Unless the eleven most confidential servants, selected by Jesus himself to be the propagators of his religion, were altogether unworthy of the task thus allotted to them,--nothing to the good purposes of that religion could be more palpably unnecessary, nothing to the purposes of peace and unity more pernicious, than the intrusion thus resolved upon. That the number of these legitimately instituted Apostles had as yet suffered any diminution, is not, by any of the documents, rendered so much as probable. Neither in the works of Paul himself, nor in that of his historiographer, is any intimation to any such effect to be found. In their own judgments, had there been any need of coadjutors--any deficiency of hands for the spiritual harvest,--they well knew how to supply it. Of the sufficiency of such knowledge, they had given the most incontestable proofs: the election of Matthias was the fruit of it. They showed--and with a disinterestedness, which has never since had, nor seems destined to have, any imitators--that, in the Christian world, if government in any shape has divine right for its support, it is in the shape of democracy;--representative democracy--operating by universal suffrage. In the eye of the Christian, as well as of the philosopher and the philanthropist, behold here the only legitimate government: the form, the exclusion of which from the Christian world, has been the object of that league, by which, by an unpunishable, yet the most mischievous--if not the only mischievous--sort of blasphemy, the name of Christian has been profaned. This method of filling offices, was no more to the taste of Paul, than to that of a Napoleon or a George. He determined to open their eyes, and prove to them by experience, that monarchy,--himself the first monarch--was the only legitimate form of government. The difficulties of the enterprise were such as could not escape any eyes:--least of all his own: but to die or conquer was his resolve: so he himself declares.[49] What, in case of success, would have been the use made by him of it? The fate of the Apostles may be read in the catastrophe of Saint Stephen: the vulgar herd would, in his eyes, have been as declaredly foolish as the Galatians. Gal. 3:1. "O, foolish Galatians!" Who did bewitch you, etc. The invasion was not less inconsistent with good faith, than with brotherly love, peace and unity. It was a direct violation of the _partition-treaty_: that treaty, of which he gives such unquestionable evidence against himself, in the boast he makes of it to his Galatians. Gal. 2:9. "When James, Cephas (Peter), and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision." SECTION 4. OPPOSITION MADE TO IT BY HIS OWN ATTENDANTS AND OTHER ADHERENTS.