As to the keeping of this or any other feast at Jerusalem or at any other place--if it was under any such notion as that of contributing to his own personal salvation by any such Mosaic work, it was an object inconsistent with his own principles--with his own so repeatedly and strenuously advocated principles:--and the like may be said of the head-shaving and the vow, performed by him, at Cenchrea, in his way to Ephesus from Corinth: and moreover, in this last-mentioned instance, more particularly in contradiction with a precept so positively delivered by Jesus, namely, _Swear not at all_,--if, under swearing, the making of vows is to be understood to be included. Of this design, the next intimation which occurs in the Acts, is in the next chapter, Acts 19:21, "When these things were ended," namely, the discomfiture of the exorcists, and the burning of the books of curious arts at Ephesus,--"Paul, it is said, _purposes in the spirit_, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome." Fortunate it is for the credit--either _of the spirit_, or of Paul, or of the author of the Acts, that it was on this second occasion only, and not on the first, that it was _in the spirit_ that he proposed to go to Jerusalem by the then next feast: for, notwithstanding the "_must_" and the "_by all means_,"--so it is, that between those his two determinations as above, no less a space of time than two years is stated as elapsing, on one occasion, at one and the same place.[46] And this place--what was it? it was Ephesus: the same place, at which, on his departure from it, the first determination was declared: after which, and before this his second visit to Ephesus,--he is represented as having visited Cæsarea and Antioch. The next mention, is that which occurs in the next chapter, chapter 20:16. "Paul," we are there told, being then at Miletus, "had determined to sail by Ephesus, because he would not spend the time in Asia: for he hasted, if it were possible for him, to be at Jerusalem the day of Pentecost." At Miletus it is, that he sends for, and receives, from Ephesus, a number of his adherents in that place. Upon their arrival, he is represented as making a formal speech to them: and now, he not merely proposes in the spirit, as before, but is "_bound in the spirit_," to go thither.[47] Vain would be the attempt to ascertain, with any approach to exactness, the interval of time, during which the operation of the spirit remained in a sort of suspense between _purpose_ and _obligation_: it may have been months, only: it may have been years. While, by one spirit, Paul was thus urged on, every now and then, towards Jerusalem;--by the same spirit, or by another spirit, he was pulled back.[48]