# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1856_S212
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Whether Such a One Is to Be Declared a Heretic or a Dangerous False Teacher, etc. 212

...from the first. — Eusebius says, Book 3, Chapter 3, that some before him maintained that the Epistle to the Hebrews was not Paul's, because the Roman Church did not accept it; yet he proves that it was not new and only recently written, from the fact that Clement of Rome, Paul's companion, took some sentences from it word for word in his epistle to the Corinthians; and he says that it is not wrongly counted among the rest of the apostle's writings. For since Paul, in this letter, spoke to the Hebrews in his native tongue, some believe that the Evangelist Luke translated that epistle, others that Clement of Rome did, and this seems the more probable in that both letters — that of Clement and that to the Hebrews — have a similar character, and their sense does not diverge very far from one another. Eusebius, Book 3, Chapter 37. Nicephorus says, Book 2, Chapter 46, that the cause of the doubt was that Paul's name was not appended, as in his other letters. But antiquity seems to have had weightier reasons. For that he does not speak in Paul's manner was easy to notice, as Origen too writes, according to the report of Eusebius, Book 6, Chapter 25. Nor could readers fail to notice what is said in Chapter 2: "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will." Who would not conclude from this that this epistle is not Paul's, since Paul, in Galatians 1, testifies that he neither received his gospel from man nor was taught it, but through the revelation of Jesus Christ? Besides, it was not hard to judge that what Chapters 6 and 10 evidently mean — that those once converted to Christ, if they fall away again, cannot be renewed again even by earnest repentance — agrees neither with the doctrine of Paul, nor of the other apostles, much less with Christ, who says, "Come unto me, all ye," etc. Moved by these and similar reasons, careful antiquity, which was accustomed to test everything by the analogy of faith, seems rightly to have doubted concerning the Epistle to the Hebrews."

Hereupon, in the Centuries, the genuineness of the Revelation is excellently demonstrated, and the discussion is concluded with the words: "Let this be enough concerning those books which are subject to doubt." (See: Centuriae Magdeburgenses, ed. S. J. Baumgarten, Vol. II, pp. 452–56.)

We will now let follow a relevant judgment on our subject from Andreas Osiander, who died in the year 1617 as Chancellor of the University and Provost of the church at Tübingen. We give what Johann Gerhard cites from him in the supplementary volume of his Loci. There it reads, namely: "Osiander approves the opinion of Eusebius,