CHAPTER XI - AN INQUIRY WHETHER THE APOSTLES WROTE THEIR
EPISTLES AS APOSTLES AND PROPHETS, OR MERELY AS TEACHERS;
AND AN EXPLANATION OF WHAT IS MEANT BY AN APOSTLE.


(1) No reader of the New Testament can doubt that the Apostles were
prophets; but as a prophet does not always speak by revelation, but only, at
rare intervals, as we showed at the end of Chap. I., we may fairly inquire
whether the Apostles wrote their Epistles as prophets, by revelation and
express mandate, as Moses, Jeremiah, and others did, or whether only as
private individuals or teachers, especially as Paul, in Corinthians xiv:6,
mentions two sorts of preaching.

(2) If we examine the style of the Epistles, we shall find it totally
different from that employed by the prophets.

(3) The prophets are continually asserting that they speak by the command of
God: "Thus saith the Lord," "The Lord of hosts saith," "The command of the
Lord," &c.; and this was their habit not only in assemblies of the prophets,
but also in their epistles containing revelations, as appears from the epistle
of Elijah to Jehoram, 2 Chron. xxi:12, which begins, "Thus saith the Lord."

(4) In the Apostolic Epistles we find nothing of the sort. (5) Contrariwise,
in I Cor. vii:40 Paul speaks according to his own opinion and in many
passages we come across doubtful and perplexed phrase; such as, "We think,
therefore," Rom. iii:28; "Now I think," [Endnote 24], Rom. viii:18, and so
on. (6) Besides these, other expressions are met with very different from
those used by the prophets. (7) For instance, 1 Cor. vii:6, "But I speak
this by permission, not by commandment;" "I give my judgment as one that