In his first epistle to the Corinthians he calls himself _sent_. "Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Are ye not my work in the Lord? If I am not an apostle unto others, yet, doubtless, I am unto you," etc. He might, indeed, have seen Jesus while he was studying at Jerusalem under Gamaliel. Yet it may be said that this was not a reason which could authorize his apostleship. He had not been one of the disciples of Jesus; on the contrary, he had persecuted them, and had been an accomplice in the death of St. Stephen. It is astonishing that he does not rather justify his voluntary apostleship by the miracle which Jesus Christ afterwards worked in his favor--by the light from heaven which appeared to him at midday and threw him from his horse, and by his being carried up to the third heaven. St. Epiphanius quotes Acts of the Apostles, believed to have been composed by those Christians called Ebionites, or poor, and which were rejected by the Church--acts very ancient, it is true, but full of abuse of St. Paul. In them it is said that St. Paul was born at Tarsus of idolatrous parents--_utroque parente gentili procreatus_--that, having come to Jerusalem, where he remained some time, he wished to marry the daughter of Gamaliel; that, with this design, he became a Jewish proselyte and got himself circumcised; but that, not obtaining this virgin (or not finding her a virgin), his vexation made him write against circumcision, against the Sabbath, and against the whole law. _"Quumque Hierosolymam accessisset, et ibidem aliquandiu mansisset, pontificis filiam ducere in animum induxisse, et eam ab rem proselytum factum, atque circumcisum esse; postea quod virginem eam non accepisset, succensuisse, et adversus circumcisionem, ac sabbathum totamque legem scripsisse."_ These injurious words show that these primitive Christians, under the name of the poor, were still attached to the Sabbath and to circumcision, resting this attachment on the circumcision of Jesus Christ and his observance of the Sabbath; and that they were enemies to St. Paul, regarding him as an intruder who sought to overturn everything. In short, they were heretics; consequently they strove to defame their enemies, an excess of which party spirit and superstition are too often guilty. St. Paul, too, calls them "false apostles, deceitful workers," and loads them with abuse. In his letter to the Philippians he calls them dogs. St. Jerome asserts that he was born at Gisceala, a town of Galilee, and not at Tarsus. Others dispute his having been a Roman citizen, because at that time there were no Roman citizens at Tarsus, nor at Galgala, and Tarsus was not a Roman colony until about a hundred years after. But we must believe the Acts of the Apostles, which were inspired by the Holy Ghost, and therefore outweigh the testimony of St. Jerome, learned as he might be.