The post-apostolic epistles may be grouped into two classes, according as they are predominantly occasioned (_a_) by internal dangers of heresy and moral laxity; or (_b_) by the external peril of persecution. To the former (_a_) must be reckoned (1) the so-called Pastoral Epistles; (2) Jude; (3) 2nd Peter. All these concern themselves outspokenly with a type of false doctrine which has certain more or less definite traits, and is tending toward the Gnostic heresies of the second century, if not yet clearly identifiable with them. But the inspired genius of Paul is wanting. The age is not creative, but conservative. Its writers are ecclesiastics and church teachers, not apostles and prophets. Their distinctive note is appeal to apostolic authority. Whether the name by which they cover their own insignificance be that of "Paul," or "Jude the brother (son?) of James," or "Peter," they have little or no independent message. They hark back to the "pattern of sound words" the "deposit," "the faith once for all delivered to the saints," "the words spoken before by the holy prophets, and the commandments of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles," in particular the "wisdom of our beloved brother Paul" who (in the Pastoral Epistles) had predicted the heresy, and "in all his epistles" had spoken of the resurrection and judgment. Second Peter, which refers in the passage just quoted (2nd Pet. iii. 2, 15 f.) to the Pauline Epistles alongside "the other Scriptures" belongs to a very late period (_c._ 150). In fact this Epistle, now almost universally recognized to be pseudonymous, merely reëdits the Epistle of Jude, supplying a prefix (ch. i.) and an appendix (ch. iii.) to make special application of its denunciations to the case of the false teachers who were "denying the (bodily) resurrection and the judgment." Neither plagiarism nor pseudonymity were recognized offences at the time; so that we bring no indictment against the author of 2nd Peter, were he the Apostle or not. Still our conception of the Galilean fisherman will be higher without this example of pulpit rhetoric than with it.