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understand, that to treat him kindly, sincerely and respectfully, is but a mere justice to him that is ready to do us the same offices: this temper of soul keeps us always awake to a just sense of things, teaches us that we are as well a-kin to worms as to angels, and as nothing is above these, so is nothing below those: it keeps our understanding tight about us, so that all things appear to us great and little as they are in nature, not as they are gilded or sullied by accident and fortune.

Meekness is to the mind, what a good mien is to the body, without which, the best limned and finest complexioned person may be very disagreeable; and with it, a very homely and plain one cannot be so; for a good air supplies the imperfection of feature and shape, by throwing a certain beauty on the whole, which covers the disagreeableness of the parts; it has a state and humility peculiar to itself above all virtues, like the holy scripture, its sacred record, where the highest things are expressed in the most easy terms, and which carries throughout a condescending explanation, and a certain meekness of style.

With this circumstance, and this ready virtue, the faithful followers of a crucified master were to shape their course to an eternal kingdom, and with that in prospect to contemn the hazards and disasters of a cruel and impenitent generation. Great were the actions and sufferings of all our blessed Saviour's apostles, but St. Paul being peculiarly sent to us, who were, or are Gentiles, he, methinks, more particularly challenges our regard; God who bestowed upon others supernaturally the gift of tongues, but not of arts, thought therefore fit to make use of him, already master in some measure of both, and qualified to converse with the politer world by his acquaintance with their studies, laws and customs: but though he shows himself by frequent brisk sallies and quick interrogatories, skilful in approaching the passions of rhetoric, yet he is very modest in any of those ornaments, and strikes all along at reason, where he never fails to convince the attentive and unprejudiced; and though his person was very despicable (which to a stranger is almost an insuperable inconvenience) yet such was the power of the commanding truth which he uttered, and his skill how and when to utter it, that there every where appears in his character, either the man of business, the gentleman, the hero, the apostle, or the martyr; which eminence above the other apostles might well be expected from his sanguine and undertaking complexion, tempered by education, and quickened by grace: it is true indeed, he had opposed in the most outrageous and violent manner this new

faith, and was accessary to the murder of the glorious leader of the army of martyrs, St. Stephen; but that fierce disposition fell off with the scales from his eyes; and God, who ever regards the intention, changed his mistaken method of serving him, and he is now ready to promote the same religion by his sufferings, which before he would have extirpated by his persecutions. He and his companion had made very great progress in the conversion both of Jews and Gentiles, but certain unbelievers prompted the multitude to a resolution at a general assembly to assassinate them, but they advertised of it fled unto Lycaonia, where their actions and eloquence were very successful: but at Lystra, a certain poor cripple (from his mother's womb) heard him with very particular attention and devotion, whom the apostle (observing in his very countenance his warm contrition, and preparation of soul to receive the benefit) commanded to stand up, upon which he immediately jumped upon his legs, and walked: this miracle alarmed the whole city, who believed their gods had descended in human shapes: Barnabas was immediately Jove, and Paul his Mercury: the priest of Jupiter now is coming to sacrifice to them with oxen and garlands: but they ran into the multitude; we are men like you, are subject to the same weakness, infirmities and passions with yourselves: we, alas! are impotent of the great things ourselves have done; your and our Creator will no longer let you wander in the maze and error of your vanities and false notions of his Deity, but has sent us with instances of his omnipotence to awake you to a worship worthy him, and worthy you. Oh graceful passage to see the great apostle oppose his own success! now only his vehemence, his power and his eloquence are too feeble when they are urgent against themselves; for which prayers and entreaties the crowd could hardly be prevailed upon, to forbear their adoration. But this applause, like all other, was but a mere gust, for the malice of certain Jews followed them from Iconium, and quickly insinuated into the giddy multitude as much rancour as they had before devotion; who in a tumultuary manner stoned St. Paul, and dragged him as dead out of the gates of the city; but he bore their affronts with much less indignation than their worship: here was in a trice the highest and lowest condition, the most respectful and most insolent treatment that man could receive; but christianity, which kept his eye upon the cause, not effect of his actions, (and always gives us a transient regard to transitory things,) depressed him when adorned, exalted him when affronted.

But these two excellent men, though they had the endearments of fellow-suffering, and their friendship heightened by the yet faster tie of religion, could not longer accompany each other, but upon a dispute about taking Mark with them, who it seems had before deserted them, their dissention grew to the highest a resentment between generous friends ever can, even to part and estrange them: but they did it without rancour, malice, or perhaps disesteem of each other; for God hath made us, whether we observe it at the instant of being so or not, so much instruments of his great and secret purposes, that he has given every individual man, I know not what peculiarly his own, which so much distinguishes him from all other persons, that it is impossible, sometimes, for two of the same generous resolutions, honesty and integrity to do well together; whether it be that Providence has so ordered it to distribute virtue the more, or whatever it is, such is the frequent effect. For these nobler personages were forced to take different ways, and in those were eminently useful in the same cause; as you may have seen two chemical waters, asunder, shining and transparent, thrown together, muddy and offensive.

The apostle was warned in a vision to go unto Macedonia, whither he and his new companion Silas accordingly went. At Philippi he commanded an evil spirit to depart out of a young. woman; but her master (to whom her distraction was a revenue, which ceased by her future inability to answer the demands usually made to her) with the ordinary method of hiding private malice in public zeal, raised the multitude upon them, as disturbers of the public peace, and innovators upon their laws and liberties: the multitude hurried them to the magistrates, who happening to be wise as themselves, commanded them to be stripped, whipped, and clapped in gaol: the keeper receiving very strict orders for their safe custody, put them in irons in the dungeon; the abused innocents had now no way left for their redress, but applying to their God, who, when all human arts and forces fail, is ready for our relief, nor did St. Paul on less occasions implore preternatural assistance:

* Nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice Nodus,
Inciderit

Let not a God approach the scene,

In cases for a God too mean.

Horace's General Epistle to the Pisos', verse 105.
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VOL. II.

We must, to men of wit and gallantry, quote out of their own scriptures. Their generous way of devotion, and begging assistance, was giving thanks for their present extremities: in the midst of their sores and chains, they sang hymns and praise to their Creator. Immediately the bolts flew, the manacles fell off, the doors were opened, and the earth shook: the gaoler awakes in terror, and believing all under his custody escaped went to dispatch himself; but St. Paul calls to him, he comes and beholds his prisoners detained by nothing but their amazing liberty; the horror, sorrow, torture and despair of a dungeon, turned into the joy, the rapture, the hallelujah, the ecstasy of a Heaven; he fell trembling at the apostles' feet, resigned himself to his captives, and felt in himself the happy exchange of his liberty, for that yoke in which alone is perfect freedom. Early the next morning, upon this stupendous occasion, the magistrates sent orders those men might be released: but St. Paul, who knew he had law on his side, and that his being a prisoner made him not the less a gentleman and a Roman, scorned their pretended favour, nor would regard their message, until they had themselves in as public a manner acknowledged their offence, as they had committed it; which they did by attending them in the goal, and desiring in a ceremonious manner they would leave the city; upon which the apostle accepted his enlargement, and when he had settled what business he had in that town, left it and its rulers to forget that painful truth, which they had neither power to gainsay, nor ingenuity to acknowledge.

His taking leave of the chief of the Ephesian churches, is hardly to be read without tears, where, when he had reminded them of his whole blameless, disinterested, humble and laborious carriage, he acquaints them with his resolution of going to Jerusalem and never to return thither; he knew not, he said, what would particularly befal him there, but that in general, afflictions, distresses, and indignities were the portions of his life, which he was ready to hazard or lay down in a cause which has a certain sweetness in it, that can make a man embrace his chains, and enjoy his miseries; what could be answered to his gallant declaration and behaviour but what they did, who all wept sore, and fell on St. Paul's neck, and kissed him: sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more. Certain Jews of Asia were glad to see him again at Jerusalem, and inflamed the city with their personal knowledge of his carriage, to the disparagement of the temple, and the rites of their nation: upon which he had been torn to pieces, had he not been rescued

by the commanding military officer there; of whom (going with him as a prisoner into the castle) he obtained the liberty of speaking to the people: they heard him with great attention, until he contradicted their monopoly of God, at which they lost all order and patience. But opposition was so far from dispiriting, that it did but quicken his resolution; for his great heart, instead of fainting and subsiding, rose and biggened in proportion to any growing danger that threatened him; however he is carried to his imprisonment, but not even there to be without debate, for he is by the commander's order to be scourged, to which he does not passively, or basely submit, but asserts his Roman privilege, and exemption from such indignities.

He was thereupon next morning brought down to a trial, by a council of his own nation, where upon his very opening his mouth, the chief priest commanded him to be struck, for which he calls him hypocrite and false pretender to justice, who could use a man, he was to sit as judge of, so inhumanly; but his good breeding being founded upon no less a sanction than the command of God, he immediately recollects himself, and acknowledges his error and disrespect to the dignity of his office: yet observing (by this treatment from the president of the council) the usage he was to expect, by a very skilful turn he makes friends in an assembly unanimous in his ruin, but in that only unanimous; for Pharisees, in which sect he was bred, composing part of the court, he closes with their belief of a resurrection, and there grounded the cruelty he had met with among the Jews: this put them into so great a flame, that to save him, he was forcibly taken away into the place from whence he came: his enemies, galled to the quick at his escape, conspired to kill him, when (upon the high-priest's request) he should be remanded to a trial: a nephew of the apostle's acquainted him with this; he was neither afraid nor amazed at the intelligence, but like a man of business and the world, discretly and calmly ordered the youth to be introduced to the captain, whom he knew answerable for the safety of the prisoner: the officer in the night sent him with a strong party to Felix the governor of the province, and directed his accusers to follow him thither: before Felix, one Tertullus, a mercenary orator, bawled an impertinent harangue, introduced with false praise of the judge, and closed with false accusation of the prisoner, who with cogent plain truths, and matter of fact, baffled his barbarous eloquence, and obtained so good a sense of himself and his innocence with the viceroy, that he gave him a private audience on the subject of his faith; but instead of then

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