care of the public peace, with the prefervation of which he was charged, and not from any favour to the apostle, or indeed any difpofition to exercise either juftice or humanity towards him; for he had no fooner fecured his person in the fortress, than he was proceeding to examine him by torture*. From this time to the conclufion of the history, the apostle remains in public cuftody of the Roman government. After escaping affaffination by a fortunate discovery of the plot, and delivering himself from the influence of his enemies by an appeal to the audience of the emperor +, he was fent, but not until he had fuffered two years imprisonment, to Rome ‡. He reached Italy after a tedious voyage, and after encountering in his paffage the perils of a defperate shipwreck §. But although still a prisoner, and his fate ftill depending, neither the various and long continued fufferings which he had * Acts xxii. 12. 24. ↑ Acts xxiv. 27. G 3 + Acts xxv. 9. II. Acts xxvii. undergone, undergone, nor the danger of his prefent fituation, deterred him from perfifting in preaching the religion; for the hiftorian clofes the account by telling us, that, for two years, he received all that came unto him in his own hired house, where he was permitted to dwell with a foldier that guarded him, "preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jefus Chrift, with all confidence." Now the hiftorian, from whom we have drawn this account, in the part of his narrative which relates to St. Paul, is supported by the strongest corroborating teftimony that a history can receive. We are in poffeffion of letters written by St. Paul himself upon the subject of his ministry, and either written during the period which the history comprifes, or, if written afterwards, reciting and referring to the tranfactions of that period. Thefe letters, without borrowing from the history, or the hiftory from them, unintentionally confirm the account which the hiftory delivers in a great variety of particulars. What What belongs to our present purpose is the description exhibited of the apostle's fufferings and the representation, given in the history, of the dangers and diftreffes which he underwent, not only agrees, in general, with the language which he himself uses, whenever he speaks of his life or miniftry, but is also, in many instances, attefted by a specific correfpondency of time, place, and order of events. If the hiftorian puts down in his narrative that at Philippi the apostle “ was beaten with many ftripes, caft into prison, and there treated with rigor and indignity*," we find him, in a letter to a neighbouring church, reminding his converts, that, "after he had fuffered before, and was fhamefully entreated at Philippi, he was bold, neverthelefs, to speak unto them (to whofe city he next came) the Gospel of God." If the hiftory relate, that, at Theffalonica, the house in which the apoftle was lodged, when he first came to that place, was assaulted by the populace, and the mafter of it dragged be Acts xvi. 24. † 1 Theff. ii. 2. Acts xvii. 57. fore the magiftrate for admitting fuch a guest within his doors, the apoftle, in his letters to the Chriftians of Theffalonica, calls to their remembrance" how they had received the Gospel in much affliction*." If the hiftory deliver an account of an infurrection at Ephefus, which had nearly cost the apostle his life, we have the apoftle himself, in a letter written a short time after his departure from that city, defcribing his despair, and returning thanks for his deliverance t. If the hiftory inform us, that the apostle was expelled from Antioch in Pifidia, attempted to be ftoned at Iconium, and actually stoned at Lyftra, there is preferved a letter from him to a favorite convert, whom, as the fame hiftory tells us, he first met with in these parts; in which letter he appeals to that disciple's knowledge "of the perfecutions which befel him at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lyftra ‡." If the history make the apostle, in his speech to the Ephefian elders, remind them, as one * I Theff. i. 6. + Acts xix. 2 Cor. i. 8, 9. Acts xiii. 50. xix. 5. 19. 2 Tim. iii. 10, IÏ. proof 1 proof of the difinterestedness of his views, that, to their knowledge, he had supplied his own and the neceffities of his companions by perfonal labour *, we find the fame apoftle, in a letter written during his refidence at Ephesus, afferting of himfelf," that even to that hour he laboured, working with his own hands t. These coincidences, together with many relative to other parts of the apostle's history; and all drawn from independent fources, not only confirm the truth of the account, in the particular points as to which they are obferved, but add much to the credit of the narrative in all its parts; and fupport the author's profeffion of being a contemporary of the perfon whofe history he writes, and, throughout a material portion of his narrative, a companion. What the epiftles of the apostles declare of the fuffering ftate of Christianity, the writ *Acts xx. 34. + Cor. iv. 11, 12. ings |