Note, likewise,--that, when the companions are spoken of,--both in the translation and in the original, the object to which the negative is applied is expressed by the same word as when he, Paul, is spoken of. SECTION 3. VISION II.--ANANIAS'S. TOPIC 1.--_Ananias's Description._ Of the vision itself there being but one account, by this singleness discordancy is saved. But, of the description belonging to Ananias there are two accounts. One the historical, as before: the other, the unpremeditated oratorical account supposed to be given by Paul in the first of his two supposed speeches, as above; and, room being thus given for discordancy,--discordancy, as of course, enters--or at any rate a strong suspicion of it. Per Acts, Ananias is a disciple: a disciple, to wit, a Christian; a disciple immediately of Jesus or his Apostles: for, such is the signification attached to the word _disciple_ in the Acts: such he would on this occasion be of course understood to be; for, otherwise the word would be uncharacteristic and insignificant. Materially different is the description supposed to have been given of this same Ananias by Paul in that same supposed unpremeditated speech; so different as to be not without effort, if by any effort, reconcilable with it. He is now a disciple of Jesus and the Apostles; of that Jesus, by whom the law, _i.e._ the Mosaic law, was after such repeated exposure of its inaptitude, pronounced obsolete. He is now not only spoken of as being, notwithstanding this conversion, a devout man according to that same law; but, moreover, as having a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there, to wit, at Damascus. Of the Jews? Yes; of "_all_" the Jews. If, notwithstanding his conversion to a religion by which that of the Jews was slighted and declared to be superseded, he was still so happy as to be the subject of this good _report_, which is as much as to say--of a correspondently unanimous good opinion; this, it would seem, would have been the man to preach to them that religion: especially if that part of the story were true, according to which he was distinguished by the same supernatural sort of communication; this man, who was already a Christian, this man, and not Paul, who of all opposers of Christianity had been the most fierce and the most mischievous, would naturally have been the man to receive the supernatural commission. Supposing his vision real, and the reports of it true, no difficulty, rationally speaking, could he have found in obtaining credence for it at the hands of the Apostles: those Apostles, at whose hands, from first to last it will be seen, never was it the lot of Paul, with _his_ vision or visions, to obtain credence.