ted by genius, and enlightened by learning, chofe to defcend, with certain, imminent, and dreadful danger to himself, from an high and honourable station, that he might become the affociate of a few poor, despised, perfecuted, and illiterate fifhermen, among whom he never affumed any fuperiority, and whose Master had lately been put to an ignominious death as a malefactor, not only of the worst kind, but also of the meaneft con dition?

In a word, Paul either was, or was not, an impoftor. If he was an impoftor, he must have been a very fingular one indeed. For, inftead of aiming at riches, honour, pleasure, or power (and at, one or other, or all of thefe, all other impoftors have aimed,) his hopes and purposes must in every respect have had a contrary direction. He must have preferred contempt to honour, imprisonment to liberty, danger to fecurity, and scourging, ftoning, hunger, nakedness, and martyrdom, (for these were all before him, and he underwent them all without a murmur,) to a life of eafe and affluence. And, finally, being a strict Pharafee, and confequently believing a future ftate, he muft, without any temporal allurement whatever, have preferred damnation to happiness in the world to come. But could he thus, in every sense of the word, prefer mifery

to its oppofite? If he could, he was a madman : -which his writings and hiftory prove he was

not.

If he was no impoftor, he muft have been an honeft man and, that being admitted, we must also admit what he teftified concerning the manner and confequences of his converfion; in other words, we must believe the gospel to be true. And if he was the author of thofe epiftles, which ever fince they were written have born his name; and if he taught thofe doctrines, which the phyfician Luke, his fellow-traveller, heard from his mouth, and has recorded: he must have been no frantic or weak enthufiaft, but a perfon of good understanding, of exemplary virtue, and of the highest attainments in true wisdom;-in that wifdom, I mean, which is from above,' and which tends to purify our nature, and make us happy, both now and for ever. The thirteenth chapter of the first epiftles to the Corinthians would alone prove him to have been one of the beft and wifest men that ever lived.

I SAID, that Paul, if he was not an impoftor, must have been an honeft man: and, this being admitted, that the gospel must be true. If indeed it could be fhewn, that he was credulous, and that before his converfion he had entertained any partiality to the doctrines and character of Jefus,

it might feem poffible at least, though no doubt very improbable, that his paffions and imagination might have difordered his judgment, and perverted his fenfes; and, therefore, that the circumftances of his converfion, though believed by him to be real, might have been vifionary. Well: was he a credulous man? or had he any partiality of this kind?

So far was he from being credulous, that all he had heard of our Lord's miracles (for he must have heard of them, and from eye-witnesfes too,) had no weight with him; and nothing could overcome his incredulity, but a miracle wrought upon himself:-wrought, not in darkness or in folitude, or at a time when any thing had happened to enfeeble or deprefs his mind, but at noon-day, in the public highway, in the midst of his adherents, in the neighbourhood of a great town, and while he himfelf was employed as he firmly believed, in the fervice of God, and of his country. And fo far was he from entertaining any partiality to the Christian cause, that, till this miracle was wrought for his convertion, he looked upon Jefus as an impoftor and blasphemer, and upon the disciples, as a set of men, whom it was in the highest degree meritorious to perfecute and destroy.

IN fome of his epiftles, addreffed to churches he had planted, we find him declaring, as a thing which they knew to be true, that he was endowed with the power of working miracles, and had actually wrought many. If the fact had been otherwife, would he have hazarded fuch a declaration, in writing to a people, among whom he knew he had perfonal oppofers, and whom he was reproving for feveral irregularities? And if the fact was fo,if he really was a worker of miracles, as well as a preacher of the pureft and fublimeft morality, muft we not confider him, as in a very peculiar manner, and in a very high degree, favoured by that Being, who is the giver of every good and of every perfect gift? They who believe in God, and candidly weigh all these circumftances, will not object to St. Paul's veracity. And if that which he teftifies concerning himself be true, it is abfolutely impoffible that the gofpel can be false.

INDEED, the converfion of this great man, and his conduct both before and after he became an apostle, do alone amount to fuch a proof of our religion, as cannot be overthrown ;-in any other way, than by proving the Acts of the Apoftles, and the fubfequent Epifles, to be fiction and forgery. The reader will find a full, an elegant, and, I think, an unanswerable illuftration of this argu

ment, in Lord Lyttleton's Remarks on the Converfion of St. Paul.

And now, to conclude this part of the fubject, -Let them, who are acquainted with the hiftory of our Saviour, attend to it ever fo flightly, and then say, what regard is due to the judgment of those, who talk of electricity and magnetifm as principles in nature capable of exalting the man who understands them into a worker of miracles.. Will magnetism or electricity, or any other natural principle that can be mentioned, enable the perfon who is skilled in it to raise himself or others from the dead; to cure diseases by speaking a word; to foretel future events ; to make a few loaves and fishes a fufficient meal for five thoufand men; to publish a system of morality more. perfect than any other that ever was in the world to impart to other men the power of working miracles, and particularly of speaking languages they had never learned? We have heard of making the agitation of water fubfide by pouring oil on it: Plutarch mentions this as a wellknown fact, quotes Ariftotle's reason for it, and gives another of his own; and of late it is faid to have been proved by experiment; but who will undertake to calm the fea by uttering a word?

THEY Who compare the meekness and benevo