Bible. New Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Christianity -- Origin; Paul, the Apostle, Saint
5. Part the Fifth is employed in showing, that,--even if, on all these
several occasions, the exercise of a power of producing supernatural
effects had, by unequivocal statements, been ascribed to Paul by the
author of the Acts,--such testimony, independently of the virtual
contradiction given to it by the above-mentioned circumstantial
evidence,--could not, with any propriety, be regarded as affording
adequate proof--either of the fact of Paul's having received a divine
commission, and thereby, having become, inwardly as well as outwardly, a
convert to the religion of Jesus--either of that radical fact, or so
much as of any one of the alleged achievements, which, upon the face of
the accounts in question, are wont to present themselves as miraculous:
for that, in the first place, it is only by error that the history in
question has been ascribed to Saint Luke: it being, in respect of the
account given of the circumstances accompanying the ascension of Jesus,
inconsistent with the account given in the gospel of Saint Luke, when
compared with Acts 1:3 to 12,--and as to those attendant on the death of
Judas, inconsistent with the account in Saint Matthew 27:3 to 10 and
Acts 1:16 to 20: and moreover, such being the whole complexion of his
narrative, as to render it incapable of giving any tolerably adequate
support to any statement whereby the exercise of supernatural power is
asserted. This part occupies Chapter 14.
In Part the Sixth, to give additional correctness and completeness, to
the conception supposed to be conveyed, of the character of Paul and his
attendant historiographer, jointly and severally considered,--a conjunct
view is given of _five_ reports of his five trials, as reported in the
Acts. This part has been added since the publication of the
above-mentioned Summary View. It occupies Chapter 15 of the present
work.
Chapter XVI. and last, winds up the whole, with some general
observations on the self-declared oppositeness of Paul's Gospel, as he
calls it, to that of the Apostles: together with an indication of a real
Antichrist, in compensation for the fabulous one, created by Paul, and
nursed by the episcopal authors and editors of the Church of England,
translators of the Bible: and by Chapter 12 of the present work, the
imaginary Antichrist is, it is hoped, strangled.
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