14. Phil. iv. 6. Let your requests be made known unto God.

15. Philipp. iv. 8. Whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, &c.

16. Phil. iv. 9. Those things which ye have both learned and received, and heard and seen, do, and the God of peace shall be with you.

17. Phil. iv. 22. All the saints salute you.

18. Gal. vi. 18. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Amen.

19. Col. iv. 16. And when this Epistle is read amongst you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and that ye likewise read the Epistle from Laodicea.

The perplexing difficulties, in which we are continually involved in our searches after truth, proceed from no cause more general than the great variety of opinions, and multiplicity of other men's sentiments, which we are obliged to meet with.

Hence it inevitably happens, that subjects, in themselves easy and intelligible, become intricate and obscure; and that which a person by his own genius and endeavour would in a short time discover, he cannot, without the utmost caution and application, if at all, come to the knowledge of. Men, who are called learned, either by some particular prejudices, some confusedness of ideas, and principally a certain incessant inclination to lengthen out their volumes, do as it were cast a veil over the truth, which themselves are about to establish, and leave the subject attended with more difficulties than they found it; whence I have often thought it no small advantage to a question, (or to him that is to manage it,) that it has escaped the busy and confounding hands and heads of critics, commentators, &c. Such an introduction forces itself from me, when I consider, that, in order to manage this plain subject, I have been obliged to read the tedious pages of so many learned men, on a matter which, had they not made them, would have had few intricacies attending it. On the Epistle of the Laodiceans, I find differing in some respects almost every one from the other; Erasmusk, Sixtus Senensis, Bellarmin m, Calvin ", Beza, Drusius P, Whitaker 9, Waltherus', Episcopiuss, Pameliust, Lightfoot ", Knatchbull*, Adams, Father Simon 2, Du Pina, Grotius b, Dr. Hammond, Spanheim, Turretin e, the present archbishop of Canterbury f, Dr. Cave 8, Fabritius h, Dr. Whitby i, Dr. Mill k, Le Clerc 1, &c. But, as far as I can, to avoid both confusion and prolixity, I shall offer the reader the substance of my observations, as clearly as I am able, in the following propositions.

T

1. In the beginning of the second century there was a certain Epistle extant, entitled, The Epistle of Paul to the Laodice ans. This is evident, because such an Epistle was received by Marcion, who lived in that time; for he was contemporary with Polycarp m, who conversed with the apostles, and many others, who had seen Christ n; and consequently he (Marcion) must live near St. Paul's time. This Marcion made use of an Epistle under the name of Paul to the Laodiceans; to confirm which I observe, that heretic, who was a notorious corrupter of the sacred writings, had, besides his mutilated and interpolated Gospel, another book, which he and his followers entitled, The 'ATOTOλxov Apostolicon, and in which he comprehended ten only of St. Paul's Epistles out of the fourteen which are now received, and then altered and accommodated them to his own sentiments and notions. These (according to Epiphanius) were the Epistle to the Galatians, the two to the Corinthians, to the Romans, the two to the Thessalonians, to the Colossians to Philemon, to the Philippians, Ἔχει δὲ καὶ τῆς πρὸς Λαοδικέας λsyoμévns μépn, i. e. " he takes in also some part of that which " is called, The Epistle to the Laodiceans." Epiphanius, whờ had read both Marcion's Evangelium and Apostolicon, (as him self says P,) producing the instances of that heretic's corruptions' and interpolations in the Epistles which he pretended to receive, styles that to the Laodiceans the eleventh 9, and in the introduction to his scholia, or criticism upon the Apostolicon he enumerates the Epistles received by Marcion, and having first placed that to the Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, next reckons that to the Laodieancs, and then the other Epistles; where I observe, by the way, a most notorious error in our present copies of Epiphanius; for whereas in all the places cited, nay, and even in this very place, that father expressly says, that Marcion received only the ten forementioned Epistles of St. Paul into his Apostolicon; yet here in the very next words he is made to receive all the fourteen, viz. the two Epistles to