帖撒罗尼迦后书 3章18节 到 3章18节 背景资料 上一笔

     # 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."