Hence  the  frequent  addresses,  the  ever-recurring  questions
with  which  he  draws  out  his  details.  Paul  is  able  power-
fully to  move,  but  also  to  lift  up  and  comfort ;  high  moral
earnestness  is  always  associated  in  him  with  depth  of
religious  feeling,  which  often  finds  vent  in  inspired  utter-
ance. He  is  not  without  passion,  he  lashes  the  weaknesses
and  errors  of  his  readers  without  pity,  he  is  able  mortally
to  wound  his  opponents,  and  does  not  even  despise  the
weapons  of  irony  and  satire.  But  the  softest  tones  of  the
mind  are  likewise  at  his  disposal,  the  ebullition  of  righteous
anger  softens  down  to  the  most  touching  expression  of  heart-
felt love,  he  can  speak  the  language  of  deeply  wounded  love
as  well  as  of  the  most  ardent  longing,  of  exulting  gratitude
as  well  as  suppressed  pain.  He  knows  how  to  win  with
delicate  tact  and  patient  tenderness;  and  in  intercourse  with
a  friend  does  not  even  despise  the  clever  jest.8

A  Vatican  MS.  contains  the  notice  that  the  rhetorician  Lougiuus  con-
eluded  au  enumeration  of  the  great  orators  with  Paul  of  Tarsus,  who
might  even  be  pronounced  the  first  (corap.  Nagel,  de  judicio  Longini,
Altdorf,  1772).  The  genuineness  of  this  citation  is  very  doubtful ;  at  all
events,  the  judgment  rests  on  a  complete  mistake.  Paul  himself  defi-
nitely repudiated  all  (striving  after  rhetorical  art  as  well  as  philosophic
culture  (§  13,  3,  note  2).  What  was  formerly  written  de  Pauli  eloqueu-
tia  (Kirchmaier,  1695;  Baden,  1766)  or  of  a  Logica  and  Rhetorica

*  It  is  clear  how  impossible  it  is  in  the  case  of  one  so  richly  endowed
with  intellect,  whose  every  epistle  and  group  of  epistles  show  the  greatest
diversity  of  form  aud  substance,  to  prove  the  spuriousnesa  of  a  writing
from  the  relatively  new  form  of  its  composition.
