CHAPTER II.
Outward Conversion—how produced—how planned.
SECTION 1.
MOTIVE, TEMPORAL ADVANTAGE—PLAN.
How flourishing the state of the church had at this period become, will be seen more fully in another place. Long before this period,—numbers of converts, in Jerusalem alone, above three thousand. The aggregate, of the property belonging to the individuals, had been formed into one common fund: the management—too great a burden for the united labours of the eleven Apostles, with their new associate Mathias—had, under the name so inappositely represented at present by the English word deacon, been committed to seven trustees; one of whom, Stephen, had, at the instance of Paul, been made to pay, with his life, for the imprudence, with which he had, in the most public manner, indulged himself, in blaspheming the idol of the Jews—their temple.[13]
Of that flourishing condition, Paul, under his original name of Saul, had all along been a witness. While carrying on against it that persecution, in which, if not the original instigator, he had been a most active instrument, persecuting, if he himself, in what he is made to say, in Acts xxii. 4, is to be believed,—"persecuting unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women;"—while thus occupied, he could not in the course of such his disastrous employment, have failed to obtain a considerable insight into the state of their worldly affairs.
Samaria—the field of the exploits and renown of the great sorcerer Simon, distinguished in those times by the name of Magus—Samaria, the near neighbour and constant rival, not to say enemy, of Jerusalem;—is not more than about five and forty miles distant from it. To Paul's alert and busy mind,—the offer, made by the sorcerer, to purchase of the Apostles a share in the government of the church, could not have been a secret.