When in the year 57, Paul,[18] to so many other boastings, was added the sufferings he would have us think were courted and endured by him, while preaching in the name of Jesus, that gospel, which he proclaims to have been his own, and not that of the Apostles, little assuredly did he think, that five years after, or thereabout, from the hand of one of his own attendants, a narrative was to appear, in which, of these same sufferings a so much shorter list would be given; or that, by an odd enough coincidence, more than seventeen centuries after, by a namesake of his honored patron, Doctor Gamaliel, the contradiction thus given to him, would be held up to view. In the second of his epistles to his Corinthians, dated A.D. 57,--the following is the summary he gives of those same sufferings. Speaking of certain unnamed persons, styled by him false Apostles, but whom reasons are not wanting for believing to have been among the disciples of the real ones,--"Are they," says he, 2 Cor. xi. 23, "ministers of Christ? I speak as one beside himself, I am more: in labours more abundant: in _stripes_ above measure: in prisons more frequent: in deaths, oft.--Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes, save one.--Thrice was I beaten with rods; once was I stoned: thrice I suffered shipwreck: a night and a day have I been in the deep." Thus far as per _Paul_. Add from his former Epistle to the same in the same year, battle with beasts, one. "If, after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me," continues he, 1 Cor. XV. 32, "if the dead rise not, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Let us now see how the account stands, as per _Acts_. On the part of this his panegyrist, whether any such habit had place as that of cutting down below their real amount, either the sufferings or the actings of his hero, the reader will have judged. Of both together, let it not be forgotten, the Acts' account comes some five years lower, than the date of the above tragical list: in it are included those sufferings and perils which we have seen, namely, those produced by the voyage to Rome, and which, at the time of Paul's list, had not taken their commencement. Now then for the Acts' list. Stripes, nine-and-thirty in a parcel, none: difference five. Beatings with rods, saving one possible one, of which presently, none; difference, three. Stoning, one[19]. Shipwreck, as yet none: the accident at Malta being three years subsequent. "Night and day in the deep,"--according as it was _on_ or _in_ the deep--either nothing at all, or an adventure considerably too singular to have been passed over. _Diving-bells_ are not commonly supposed to have been, at that time of day, in use; but whoever has a taste for predictions, may, if it be agreeable to him, see those same scientific instruments or the equivalent in this Gospel of Paul's predicted.