as they are rendered by Eusebius from the original Syriac into Greek; and from him translated into our own tongue.

THE EPISTLE OF ABGARUS TO OUR BLESSED SAVIOUR.

1 "Abgarus Prince of F'dessa, to Jesus the good Saviour, who has appeared in the country about Jerusalem, Health.

2 I have received an account of thee, and thy cures, how without any medicines or herbs they are done by thee.

3 For report says that thou makest the blind to see, the lame to walk; that thou cleansest the lepers, and castest out unclean spirits and devils, and healest those who have laboured under long diseases, and raisest up the dead.

4 And having heard all this concerning thee, I have concluded with myself one of these two things; either that thou art God, and that being come down from heaven, thou doest all these mighty works; or that thou art the Son of God, seeing thou art able to per.form such things.

5 Wherefore by this present letter I entreat thee to come unto me, and to cure me of the infirmity that lies upon me.

6 For I have also heard that the Jews murmur against thee, and seek to do thee mischief. For I have a small but fair city, which may be sufficient both for thee and me."

THE ANSWER OF OUR SAVIOUR TO ABGARUS.

1" Abgarus, thou art blessed, in that though thou hast not seen me, thou hast yet believed in me.

2 For it is written concerning me, that those

a Bibl.

in Paulo.

Add. Frasse

who have seen me should not believe in me, that so they who have not seen me, might believe and live.

3 As for what thou hast written unto me, that I should come to thee, it is necessary that all those things for which I was sent, should be fulfilled by me in this place: and that having fulfilled them, I should be received up to him that sent me.

4 When therefore I shall be received into Heaven, I will send unto thee some one of my disciples, who shall both heal thy distemper, and give life to thee, and to those that are with thee."

9. Having said thus much concerning this pretended intercourse between our Saviour Christ and this Prince, I should in the next place mention the letters ascribed to his mother, the blessed Virgin Mary, but that there is not the least shadow of truth to give credit to them; nor any arguments brought in favour of them, that may deserve a refutation. I shall therefore say nothing to these, but pass on without any more ado, to those pieces which have been attributed either to some particular Apostle or Evangelist; or else are pretended to have been composed by the whole college of the Apostles together.

10. Of the former kind is the Epistle of St. Paul to the Laodiceans, set out by Hutter in his Polyglott New Testament, and inserted by Sixtus Senensis into his Bibliotheque, a together with the other Epistles that are in like manner pretended, though without any just nium Disq. ground, to have passed between the same Apostle and Seneca the philosopher. Now that which gave occasion to the forging of such an Epistle was, that St. Paul himself seems to speak, as if he had written an Epistle to that Church. For having commanded the Colossians when they should have read the Epistle which he

Biblic. page

731, &c.

Col. iv. 16.

ostom and

Theophy

wrote to them, to cause it to be read in the Church of the Laodiceans; he adds, that they likewise should read the Epistle from Laodicea. But not to mention that St. Paul's words may be understood of an Epistle written from Laodicea, b (as Theophylact thinks the So Chrysfirst Epistle to Timothy; which nevertheless, I suppose, Thedoret. was written after that to the Colossians ;) or of an Epis- lact in loc. tle written by the Apostle to some other Church, but ordered to be communicated to the Laodiceans; as the second Epistle to the Corinthians was directed, not only to that one place, but to all the churches of Achaia,† † 2 Cor. i. 4. and as in the very passage under debate, the Epistle to the Colossians is ordered to be sent to the Laodiceans, and to be read in the Church there: I say, not to insist upon these explications, there are reasons sufficient to induce one to believe that the Epistle to the Ephesians, as it now is, and was very early intitled, was originally inscribed to the Laodiceans; this at least is sure, that it is so called by Marcion, who though a rank heretic, and reproved by Tertullian as a falsifier of the title of an Apostolical Epistle, yet in a matter of this nature, may be admitted to give his evidence; especially considering that he lived within three-score years after this Epistle was written.

11. But to suppose that this Epistle was primarily written to the Ephesians, yet this does not hinder but that St. Paul might have ordered it to be communicated, as to other Churches, so in particular to that of Laodicea; and from thence to be sent on to the Colossians; which as I have before observed, will sufficiently answer all that can be collected from the passage produced out of his Epistle to them. Now that which favours this conjecture is, that Ephesus was in those days looked upon, even in the civil account of the empire, as the chief city and metropolis of Lesser Asia. Here it was that the Emperors d ordered their edicts relating to that province, to be published; in like manner, as we find in several Hist. lib. iv.

d Vid. Euseb. Eccies.

c. 13.

Vid. An- laws of the Theodosian Code, e that they were wont to

not. Vales.

in Euseb.

page 60. a.

be proposed at Rome for Italy, and at Carthage for Africa. Here the common councils of Asia assembled: and to name no more, here the public sports, and sacred Vid. Obs. rites, &c. f that concerned the whole community of that

Menag, in

page 23, b. Edit. 4.

Diog. Laert. province, were usually transacted. Hence St. Chrysosetome g calls it, in express terms, the metropolis of Asia ; and in the order of the Metropolitan Churches, h it is Ad calcem accordingly styled the first, and most honourable of Asia.

4 Arg. in Epist. ad Ephes.

Codini.

19. x x. 1, 10.

Tertull.

Præscript.

cap. xxxvi.

page 215.

12. And much greater was the respect which it had with relation to Ecclesiastical matters; both as it was a Acts xviii. Church founded by St. Paul, i and as it was the seat of the beloved disciple St. John, who continued there to the very time of Trajan, above 100 years after Christ. de Hence Tertullian directing those who were desirous to know what the true faith of Christ was, to inquire among the chiefest Churches in every part, what had been delivered to them, and was the faith received and taught amongst them; bids them if they were in Italy go to Rome; if in Achaia, to Corinth; if in Macedonia, to Philippi; if in Asia to Ephesus: insomuch that, as Evagrius tells us, the Bishop of Ephesus had a Pacles. lib iii. triarchal power within the diocese of Asia, until the time of the fourth general council. And long after that, Theodorus Bishop of this See, subscribing to the acts of the sixth general council, calls himself Bishop of Ephesus, the metropolis of the province of Asia. And even in the times of which we are now discoursing, St. John writing to the seven Churches of Asia, (of which Laodicea was one) places Ephesus m at the head of them as that which had the precedence of all the rest in those parts.

! Hist Ec

c. vi. page

339.

Rev. i. 11.

ii. 1.

Acts xx.

1

13. Nor is it any small confirmation of this opinion, that when St. Paul passed through Asia to Jerusalem, we read,* that having not time to go himself to Ephesus, he ordered the Elders of that Church to meet him at

lib. iii. c. 14.

Miletus, and there gave his last charge to them. Now who those Elders were we are plainly told, v. 28. They were the Bishops of that Church. But it is certain, that in those days there was but one Bishop, properly so called, in a Church at one time: and therefore these could not be the Bishops of that city alone," but " Irenæus, must have been rather the Bishop of Ephesus, together with the Bishops of the other neighbouring Churches within that district: and it was probably Timothy, who now came at the head of them. And what kind of Bishop he was, St. Paul's Epistles will not suffer us to doubt he was indeed a Bishop over other Bishops; the first, to say no more, of all the Bishops in those parts.

14. Seeing then such was the prerogative, which the Church of Ephesus had from the beginning, over all the other Churches of the Asian diocese; and that St. Paul himself had first planted Christianity there: and seeing it appears from the command which he gave to the Colossians, chap. iv. 16, to cause the Epistle which he had written to them, to be read in the Church of the Laodiceans, that he was wont to order the Epistles which he wrote to one church, to be sent to, and read in the others that were near unto it: seeing, lastly, we are told both by Tertullian and Epiphanius that the Epistle to, Tertull. the Ephesians, was anciently called by some the Epistle on. lib. v. to the Laodiceans; I think it may not be improbable, 481. Epi but that by the Epistle from Laodicea, he may have hanameant the Epistle which he wrote to the Ephesians, r at PIVid. the same time, and by the same person that he wrote Critique de to the Colossians; and which being from them commu-Simon sur le nicated to the Laodiceans, might be ordered by St. Paul N... xv. to be sent on to the Colossians, who were a neighbour Prolegom. Church to Laodicea, and afterwards subject to it as their ad. N. T. p. Metropolitane.

15. But whatever becomes of this conjecture; whether by the Epistle from Laodicea we are to understand some Epistle written from that place, and that either by

adv. Mar

c. xvii. page

res. xlii.

num. xii.

L'Histoire

Monsieur

T.

p. 116. See Dr. Mill's