The second treatise shows how this purpose of God to secure the dissemination of the true faith by the disobedience and hardening of its first custodians was accomplished, chief stress being always laid upon the fact that it was only when the Jews "contradicted and blasphemed" that the apostles said, "It was necessary that the word of God should first be spoken to you, but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." There is no interest taken in the subsequent fortunes of Jerusalem and Jewish Christianity, nor even in the fate of Peter and James, after this transition has been effected to Gentile soil. There is no interest taken in the spread of Christianity as such, in Egypt, Ethiopia, Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Mesopotamia; but only where the conflict rages over the respective claim of Jew and Gentile to be the true heir of the promises, _i. e._ the mission-field of Paul. At the individual centres the story goes just far enough to relate how the gospel was offered to the Jews and rejected, compelling withdrawal from the synagogue, and thereafter it is told over again with slight variations at the next centre. The book concludes with a repetition of the stereotyped scene at Rome itself, in spite of the representation of the very source employed, that an important church had long existed there before Paul's coming, ending with a quotation of the classic passage from Isa. vi. 9 f. to prove God's original purpose to harden the heart of Israel, so that his "salvation might be sent unto the Gentiles." The very fate of Paul himself has so little interest for Luke in comparison with this demonstration of Christianity as the one original, revealed religion, enclosed in Judaism as seeds are confined in the hardening seed-pod until disseminated by its bursting, that he leaves it unmentioned, like that of all other leaders of the church whose death was not directly contributory to the process.