And on what occasion is it, that this account of the matter is given by him? It is at the close of a declamation, which occupies ten verses—a declamation, the object of which is—to impress upon the minds of his adherents the idea of his merits: viz. those which consisted in labour, suffering, and perils: merits, on which he places his title to the preference he claims above the competitors to whom he alludes:—alludes, though without naming them: they being, as he acknowledges therein, ministers of Christ, and probably enough, if not any of them Apostles, persons commissioned by the Apostles. Greater, it is evident, must have been the danger from the ruling powers of the place, than from a set of individual intended murderers:—from the power of the rulers there could not be so much as a hope of salvation, except by escape: from the individuals there would be a naturally sufficient means of salvation; the power of the rulers presenting a means of salvation, and that naturally a sufficient one.
Note here, by the by, one of the many exemplifications, of that confusion which reigns throughout in Paul's discourses: the result, of that mixture, which, in unascertainable proportions, seems to have had place—that mixture of nature and artifice. It is at the end of a long list of labours, sufferings, and perils, that this anecdote presents itself. Was it accordingly at the end of them that the fact itself had taken place?—No: it was at the very commencement: or rather, so far as concerned preaching, before the commencement. Only in the way of allusion—allusion in general terms—in terms of merely general description, without mention of time or place, or persons concerned,—are any of the other sufferings or perils mentioned: in this instance alone, is any mention made under any one of 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 anything 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 his 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 cooperation, he betrays the trust reposed in him:—he not only suffers the alleged 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 everywhere, 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 anything 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 everything 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?[17] By the very nature of his situation, this question has been already 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.