S. Ephrem of Edessa, the Syrian, who died in the same year with S. Basil, is another valuable witness. (Cf. e.g. t. 2, Serm. in 2m Domini Adventum.)

Add to these Amphilochius (ob. circ. A.D. 392), who, alluding in a fragment to Heb. i. 14, ascribes it to the Apostle, and there will only remain unnoticed one of the stars of that great Oriental constellation which illumined the Church at the close of the fourth century.

That star which we reserve for special inspection is S. John Chrysostom. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that the ruling passion of his life was admiration of S. Paul. In season and out of season his eloquence is ever recurring to this loved theme. We have only to read the glowing words in his best-known work, De Sacerdotio (1. vi. c. 6), to assure ourselves of the depth of his love and reverence for the great Apostle. Love is blind, but only to the defects, not to the identity of the person beloved. S. Chrysostom, with his passionate devotion to S. Paul, had thrown himself into the study of his Epistles. He had tried to imbibe their spirit, and may well seem to have succeeded. Would not such a mind as his at once detect, and such a heart as his almost know by instinct, no matter how disguised, the genuine tones of that familiar voice? And would not the smallest misgiving about the authenticity have shown itself in his dealings with the suspected Epistle? Yet nowhere is there a trace of any disadvantageous comparison of the Epistle to the Hebrews with the other writings of the muchcherished master. Immediately after he has been lauding to the sky yet once again S. Paul and his Epistles, he takes the opportunity of noticing the reason which induced S. Paul to omit his name at the beginning of this Epistle. "The Epistles of Paul," he says, "are mines and well-springs of spiritual wealth :-mines, because they furnish us with treasure of higher price than any gold :—wellsprings, because they never fail." Then he subjoins a little lower down: "Always when writing to others, he puts his name at the beginning of his Epistles, but he did nothing of the sort when he was writing to the Hebrews. Without writing any introduction, without saying who he was, or to whom he was writing, as it had been his wont to do, he started off at once with the words: God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to our fathers. This was prudence on Paul's part. In order that his letter might not share his own unpopularity, he hid himself under a kind of mask by suppressing his name, &c." S. John Chrysostom, therefore, so jealous of the honour of S. Paul, and so deeply versed in all that appertained to the Apostle and his writings, seems to have been utterly unmoved by all the suspicions, certainly not unknown to him, which had been long harboured in the Western Church. But by this time S. Ambrose had spoken out, and

S. Augustine was at work with all the influence of his great name to change controversy into unanimity; and this, be it observed, not by trying, Western, as he was, to reduce the East to acknowledge the justice of those ancient doubts of Rome, but by invoking the aid of an authoritative voice to silence those doubts, and to proclaim the truth of that numerously attested, and stoutly defended Oriental tradition. From this time we have nothing but unwavering consent in theory and in practice. Theodoret of Cyre, the well-known historian, begins the preface to his commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews by severely rebuking the Arians for not receiving the Epistle as coming from S. Paul. We meet occasionally afterwards an historical notice of the doubts which had existed, but only by way of making it more clear that they existed no longer. There was only one mind in the Church about the Pauline origin of this Epistle from thenceforward till the time of Cajetan (ob. 1535) and Erasmus (ob. 1536). Cajetan was considered to have treated Scripture with far too great freedom, and, as he was not familiar with Hebrew, he was at the mercy of the Rabbi, to whom he went as to a fountain-head of sound interpretation of the Old Testament. He used the same liberty of private judgment in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, which from intrinsic reasons he deems not only not Pauline, but not even canonical. For this rash assertion he is properly taken to task by Ambrosius Catharinus, himself a bold and original thinker, and by many others. Estius and Bellarmine give some of his arguments against the canonicity; and if he had no better than these to bring, Cajetan richly deserved the abuse that he received.*

Erasmus, though such a friend and favourite of Protestantism, was content to leave the canonicity unassailed, but he expressed his decided opinion that S. Paul was not the author. He seems to have been chiefly influenced by the doubting mode of citation adopted by both S. Jerome and S. Augustine, and of course also by that unfortunate letter to Dardanus, which is well calculated to mystify any one, and which yet, as we have seen, cannot, unless we attribute to the writer either downright falsification of history or

*Here are two specimens (Bellarm. de Verbo Dei, l. i. c. 17). Argumentum 6tum est Cajetani in commentario hujus epistolæ. Auctor hujus epistolæ probat cap. 1. Christum esse Filium Dei ex illis verbis libro 2. Reg. c. 7: Ego ero illi in patrem et hæc verba intelliguntur ad literam de Salomone, et solum ex literali consensu sumuntur argumenta firma : igitur vel iste auctor non est Paulus, vel Paulus non solide argumenta

tur

*

"Argum. 7m ejusdem Cajetani est. Ad Heb. 9 dicit Auctor fuisse in arca urnam habentem manna et virgam Aaron, quæ fronduerat, et tabulas legis sed 1. 3. Regum, c. 8, solæ tabulæ referuntur fuisse in arca; igitur aut mentitur Paulus, aut hujus epistolæ auctor non est Paulus."

the most audacious and unfounded assertion, bear the meaning which Erasmus, Alford, and others wish to attach to it.

We have seen also how that hesitating style of citation is amply accounted for by the mere consciousness of the existence of great doubt on the subject. Still, though we cannot allow that Erasmus had sufficient reason for adopting even the milder half of Cajetan's uncatholic teaching, it is quite unnecessary to call him a heretic on the point. Even after the dogmatic decree of Trent, Estius, as we have said, would not call it more than "temerarious" to deny the authorship, as long as the canonicity was admitted.

We may sum up the history of the external evidence upon the authorship of our Epistle, by repeating that the most ancient testimonies quoted on the subject are purely negative. Those who

could have spoken from their own personal knowledge either never transmitted what they knew, or the record has perished in the transmission. Had the early evidence been decisive, the controversy would never have arisen. The earliest positive evidence on the subject is at variance in the East and West. In the West there was a widespread and very real doubt about everything connected with the Epistle. In the East there was the consciousness of the existence of that doubt in the West, joined with a wonderful unanimity in refusing to sanction, or take home, the doubt. As time went on, the Easterns became more and more immovable in their opinion, and the Westerns, little by little, abandoned their doubts, and opened their minds to firm conviction and peaceful

assurance.

It may not be amiss to remark, in passing, that ordinarily human minds proceed contrariwise. Objective truth alone, revealed or recognized, can change subjective doubt into subjective certainty; whilst, if a little time be granted, it is the easiest thing in life to shake mere human conviction, resting on an ipse dixit even of Origen.

There existed, then, in early times, at least in the Western Church, a most unmistakable doubt about the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews. It must now be our business to investigate the causes of this doubt, and to trace it back to its startingpoint. Was it well founded? Was it so founded that scholars and critics, unbiassed by any infallible teaching, and free to pursue "intelligent inquiry," would be forced to confess that S. Paul had, at the best, but a very ambiguous claim to be regarded as the author? In other words, do Catholics hold the Pauline authorship just merely because they cannot help themselves, and have no liberty to think as they like in the matter, or are they well able to make out a good case for their opinion, and can they show that here, as elsewhere, reason and dogma are in harmony? When we try to investigate the origin of the doubt, we recognize at the outset

two evident, though perhaps only partial causes, one negative and one positive. Both have been already more than hinted at in the previous rapid historical sketch. The first is the insufficiency of primitive tradition; the second is the manifold discrepancy, which seems to sever at once and hopelessly this Epistle from the universally acknowledged thirteen of S. Paul. The total absence of primitive tradition would of course, by itself alone, have been cause enough of subsequent doubt; but we need not suppose that, in the early Church, there was the same total dearth of information that meets us now. The tradition might well have existed, and yet have been too weak to cope with the other strong and positive cause of doubt, the intrinsic difference of style. There might have been a strong leaning in the minds of the faithful to the idea of Pauline origin, but, for want of one single downright testimony to counteract the intrinsic evidence, such a tendency might be gradually weakened till it died away. This could not have been if S. Clement of Rome had only introduced one of his many quotations with the words: "The Vessel of Election speaketh." That, which in S. Jerome's letter to Dardanus has, by hypercritical interpreters, been construed into a conventionalism, could not have been so misunderstood in a letter written by the disciple of S. Paul himself. In fact, if S. Clement had adopted another method of quotation, there would have been one dispute the less in Christendom, and it would never have been given to mankind to know all the treasures of logic and research which a few plain words had forfeited; those intricate windings of German ingenuity, those evenly balanced arguments which left poor Michaelis where they found him, only with a more bewildering sense of hopelessness. The insufficiency of primitive tradition was only a negative cause. It was absolutely needed to give the other causes room to work, but we have no reason to suppose that it was complete enough to be itself the source of the doubt.

The other and positive cause which meets us on the threshold of our inquiry, is, as has been said, the manifold discrepancy between this Epistle and the others of S. Paul. The exordium is startlingly different the phraseology is different, methodically and systematically different throughout: there are some expressions (ii. 3) which at first sight seem inconsistent with S. Paul's position and authority, so jealously vindicated in his other Epistles. Behold amply enough to create grave doubt in the minds of those who were not deeply convinced of S. Paul's authorship.

But it is not precisely with the doubt itself, nor yet precisely with the causes of the doubt, that we have to deal. We want to trace the operation of those causes, not for their own sake, or for anything to which they led, but simply in order to discover that previous certainty, which they succeeded in changing into doubt.

The doubt, as we find it established in the earliest direct testimony, is not the aboriginal state of the subject. At first it was certain, either that S. Paul wrote, or that S. Paul did not write, the letter. Now, from which of these contradictory certainties was the doubt, as we have it, evolved, and fashioned by the operation of the causes above specified? What was the "materia ex qua" of the later doubt, the raw material from which it was fashioned? This is the single point at issue.

The actual genesis of the doubt is well beyond the reach of our inquiry. Where all is hypothesis, we are, in reason, bound to take the more simple solution. We are not at liberty to take a less likely solution, merely because it is a possible way out of the difficulty, for that would be to effect an arbitrary and capricious, not a logical settlement of the dispute. Therefore the question narrows itself to this: is it more easy to suppose that some disciple of S. Paul wrote the letter, and that the master's name in course of time supplanted the scholar's; or to suppose that S. Paul wrote the letter himself, and that his authorship afterwards became doubtful? Alford and the modern Germans maintain the former alternative; we defend the latter.

To defend the former is to say, that the master's name was actually substituted for the disciple's, at least to a sufficient extent to start a doubt.

To defend the latter is to say, that some one was accused of substituting the master's name for the disciple's.

Therefore the question narrows itself still farther.

Is it easier to suppose that some one changed the author, or to suppose that some one said that some one else had changed the author?

The question simplified into this form may be taken as answering itself, but it will be better to work out the argument. Our thesis, then, is this: that it is much more easy to account for the later doubt upon the hypothesis that S. Paul himself was the author of the Epistle, than upon the hypothesis which ascribes it to one of his disciples.

Those who contest S. Paul's claims consider nothing more easy than to suppose that the letter was written by a disciple of S. Paul, and that the lesser name, as time went on, was gradually merged in the greater, and so came ere long to be entirely lost. If they cared to prove this assertion, which they do not, I fancy their argument would probably run somewhat thus :—

Daily experience, they might say, is enough to show us how easy it is to father an anecdote, or a good saying, upon Sheridan, or Talleyrand; or a practical joke upon Theodore Hook; or a genuine bull upon Sir Boyle Roche. So, by parity of reasoning, nothing is more easy than to suppose that a letter of such merit as the Epistle to the Hebrews, going begging for an author in the early