salem against the feast of Pentecost.5 His reception at Jerusalem was of a piece with the usage he had experienced from the Jews in other places. He had been only a few days in that city, when the populace, instigated by some of his old opponents in Asia, who attended this feast, seized him in the Temple, forced him out of it, and were ready immediately to have destroyed him, had not the sudden presence of the Roman guard rescued him out of their hands. The officer, however, who had thus seasonably interposed, acted from his care of the public peace, with the preservation of which he was charged, and not from any favour to the Apostle, or, indeed, any disposition to exercise either justice or humanity towards him; for he had no sooner secured his person in the fortress, than he was proceeding to examine him by torture.7

From this time to the conclusion of the history, the Apostle remains in public custody of the Roman government. After escaping assassination, by a fortunate discovery of the plot, and delivering himself from the influence of his enemies by an appeal to the audience of the

Acts xx. 16.

• Acts xxi. 27-34.

7 Acts xxii. 24.

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emperor, he was sent, but not until he had suffered two years' imprisonment," to Rome. He reached Italy, after a tedious voyage, and after encountering in his passage the perils of a desperate shipwreck.1 But although still a prisoner and his fate still pending, neither the various and long-continued sufferings which he had undergone, nor the danger of his present situation, deterred him from persisting in preaching the religion; for the historian closes 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 soldier that guarded him, "preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence." 2

Now the historian, from whom we have drawn this account, in the part of his narrative which relates to Saint Paul, is supported by the strongest corroborating testimony that a history can receive. We are in possession of letters written by Saint Paul himself upon the subject of his ministry, and either written during the period which the history comprises, or, if written afterwards, reciting and referring to the trans

Acts xxv. 9, 11.

1 Acts xxvii.

• Acts xxiv. 27.

2 Acts xxviii. 31.

actions of that period. These letters, without borrowing from the history, or the history from them, unintentionally confirm the account which the history delivers, in a great variety of particulars. What belongs to our present purpose is the description exhibited of the Apostle's sufferings; and the representation given in the history, of the dangers and distresses which he underwent, not only agrees, in general, with the language which he himself uses whenever he speaks of his life or ministry, but is also, in many instances, attested by a specific correspondency of time, place, and order of events. If the historian put down in his narrative, that at Philippi the Apostle was beaten with many stripes, cast into prison, and there treated with rigour and indignity; we find him, in a letter to a neighbouring church, reminding his converts, that after he had suffered before, and was shamefully entreated at Philippi, he was bold, nevertheless, to speak unto them (to whose city he next came) the Gospel of God. If the history relate,5 that, at Thessalonica, the house in which the Apostle was lodged, when he first came to that place, was assaulted by the populace, and the master of it dragged before the magistrate for

3

Acts xvi. 23, 24.

1 Thess. ii. 2.

5 Acts xvii. 5.

admitting such a guest within his doors; the Apostle, in his letter to the Christians of Thessalonica, calls to their remembrance "how they had received the Gospel in much affliction." If the history deliver an account of an insurrection at Ephesus, which had nearly cost the Apostle his life; we have the Apostle himself, in a letter written a short time after his departure from that city, describing his despair, and returning thanks for his deliverance." If the history inform us that the Apostle was expelled from Antioch in Pisidia, attempted to be stoned at Iconium, and actually stoned at Lystra, there is preserved a letter from him to a favourite convert, whom, as the same history tells us, he first met with in these parts; in which letter he appeals to that disciple's knowledge of the persecutions which befell him at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra. If the history make the Apostle, in his speech to the Ephesian elders, remind them, as one proof of the disinterestedness of his views, that, to their knowledge, he had supplied his own and the necessities of his companions by personal labour; we find the same Apostle, in a letter written during his

1 Thess. i. 6.

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9

7 Acts xix. 2 Cor. i. 8-10. Acts xiii. 50; xiv. 5, 19. 2 Tim. iii. 10, 11.

• Acts xx. 34.

residence at Ephesus, asserting of himself, "that, even to that hour, he laboured, working with his own hands." 1

These coincidences, together with many relative to other parts of the Apostle's history, and all drawn from independent sources, not only confirm the truth of the account, in the particular points as to which they are observed, but add much to the credit of the narrative in all its parts; and support the author's profession of being a contemporary of the person whose history he writes, and, throughout a material portion of his narrative, a companion.

What the epistles of the Apostles declare of the suffering state of Christianity, the writings which remain of their companions and immediate followers expressly confirm.

Clement, who is honourably mentioned by Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Philippians,2 hath left us his attestation to this point, in the following words: "Let us take," says he, "the examples of our own age. Through zeal and envy, the most faithful and righteous pillars of

the Church have been most grievous deaths. eyes the holy Apostles.

1 1 Cor. iv. 11, 12.

persecuted even to the Let us set before our Peter, by unjust envy,

Phil. iv. 3.