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the most active philanthropist the world has yet seen? Why should Paul of Tarsus alone teach truth with a certainty, which no difference of place could alter, no length of time diminish?

Ꭼ ᎠᎳᎪ Ꭱ Ꭰ .

Might not his intercourse with other nations make the difference?

MR. B.

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Had he alone intercourse with them? the philosophy of Philo, or compare the apostle with Josephus. It was neither Grecian philosophy nor Grecian patriotism that taught St. Paul; that made him very "gladly spend and be spent, though the more he laboured, the less he was loved;" that made him account himself " a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, to the wise and to the unwise." The more you consider the character of St. Paul, the more convinced you must become of the truth of the miracles of the New Testament; for nothing else can account for it. The good Lord Lyttelton wrote an excellent little book on this subject, which you ought by all means to read.

EDWARD.

But might not the excellency of the Christian religion produce those effects on St. Paul, independently of miraculous agency? Might he not have been deceived, and his mind being strongly

worked upon, make him thus zealous, in what he deemed a good cause?

MR. B.

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St. Paul could not have been deceived. racle was wrought at a time when no prejudice of his mind favoured deception; in open day; in the open country; it affected others as well as himself; and its effects on him were permanent, so that no doubt could remain of the reality of “the heavenly vision." His blindness was miraculously inflicted, and miraculously removed.

BEATRICE.

His own writings prove also that he was a man not easily imposed upon; and from his life, we cannot think he would impose upon others.

MR. B.

We have yet one more test, and that decides the whole matter, proving he neither could have been deceived nor deceive. We have before seen that his epistles were genuine.

BEATRICE.

Undoubtedly: the undesigned coincidence observable in them, when compared with each other, and with the Acts of the Apostles, in addition to their universal reception as his, fully establishes it.

EDWARD.

On that there can be no doubt.

MR. B.

But in these epistles St. Paul asserts, that he himself worked miracles, and that he had communicated extraordinary powers to others also. Here no possibility of deception remains. It is not easy to say how far the senses may be imposed upon; but no human power whatsoever can produce on another effects like these. No artifice of the other apostles could enable St. Paul to heal the cripple at Lystra-to recall Eutychus to life; no persuasion. on the part of St. Paul, or enthusiasm in themselves, could induce the Corinthians to believe they had received from him the power of speaking languages they had never learned.

EDWARD.

And yet this must have been the case, since the Corinthians received it as genuine, and endured every suffering in consequence, rather than renounce Christianity.

MR. B.

The conclusions which Paley draws, at the end of his Hora Paulinæ, are all that is necessary to state on this subject.

1. That Christianity was not a story set on foot, amidst the confusions which attended, and immediately preceded, the destruction of Jerusalem; when many extravagant reports were circulated; when men's minds were broken by terror and distress; when, amidst the tumults that surrounded them, inquiry was impracticable. These letters show incontestably, that the

religion had fixed and established itself before this state of things took place.

2. Whereas it hath been insinuated, that our Gospels may have been made up of reports and stories which were current at the time, we may observe, that, with respect to the Epistles, this is impossible.

3. These letters prove, that the converts to Christianity were not drawn from the barbarous, the mean, or the ignorant set of men, which the representations of infidelity would sometimes make them.

4. St. Paul's history, I mean so much of it as may be collected from his letters, is so implicated with that of the other apostles, and with the substance indeed of the Christian history itself, that I apprehend it will be found impossible to admit St. Paul's story (I do not speak of the miraculous part of it) to be true, and yet to reject the rest as fabulous.

5. St. Paul's letters furnish evidence (and what better evidence than a man's own letters can be desired?) of the soundness and sobriety of his judgment.

6. These letters are decisive, as to the sufferings of the author; also as to the distressed state of the Christian church, and the dangers which attended the preaching of the Gospel.

7. St. Paul in these letters asserts in positive and unequivocal terms his performance of miracles, strictly and properly so called.

CONVERSATION XII.

MR. B.

THE Conversion of St. Paul, and his continuance in the faith of Christ till death, with the evidence collected from his letters, would alone be sufficient to establish the reality of the miracles of the New Testament to any reasonable mind; but beyond this we may extend the proof, and from the Gospels themselves defend the truth of those parts of their contents which relate miraculous events.

BEATRICE.

There is a peculiar interest attached to the miracles of our Lord.

MR. B.

That the other apostles were neither deceivers nor deceived is equally certain with the case of St. Paul. Out of twelve whom he selected, one indeed proved false, but instantly bore melancholy testimony to the truth, by putting an end to his life. The remaining eleven, with one elected in the place of the traitor, continued till death firm in the faith of their Master. Most of them sealed their testimony with their blood; and if any did not, the expectation of a cruel death was at least common to all.

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