SECTION 4.
TOPICS UNDER HIS SEVERAL JERUSALEM-VISITS.
Thick clouds, and those covering no small portion of its extent, will, after everything that can be done to dispel them, be found still hanging over the field of this inquiry. But, if to the purpose of the present question, sufficient light be elicited; in whatever darkness any collateral points may remain still involved, the conclusion will not be affected by it.
As to the credibility of Paul's story,—taken in itself, and viewed from the only position, from which we, at this time of day, can view it,—the question has just been discussed.
That which remains for discussion is—whether, from the Church, which Paul found in existence—the Church composed of the Apostles of Jesus, and his and their disciples—it ever obtained credence.
On this occasion, to the Apostles more particularly must the attention be directed: and this—not only because by their opinion, that of the great body of those disciples would, of course, on a point of such vital importance, be governed; but, because, in the case of these confidential servants and habitual attendants of Jesus, the individuals, of whom the body is composed, and who are designated by one and the same denomination, are always determinable: determinable, in such sort, that, at all times, wheresoever they are represented as being, the eye can follow them.
To judge with what aspect Paul with his pretensions was viewed by them, always with a view to the main question—whether, in any particular, the alleged supernatural cause of his outward conversion, and thence of his presumable inward conversion, ever obtained credence from them;—one primary object, which requires to be attended to, is—personal intercourse; viz. the sort of personal intercourse, which between him on the one part, and them, or some of them, on the other part, appears to have had place.
Of this intercourse, the several interviews, which appear to have had place, will form the links. Correspondent to those interviews will be found to be so many visits: all of them, except one, visits made by him to the great original metropolis of the Christian world—Jerusalem:—the scene of the acts and sufferings of the departed Jesus:—the ordinary abode of these his chosen disciples and successors. If, to these visits of Paul's is to be added any other interview,—it will be in another city, to wit, Antioch: and, in this instance, between Paul, and not, as in the case of the other visits might naturally be expected, the Apostles in a body; but one, or some other small number of members, by whom a visit to that place was made, in consequence of their having been selected for that purpose, and deputed by the rest.
Of the interviews corresponding with these visits, the real number,—and not only the real number, but the number upon record,—is unhappily, in no inconsiderable degree, exposed to doubt; for, considering the terms they were upon, as we shall see, at the interviews produced by Paul's first Jerusalem visit, it does not by any means follow, that, between the persons in question, because there were two more such visits, there was, on each occasion, an interview.