Now, supposing the adverse force to have been that of a band of conspirators, it was natural for them to watch the "city gates": a more promising resource they could scarcely have had at their command. But, suppose it to have been that of the governor,--what need had he to watch the gates? he might have searched houses. By the reference made, to a matter of fact, which, supposing it real, must in its nature have been notorious--to wit, the existence of a king, of the name in question, in the country in question, at the time in question--a comparative degree of probability seems to be given to Paul's account. A curious circumstance is--that, in this Epistle of Paul's, this anecdote of the Basket stands completely insulated; it has not any the slightest connection with anything that precedes or follows it. In the Acts' account, as already observed, Chap. 4, it looks as if it was immediately after the adventure of the basket, that he went on this his first visit to the Apostles at Jerusalem: for, as we see, it is immediately thereupon that his arrival at that city is mentioned. If so, the abode he had _then_ been making at Damascus, was probably _after_ his return from Arabia: that return from Arabia, which we have seen him speaking of in his Epistle to the Galatians, Gal. i. 15. "When it pleased God ... to reveal his son to me, that I might preach him to the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood; Neither went I up to Jerusalem, to them which were Apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. _Then after_ three years, I went up to Jerusalem, to see Peter." &c. "After three years?"--three years, reckoning from what _time_? Here we see the ambiguity, and along with it the difficulty. If reckoning from his conversion,--then we have the three years, to be spent--partly in Damascus, partly in Arabia: in Damascus, in obtaining, perhaps, from the Christianized Jews--in return for the impunity given to them by the breach of the trust committed to him by the Jerusalem rulers--money, for defraying his expenses while in Arabia. If, reckoning from his escape from Damascus in a basket, then we have three years, during which not so much as any the faintest trace of him is perceptible. All, therefore, that is clear is--that according to his account of the matter, there was an interval of at least three years between his conversion, and this first of his subsequent Jerusalem visits--this visit of his to Jerusalem, to see the Apostles.