The general judgment, the resurrection of the body,
 and the states of the quick and the dead, the unrighteous and
 the just, are described, concisely indeed, but they are
 exhibited in the most striking and affecting points of view."

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