very decidedly to have been the first of all the epistles written by Paul, and maintain that he wrote it soon after his first visit to them, at some time during the interval between Paul's departure from Galatia, and his departure from Thessalonica. Others date it at the time of his imprisonment in Rome, according to the common subscription of the epistle. Against this last may, however, perhaps be urged his reproof to the Galatians, that they "were so soon removed from him that called them to the grace of Christ,"—an expression nevertheless, too vague to form any certain basis for a chronological conclusion. The great majority of critics refer it to the period of his stay in Ephesus,—a view which entirely accords with the idea, that it must have been written soon after Paul had preached to them; for on his last journey to Ephesus, he had passed through Galatia, as already narrated, confirming the churches. Some time had, no doubt, intervened since his preaching to them, sufficient at least to allow many heresies and difficulties to arise among them, and to pervert them from the purity of the truth, as taught to them by him. Certain false teachers had been among them since his departure, inculcating on all believers in Christ, the absolute necessity of a minute and rigid observance of Mosaic forms, for their salvation. They also directly attacked the apostolical character and authority of Paul,—declaring his opinion to be of no weight whatever, and to be opposed to that of the true original apostles of Jesus. These, Paul meets with great force in the very beginning of the epistle, entering at once into a particular account of the mode of his first entering the apostleship,—showing that it was not derived from the other apostles, but from the special commission of Christ himself, miraculously given. He also shows that he had, on this very question of Judaical rituals, conferred with the apostles at Jerusalem, and had received the sanction of their approbation in that course of open communion which he had before followed, on his own inspired authority, and had ever since maintained, in the face of what he deemed inconsistencies in the conduct of Peter. He then attacks the Galatians themselves, in very violent terms, for their perversion of that glorious freedom into which he had brought the Christian doctrine, and fills up the greater part of the epistle with reproofs of these errors.
His argument against the doctrines of the servile Judaizers is made up in his favorite mode of demonstration, by simile and metaphor, representing the Christian system under the form of
