Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 121, February 21, 1852: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. — John Shaqi
Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 121, February 21, 1852: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.Various
History
Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 121, February 21, 1852: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
Have any of your chart-wrights in London got up such maps for youth and
emigrants? If not, let them take the hint now given by
PATERFAMILIÆ.
Edinburgh.
Queries.
DID ST. PAUL QUOTE ARISTOTLE?
Throughout the writings of St. Paul, his exactly cultivated mind is
scarcely less visible than his divinely inspired soul. Notwithstanding
his magnificent rebukes of human learning and philosophy, and his
sublime exaltation of the foolishness of God above the wisdom of men,
the Apostle of the Gentiles was no mean master of Gentile learning. His
three well-known quotations from Greek poets furnish direct evidence of
his acquaintance with Greek literature. He proclaimed the fatherhood of
God to the Athenians in the words of his countryman the poet Aratus
(Acts, xvii. 28.). He warns the Corinthians by a moral common-place
borrowed from the dramatist Menander (1 Cor. xv. 33.). He brings an
hexameter verse of a Cretan poet as a testimony to the bad character of
the Cretan people (Titus, i. 12.). I do not positively assert that I
have discovered a fourth quotation; I would merely inquire whether the
appearance in a Pauline epistle of a sentence which occurs in a treatise
of Aristotle, is to be regarded as a quotation, or as an accidental and
most singular identity of expression. In the _Politics_ (lib. III. cap.
8.), Aristotle, in speaking of very powerful members of a community,
says, "κατα δε των τοιουτων ουκ εστι νομος" ("but against such
there is no law"). In the Epistle to the Galatians (v. 23.), Paul, after
enumerating the fruits of the Spirit, adds, "against such there is no
law" ("κατα των τοιουτων ουκ εστι νομος"). The very same words
which the philosopher uses to express the exceptional character of
certain over-powerful citizens, the apostle borrows, or, at least,
employs, to signify the transcendent nature of divine graces. According
to Aristotle, mighty individuals are above legal restraint, against such
the general laws of a state do not avail: according to Paul, the fruits
of the Spirit are too glorious and divine for legal restraint; they
dwell in a region far above the regulation of the moral law.
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