“But what, you will ask, did this belief then justify those crimes? And, are blasphemy, murder, and persecution, innocent things, from the time that a man persuades himself he ought to commit them? This would open a door to all the evils of the most outrageous fanaticism, and evacuate the whole moral law, under the pretence of conscience.”
In general, it would do so: and we shall presently find, that St. Paul does not pretend to justify himself, notwithstanding he verily believed he ought to do these things. But to see the degree of his crime, it will be convenient, and but just to the criminal, to call to mind, in the first place, the peculiar circumstances under which it was committed.
Paul was at that time a Jew; and, as a follower of this law, his conduct, supposing his conscience to have been rightly informed, had not been blameable; on the contrary, had been highly meritorious. For the law of Moses made the restraint of opinions, in matter of religion, lawful: Heterodoxy was to a Jew but another word for disloyalty; and a zeal to see the rigour of the law executed on that crime, was the honour of a Jewish subject. Paul, then, conceiving of Jesus as a false prophet, and the author of a new worship, contrary to that of the God of Israel, Paul, I say, regarding Jesus in this light, but conformed to the spirit of the law, when he joined in persecuting the Jewish Christians, and must esteem himself to have deserved well of it.
And this he, in fact, did. For, reckoning up the several merits, which, as a Jew, he might claim to himself, he mentions this zeal of persecution, as one, which did him honour, under that character—Concerning zeal, says he, PERSECUTING THE CHURCH[136].
The crime of Paul, then, as of the other Jews, in persecuting Christ and his religion, was not simply the crime of persecution (for, had that religion been a false one, by the peculiar structure of the Jewish œconomy, there would have been no crime at all in punishing such of the Jews, as professed themselves of it); but his guilt was, and, in general, the guilt of the other Jews was, in misapplying the law to this particular case; in persecuting a just and divine person, whom their own prophets had foretold and pointed out, who came in no opposition to the Jewish law, nay, who came not to destroy, but to fulfill[137].
The conclusion is, that, though persecution be on no pretence of conscience excusable in another man, yet in a Jew, and as directed against an apostate Jew, it had not this malignity, and was not the proper subject of his abhorrence[138].
To the question then, “Whether Paul’s belief justified his practice, in the case before us, that is, whether he did right in doing that which he verily believed he ought to do,” You may take his own answer—This, says he, is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, OF WHOM I AM CHIEF[139]. He owns himself, we see, to have been the chief of sinners, that is, making all allowance for the hyperbole and modesty of the expression, a very great sinner. And if you ask in what respect, he tells you that, too: for, in the immediately preceding verses, he declares the ground of this charge upon himself, That he had been a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious. And in another place he says of himself, I am the least of the Apostles; that am not meet to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the church of God[140].
You see, then, that, notwithstanding his former religion authorized him to persecute its enemies, notwithstanding he verily believed, that he ought to persecute Jesus as such, yet he now condemns himself, as having grievously sinned in giving way to that authority, and to that persuasion. How is this conduct to be accounted for and made consistent? plainly, by observing, that he had persecuted without warrant, even from his former religion; that he had culpably and rashly overlooked (what he might and ought to have seen) that Jesus was no fit object of this severity even to a Jew, that he was no enemy or subverter of the Jewish law, that he was no rebel to the God and king of Israel, but came indeed from him, acted by his commission, and displayed all the signs and credentials of the Messiah, in whom the law and the prophets were finally to be completed.
Without doubt, his being now of a religion, which forbad persecution, under all its forms, sharpened his sense of this crime, and may perhaps account for his calling himself the chief of sinners; yet, that the persecution of Christians was to him a crime, and that he had sinned in committing it, he could not but know, and is clearly to be inferred from his expression. All the use he makes of his Jewish persuasion, is, but to palliate something what he knew was without excuse:—I obtained mercy, says he, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief: that is, because I persecuted in my unbelieving state of a Jew, and was kept, by the genius of the Mosaic law, from knowing and considering the general malignity of persecution. And that there may be some ground of mercy in this consideration, who can doubt, when we find the Son of God interceding for his very murderers on the same principle—Father, says he, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
There was this difference, you see, between a Jewish and a Gentile persecutor. The Jew was answerable for his not seeing that Jesus was the Messiah: The Gentile was to answer for that ignorance, and for his not seeing the general iniquity of persecution, on account of religion.