But, apart from the easy and obvious solution which is accepted by Ritschl, following Hefele and others, [Endnote 83:1] that the sentence is extant only in the Latin translation and that the phrase 'qui cum eo sunt' is merely a paraphrase for [Greek: ton met' autou]; apart from this, even supposing the objection were valid, it would prove nothing against the genuineness of the Epistle.

It might be taken to prove that the second passage is an interpolation; but a contradiction between two passages in the same writing in no way tends to show that that writing is not by its ostensible author.

But surely either interpolator or forger must have had more sense than to place two such gross and absurd contradictions within about sixty lines of each other.
An argument brought by Dr.Hilgenfeld against the date dissolves away entirely on examination.

He thinks that the exhortation Orate pro regibus (et potestatibus et principibus) in c.

xii must needs refer to the double rule of Antoninus Pius (147 A.D.) or Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus (161 A.D.).