Now, then, as to _miracles_. Had Paul, really and truly, ever received from Jesus, any such preeminent and characteristic appendage and mark of Apostleship,--here, of all others, was an occasion, on which it concerned him to make proof of it. Here was an occasion, on which, with the design, and for the purpose--the palpable, and almost universally and so strenuously opposed design and purpose--of constituting himself the superior of the Apostles, he was presenting himself--though in circumstances of such humiliation--in the character of an equal, with whom they had treated on equal terms. Here--in order to impose silence on all gainsayers--here was the occasion, for his bringing to public view, this most important of all items in the list of his credentials. The Apostles, to whom--without any exception, by Jesus, if the Evangelist, Mark 16:15-18, is to be believed--this power had, previously to his ascension, been imparted,--these, if any, were the men--not to say the only men--qualified to form a judgment on the question--whether, by any other individual, and, more especially, by the individual before them, namely, by this their self-declared colleague, any such extraordinary power had, on any, and what, occasion, been exercised or possessed. Of all imaginable occasions, this was the one, on which he had most at stake, in the being able to make proof of so matchless an endowment:--of an endowment, which in the character of a proof, in support of all his claims, would, in the very nature of it, have been so perfectly irresistible. Well, then: this proof of his title--did he use every endeavour, or make any offer, to produce it? No: not so much did he venture upon, as, in any the most general terms, to assert, or, so much as insinuate, the existence of it. According to his own statement, what was the general description of the tokens brought forward by him, for the purpose of obtaining acceptance? Were they _signs and wonders_? Oh, no! His historiographer, indeed--in that, or any other such indeterminate, and conveniently ambiguous phrase--his historiographer, at some twenty or seven-and-twenty years' distance, might venture, Acts 14:3, to speak of his exploits--of the effects produced by his exertions: in the like terms, in writing to his Corinthian disciples, he might, even himself, venture, for once, to speak of his own exploits.[54] But, before an assembly, so composed, was this boast, loose, and conveniently ambiguous, as it was,--in his eyes, too much to venture. Acts 21:19--Behold here the passage: "And when he had saluted them, he declared particularly"--what? what--signs and wonders? No: but simply--"what _things_ God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry."