Had he hazarded so much as the general expression of signs and wonders--well, and what were these signs and wonders? give us, at any rate, something by way of a sample of them? In any one of them, was there anything supernatural? anything--beyond the success, the extraordinary success--we are to understand, your exertions were attended with? Questions, to some such effect as this, which, in an assembly, so composed, had he ventured upon any such expressions, he could not but have expected to be annoyed with. The occurrences which, in the course of it, in the character of _miracles_, he has ventured to present to view, will have been seen in their place and order. Yet,--notwithstanding the mention there respectively and severally made of them--no mention of them does he, in the account given by him of the meeting, venture to put in his leader's mouth. Why? because--forasmuch as, by Paul himself, no such pretence was ventured to be made--the meeting was too important, and too notorious, to render it safe to advance any such matter of fact; the face being false; or, that any such pretensions were really made. But, hereupon come two questions. 1. Had any such miracles been really wrought--was it in the nature of things, that, on this occasion, Paul should have omitted all mention of them? even so much as the most distant allusion to them? 2. If any such intimation had really been given, by the historian himself, is it in the nature of the case, that, on this occasion,--he having been one of the witnesses, in whose presence they had been performed,--all mention of such intimation should have been omitted? Well, then--suppose that to both these questions, let it but be a negative answer or the true one, the consequence is plain--no such miracles were wrought. Yet, in his narrative, has this man--exhibiting himself, at the same time, in the character of a _percipient_ witness, in relation to them--ventured to assert the existence, one after another, of the whole list of these particularized miracles, not to speak of the cluster of unparticularized ones. SECTION 4. ACCUSED BY THE DISCIPLES, HE COMMENCES, AT THE RECOMMENDATION OF THE APOSTLES, AN EXCULPATORY OATH IN THE TEMPLE. Such being in their eyes the danger; now comes their expedient for the arresting of it. It is an altogether curious one: and among those persons styled _elders_--all the elders--to every sincere and pious Christian it will naturally be matter of no small satisfaction that no one of the whole fellowship of the Apostles is to be found. According to the description here given of it, the expedient is of such a sort, that--but for the occasion on which it is represented as being proposed,--scarcely would it be possible to divine what is meant; what it was that was proposed to be done; or, whatever it was, what could be the use or effect of it?