1. As to his place in relation to the Apostles. His was not inferior to anybody's: upon terms altogether equal did he treat with the Apostles: in and by the first partition treaty,--he, with Barnabas for his colleague,--Barnabas, from whom, according to the Acts, he afterwards separated,--obtains the whole of the Gentile world for the field of their labors. Thus elevated, according to his account of the matter, was the situation, occupied by him on the occasion of this his third visit to Jerusalem, in comparison of what it had been at the time of his first,--and, to all appearance, at the time of the second. At the time of his first visit, the Apostles,--all but Peter and James, upon which two Barnabas forced him,--turned their backs upon him: upon his second visit, none of them, as far as appears, had anything to do with him: now, upon his third visit, they deal with him upon equal terms: and now, not only Peter and James, but John, are stated as having intercourse with him. 2. Of this partition treaty, important as it is, no mention is to be found in the Acts. From first to last,--in the account given in the Acts, no such figure does he make as in his own. In the Acts, of the speech of Peter, and even of that of James, the substance is reported: of Paul's, nothing more than the subject: viz. his own achievements among the Gentiles: against Paul's opinion, as well as Peter's, the compromise, moved by James, is represented as carried. 3. As to the cause, or occasion, of his third visit to Jerusalem. In the account given in the Acts, it is particularly and clearly enough explained. It is in conjunction with Barnabas that he goes thither: both of them, to confer with the Apostles and elders, on the subject of the notion, entertained by numbers among the Jewish converts, that, by conversion to the religion of Jesus, they were not set free from any of the obligations imposed by the law of Moses. Of this commission,--creditable as it could not but have been to him,--Paul, in his account of the matter, as given to the Galatians, makes not the least mention. No: it is not from men on this occasion nor on others, it is not from men, that he received his authority, but from God: it is by revelation, that is, immediately from God, and by a sort of miracle. 4. What, in obedience to this revelation, he was to do, and did accordingly, was,--the preaching of a gospel of his own; a gospel which as yet he had not preached to any body but the Gentiles. Preaching? how and where? in an assembly of the whole body of the believers in Jesus, the Apostles themselves included? No: but privately, and only to the leading men among them: "to them which were of reputation."