Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/599



Corinth. The mention of the disappointment in this place, upon any other supposition, is irrelative." (Paley's Hor. Paul. 2 Cor. No. VIII.)

SECOND JOURNEY TO CORINTH.

Among his companions in Macedonia, was Timothy, his ever zealous and affectionate assistant in the apostolic ministry, who had been sent thither before him to prepare the way, and had been laboring in that region ever since, as plainly appears from the fact, that he is joined with Paul in the opening address of the second epistle to the Corinthians,—a circumstance in itself sufficient to overthrow a very common supposition of the critics,—that Timothy returned to Asia; that Paul at that time "left him in Ephesus," and at this time wrote his first epistle to Timothy from Macedonia. It is also most probable that Timothy was the personal companion of Paul, not only during the whole period of his second ministration in Macedonia, but also accompanied him from that province to Corinth; because Timothy is distinctly mentioned by Luke, among those who went with Paul from Macedonia to Asia, after his brief second residence in that city. No particulars whatever are given by Luke of the labors of Paul in Corinth. From his epistles, however, it is learned that he was at this time occupied in part, in receiving the contributions made throughout Achaia for the church of Jerusalem, to which city he was now preparing to go. The difficulties, of which so much mention had been made in his epistles, were now entirely removed, and his work there doubtless went on without any of that opposition which had arisen after his first departure. There is however, one very important fact in his literary history, which took place in Corinth, during his residence there.

THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.

From the very earliest period of apostolic labor, after the ascension, there appear to have been in Rome, some Jews who professed the faith of Jesus. Among the visitors in Jerusalem at the Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit first descended, were some from Rome, who sharing in the gifts of that remarkable effusion, and returning to their home in the imperial city, would there in themselves constitute the rudiment of a Christian church. It is perfectly certain that they had never been blessed in their own city with the personal presence of an apostle and all their associated action as a Christian church, must therefore have been entirely the result of a voluntary organization, suggested by the natural desire to keep up and to spread the doctrines which they had first received