those heads: and here we see it under two of them, viz. place and person: and moreover, by other circumstances, the time, viz. the relative time, is pretty effectually fixed.

Immediately afterwards, this same indisputably false colouring will be seen laid on, when the account comes to be given, of his departure for Jerusalem : always for preaching Jesus is he sought after, never for any thing else.

According to this representation, here are two governments-two municipal governments-one of them, at the solicitation of a functionary of its own, giving him a commission to negotiate with another, for the purpose of obtaining, at its hands, an authority, for apprehending a set of men, who, in the eyes of both, were guilty of an offence against both. Instead of pursuing his commission, and using his endeavours to obtain the desired co-operation, he betrays the trust reposed in him:-he not only suffers the alledged malefactors to remain unapprehended and untouched, but enters into a confederacy with them. To both governments, this conduct of his is, according to him, matter of such entire indifference, that he might have presented himself every where, as if nothing had happened, had it not been for his preaching :-had it not been for his standing forth openly, to preach to all that would hear him, the very religion which he had been commissioned to extinguish.

In such a state of things, is there any thing that can, by any supposition, be reconciled to the nature of man, in any situation, or to any form of government?

Three years having been passed by him in that to him strange country, what, during all that time, were his means of subsistence? To this question an unquestionable answer will be afforded by the known nature of his situation. He was bred to a trade, indeed a handicraft trade-tent-making: an art, in which the

operations of the architect and the upholsterer are combined. But, it was not to practise either that, or any other manual operation, that he paid his visit to that country. When he really did practise it, he took care that this condescension of his should not remain a secret from that, as from every thing else he ever did or suffered, or pretended to have done or suffered, he failed not to extract the matter of glory for himself, as well as edification for his readers. In Arabia, his means of subsistence were not then derived from his trade: if they had been, we should have known it:from what source then were they derived? By the very nature of his situation, this question has been al ready answered:-from the purses of those, whom, having had it in his power, and even in his commission, to destroy, he had saved.

And now, as to all those things, which, from the relinquishment of his labours in the field of persecution to the first of his four recorded visits to Jerusalem, he is known to have done, answers have been furnished: -answers, to the several questions why and by what means, such as, (upon the supposition that the supernatural mode of his conversion was but a fable) it will not, it is hoped, be easy to find cause for objecting to as insufficient.

SECTION 5.

ARABIA-VISIT-MENTIONED BY PAUL, NOT ACTS. Not altogether without special reason, seems the veil of obscurity to have been cast over this long interval. In design, rather than accident, or heedlessness, or want of information, may be found, it should seem, the cause, of a silence so pregnant with misrepresentation. In addition to a length of time, more or less considerable, spent in Damascus, a city in close communica

tion with Jerusalem, in giving proofs of his conversion, -three years spent in some part or other of the contiguous indeed, but wide-extending, country of Arabia -(spent, if Paul is to be believed, in preaching the religion of Jesus, and at any rate in a state of peace and innoxiousness with relation to it)-afforded such proof of a change of plan and sentiment, as, in the case of many a man, might, without miracle or wonder, have sufficed to form a basis for the projected alliance: -this proof, even of itself; much more, when corroborated, by the sort of certificate, given to the Church by its pre-eminent benefactor Barnabas, who, in introducing the new convert, to the leaders among the Apostles, for the special purpose of proposing the alliance, took upon himself the personal responsibility, so inseparably involved in such a mark of confidence.

In this state of things then, which is expressly asserted by Paul to have been, and appears indubitably to have been, a real one,-considerations of an ordinary nature being sufficient to produce-not only the effect actually produced-but, in the case of many a man, much more than the effect actually produced,-there was no demand, at that time, for a miracle: no demand for a miracle, for any such purpose, as that of working, upon the minds of the Apostles, to any such effect as that of their maintaining, towards the new convert, a conduct free from hostility, accompanied with a countenance of outward amity. But, for other purposes, and in the course of his intercourse with persons of other descriptions, it became necessary for him to have had these visions: it became necessary-not only for the purpose of proving connexion on his part with the departed Jesus, to the satisfaction of all those by whom such proof would be looked for,-but, for the further purpose, of ascribing to Jesus, whatsoever doctrines the prosecution of his design might from time to time call upon him to promulgate;-those doctrines, in a word,

which, (as will be seen,) being his and not Jesus'snot reported by any one else as being Jesus's-we shall find him, notwithstanding, preaching, and delivering, -so much at his ease, and with unhesitating assu

rance.

A miracle having therefore been deemed necessary (the miracle of the conversion-vision), and reported accordingly, thus it is, that, by the appearance of suddenness, given to the sort and degree of confidence thereupon reported as having been bestowed upon him by the Apostles, a sort of confirmation is, in the Acts account, given to the report of the miracle: according to this account, it was not by the three or four years passed by him in the prosecution of their designs, or at least without obstruction given to them;-it was not by any such proof of amity, that the intercourse, such as it was, had been effected:-no: it was by the report of the vision-that report which, in the first instance, was made to them by their generous benefactor and powerful supporter, Barnabas; confirmed, as, to every candid eye it could not fail to be, by whatever accounts were, on the occasion of the personal intercourse, delivered from his own lips. "But Barnabas (says the author) took him and brought him to the Apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen "the Lord by the way, and that he had spoken to "him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus "in the name of Jesus*"

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SECTION 6.

GAMALIEL-HAD HE PART IN PAUL'S PLAN? GAMALIEL-in the working of this conversion, may it not be that Gamaliel-a person whose reality seems little exposed to doubt-had rather a more consider

*Acts ix. 27.

able share, than the above-mentioned unknown and unknowable Ananias ?

Gamaliel was "a doctor of law*". a person of sufficient note, to have been a member of the council, in which the chief priests, under the presidency of the High Priest, took cognizance of the offence with which Peter and his associates had a little before this been charged, on the occasion of their preaching Jesus. Under this Gamaliel, had Paul, he so at least is made to tell us, studied. Between Paul and this Gamaliel, here then is a connexion: a connexion-of that sort, which, in all places, at all times, has existence,—and of which the nature is every where and at all times so well understood-the connexion between protegé and protector. It was by authority from the governing body, that Paul was, at this time, lavishing his exertions in the persecution of the Apostles and their adherents: who then so likely, as this same Gamaliel, to have been the patron, at whose recommendation the commission was obtained? Of the cognizance which this Gamaliel took, of the conduct and mode of life of the religionists in question,-the result was favourable. "Let them alone," were his words (Acts v. 38). The maintenance, derived by the protegé, on that same occasion, from the persecution of these innoxious men-this maintenance being at once odious, dangerous, and precarious,-while the maintenance, derivable from the taking a part in the direction of their affairs, presented to view a promise of being at once respectable, lucrative, and permanent ;-what more natural then, that this change, from left to right, had for its origin the advice of this same patron?-advice, to which, all things considered, the epithet good could not very easily be refused.

Acts v. 34.

† Ibid. v. 24.

Ibid. xxii. 3.