PREFACE.
In the Conversations of S. T. Coleridge, that eminent, though not always judicious, thinker is represented as suggesting that, on the supposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews not being the production of St. Paul, the weight of the Christian testimony would be enhanced instead of lessened. Without denying that this idea is a somewhat doubtful one, I certainly hold that the Canonical authority of that Epistle does not altogether depend on the question, Whether or not it was written by St. Paul. There are several Books of the Old Testament the human authority of which is a matter uncertain and unknown — while yet their Canonical authority and Divine inspiration are explicitly determined by apostolic testimony and, indeed, by that of Christ himself. This kind of evidence is awanting in the case of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But, independently of the question as to St. Paul's having written it, — its strict and pervading accordance with unquestionably apostolic writings, its intellectual and moral majesty, its vast and manifest superiority to the uninspired remains of Christian antiquity, and the early,
