It does not appear that St. Paul performed miracles at Jerusalem after his conversion; this city was not in his department: it belonged to St. Peter and the other Jewish apostles, who, according to the Acts, did not cease to work miracles there. Our Apostle of the uncircumcised, or of the district in which the Gentiles were converted, having quitted his brethren, commenced his course of miracles at Paphos. He was upon the point of converting Sergius, proconsul of the province, had not a cursed sorcerer of a Jew, named Barjesus, and surnamed Elymas, i.e. magician, endeavoured to prevent the magistrate from believing in Jesus Christ. Indignant at the obstacle that this man opposed to the divine will, instead of converting and convincing him, Paul abused him according to the present practice of theologians, and called him a child of the devil, and finished with striking him with blindness. If this conduct was conducive to the salvation of the proconsul, who according to the author of the Acts, having seen this miracle, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord, there are many who will not be so edified, at this prodigy, so contrary to Christian charity and mildness. In fact would it not have been more kind of St. Paul armed with divine power, to have enlightened the eyes of the sorcerer's mind, than to have struck those of his body with darkness? But we always see that the miracle that the apostles as well as their divine master had most difficulty in working was that of convincing those who were not disposed to believe every thing. It appears that on the present occasion, the sorcerer was stronger, in point of reasoning, than St. Paul, which put him in a passion. Logic was not in fact, the most prominent quality in our Apostle, any more than in his brethren and successors. Besides, this holy Missionary was of too impetuous a temper to reason with moderation, and argue in a clear and precise manner. Thus to terminate the dispute with Elymas, he abused him, and perhaps relying on the protection of the proconsul, whom he saw wavering in favour of his doctrine, ventured to strike his antagonist, which deprived him of his sight for a period, for it is easy to deprive a man of the use of his eyes without a miracle*. * This, it must in candour be acknowledged, is an inference which the text will not warrant us to draw, and is unworthy Boulanger's pen. It seems to be compromising the dignity of truth, to impose upon itself the necessity of accounting for all the hocus pocus tricks, or wilful falshoods, which the ignorance, bigotry, and knavery of a deplorable superstition, have handed down through the mist of eighteen centuries.--Translators