Whosoever, putting aside all prepossessions, feels strong enough in mind, to look steadily at the originals, and from _them_ to take his conceptions of the matter, not from the discourses of others,--whosoever has this command over himself, will recognise, if the author does not much deceive himself, that by the two persons in question, as represented in the two sources of information--the Gospels and Paul's Epistles,--two quite different, if not opposite, religions are inculcated: and that, in the religion of Jesus may be found all the _good_ that has ever been the result of the compound so incongruously and unhappily made,--in the religion of Paul, all the _mischief_, which, in such disastrous abundance, has so indisputably flowed from it. 1. That Paul had no such commission as he professed to have;--2. that his enterprize was a scheme of personal ambition, and nothing more;--3. that his system of doctrine is fraught with mischief in a variety of shapes, and, in so far as it departs from, or adds to, those of Jesus, with good in none;--and that it has no warrant, in anything that, as far as appears from any of the four gospels, was ever said or done by Jesus;--such are the conclusions, which the author of these pages has found himself compelled to deduce, from those materials with which history has furnished us. The grounds of these conclusions he proceeds to submit to the consideration of his readers. PLAN OF THE WORK. The work may be conceived as divided into five parts. 1. In Part the first, the five different, and in many respects discordant, accounts given of Paul's conversion, which, in these accounts, is of course represented as being not only _outward_ but _inward_, are confronted, and, so far as regards inward conversion, shown to be, all of them, untrue: and, immediately after, the state of things, which produced, accompanied, and immediately followed, his outward conversion,--together with the time and manner in which that change was declared,--is brought to view. This part occupies the first two chapters. 2. Part the Second is employed in showing,--that, from the first commencement, of the intercourse, which, upon the tokens given of his outward conversion, took place at Jerusalem between him and the apostles, Acts 9:27, to the time when,--in consequence of the interposition of the Roman commander, to save him from the unanimous indignation of the whole people, more particularly of the disciples of the apostles,--he was conveyed from thence under guard to Rome, a space, according to the commonly received computation, not less than six and twenty years, (Acts 21 and 23), no supernatural commission from Jesus, nor any inward conversion, was,--either by those distinguished servants and companions of Jesus, or by their disciples at Jerusalem,--believed to have place in his instance. This part occupies eight chapters: to wit, from the 3d to the 10th inclusive.