117 CHAP. VIII. SAINT PAUL'S JUDGMENT IN HIS INTERCOURSE WITH THE PAGANS. It is among the mysteries of Christianity, that the preaching of Jesus made so few converts, and his death so many. The more affecting were his discourses, the stronger was the indignation they excited; the deeper was the anxiety which he expressed for the salvation of men, so much the more vehemently were they exasperated against him; the more merciful were his miracles, so much the faster did they accelerate his ignominious catastrophe. — “Did not this prove," says the eloquent Bossuet, "that not his words, but his Cross, was to bring all men to Him? Does it not prove that the power of his persuasion consisted in the shedding of his blood?" This he himself predicted - "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” Were it not for this reason, it would be astonishing to our shallow wisdom, that the Author of Christianity made so few proselytes to his own faith, and his apostles so many that the disciple who denied Him should, after the descent of the Holy Spirit, awaken, by a single sermon, the consciences of three thousand auditors; and that the persecutor, who reviled Him, should become, under the influence of the same Divine Spirit, the mighty instrument of the conversion of the pagan world! If Saint Paul had declined visiting the learned and polished regions of Greece, it might have been produced against him, that he carefully avoided those cultivated cities where men were best able to judge of the consistency of the Gospel doctrines with its precepts, and of the truth of those miracles by which its Divinity was confirmed. The Greeks might have urged it as an argument against Saint Paul's integrity, that he confined his preaching to the countries which they called barbarous, knowing that they would be less acute in discovering inconsistencies, and more easily imposed upon by impostures which men of liberal education would have immediately detected. His visiting every city famous for literature, science, and philosophy, would also be a complete refutation of any such charge in after ages. "Because," says a judicious commentator, "if upon an accurate examination great numbers of men embraced the Gospel, who were best qualified to judge of its nature and evidences, their conversion would render it indubitable in after times, that the Gospel was supported by those great and undeniable miracles which were performed in every country by the preachers of Christianity; so that no person might hereafter suspect that idolatry was destroyed and Chris tianity established merely through the simplicity and ignorance of the people among whom it was first preached." * Saint Paul was with more propriety selected to be the Apostle of the Gentiles than if he had been of Gentile extraction; none but a teacher, educated as he had been, under an eminent Jewish doctor, would have been so competent to produce, before both Jews and Gentiles, proofs that the miracles, sufferings, and death of Jesus happened in exact conformity to the predictions of those prophets of whom the Jews had perfect knowledge, and to whom, though the Gentiles previously knew them not, yet it is probable that he afterwards, for their fuller confirmation, would refer them. There appears to have been a considerable difference between Saint Paul's reception among the Jewish and the Gentile populace. Among the former, the "common people who had heard Jesus gladly" must have had their prejudices softened, and in many instances removed; even those, probably, who were not converted, had seen and heard of his miracles with astonishment. They were also witnesses of the wonderful effects produced by Saint Peter's sermon. Their minds were become so favourably disposed, that, after the miracle wrought by Peter and John†, • Macknight on the Life of Saint Paul. the enraged council did not venture to punish them, "because of the people, for all men glorified God for that which was done." While the heathen governors seem, in their transactions with Saint Paul, less intolerant than the Jewish Sanhedrim, the heathen multitude appear to have been more furious than the Jewish. The Jewish leaders had a personal hatred to Christ; the Gentile community had a national hatred to the Jews. If a party amongst the Jews detested the Christians, the pagans as a body despised the Jews, whilst they would consider Christianity but as a new modification of an antiquated and degrading superstition, made worse by the offensive exposition of certain tenets, still more unphilosophical and incredible than were taught under the old dispensation. The contempt of the Gentiles was founded on their ignorance of the true religion of the Jews, and that again had prevented any enquiry into their opinions. From the prejudiced pen of Tacitus, and the sarcastic muse of Juvenal, we see the disdain in which they were held. These great writers, only less culpable than modern infidels, like them collected a string of misrepresentations, and then turned into ridicule the system of their own invention. The philosophers, who disagreed each with the other, all joined in contemning more especially one doctrine of Christianity, which every sect alike conceived to be the most inconsistent with their own tenets, and the most contradictory to general philosophical principles, the resurrection of the body, which they contemptuously called the hope of worms. The pagan magistrates looked with a jealous eye upon all innovators; not indeed so much from an aversion to any novelty of religious opinion, for to this they were so indifferent as to make little objection to any mode of worship which did not seek to subvert their own ;- but through the machinations of the mercenary priests, who, fearful of any invasion of their corrupt establishment, any detection of their frauds, any disclosure of their mysteries, any danger to their altars, their auguries, their profitable oracles, and, above all, any abridgment of their political influence; excited the civil governors against Paul by the stale artifice of insinuating that his designs were hostile to the state. The artisans, who enriched themselves by the occupation of making the symbols of idolatry, found that, by the contempt into which their deities were likely to be brought, their craft would not only be endangered but destroyed. This conviction, more perhaps than any zeal for their own religion, served to influence them also against that of Saint Paul. And, finally, the populace, who liked the easy and pleasant way of appeasing their divinities by shows and pageants, and ceremonies, and |