PAUL, SAINT. 



PAUL, SAINT. 



C90 



reputation. He also completed and published Gunton's ' History of 

 the Church of Peterborough.' 



PAUL, SAINT, the great Apostle of the Gentiles, originally called 

 Saul, was born at Tarsus in Cilicia. Though a Jew of the tribe of 

 Benjamin, and a Pharisee of the most rigid sect, he was by birth a 

 Koman citizen a privilege inherited from his ancestors, upon some of 

 whom it had probably been conferred for services rendered to the 

 state. The year of his nativity is not known. He was present at the 

 martyrdom of Stephen, A.D. 34, on which occasion he is first introduced 

 to our notice, and is called a young man. He learned the art of tent- 

 making, not with the intention^pf making it the occupation of his life, 

 but because it was a custom among the Jews, even of the highest 

 respectability, to instruct their youth in some mechanical art. Having 

 been educated in the learning of the times, for which Tarsus was then 

 highly celebrated (Strabo, p. 673, Casaub.), and in which he undoubtedly 

 made great proficiency, he went to Jerusalem to study the laws and 

 traditions of his people under Gamaliel, a distinguished Rabbi. Being 

 a man of great talent, ardent mind, and inflexible resolution, and being 

 devotedly attached to the institutions of his country, whose origin and 

 antiquity alike impressed and fascinated his imagination, he contem- 

 plated with alarm and anxiety the progress of the new religion. 

 Accordingly he took an active and prominent part against the Chris- 

 tians, and pursued them with such zeal and fury, that his condnct 

 towards them is described as " breathing out threatening* and 

 slaughter." He obtained letters from the Sanhedrim to the synagogue 

 of the Jews at Damascus, and also to the governor, authorising him to 

 apprehend and bring to Jerusalem whomsoever of the disciples he 

 might find there. While on his journey for this purpose his miracu- 

 lous conversion took place, the particulars of which are recorded in 

 the ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. This event, so import- 

 ant in its results upon the subsequent fortunes of Christianity, occurred 

 in 35, two years after the crucifixion of our Lord. 



After his baptism at Damascus he went into Arabia. In 38 we find 

 him again at Damascus ; and from this place, as likewise from Jeru- 

 salem shortly after, he was compelled to escape secretly and by night, 

 in consequence of the perseverance with which the Jews sought his 

 life, for preaching with so much boldness and success the religion 

 which he once laboured to destroy. From Jerusalem he retired to 

 Tarsus, his native city, and was employed for some years in propa- 

 gating the faith through the neighbouring regions of Syria and Cilicia. 

 Up to this time the preaching of St. Paul and of the other apostles 

 had been confined to the Jews ; but the conversion of Cornelius, a 

 Gentile, was a very significant indication that Christianity was intended 

 not for one country or one people, but for all mankind, without dis- 

 tinction of race or nation. This was the conclusion inferred both by 

 the apostles and the Jewish converts at Jerusalem. Immediately 

 therefore the object of their mission was extended ; and instead of 

 being restricted to the children of Abraham, now comprehended all 

 mankind. Into this great idea, that of founding a religion for the 

 entire human race, St Paul entered with all the ardour and devotion 

 which characterised his mind. He departed from Tarsus in 42 ; and 

 in conjunction with Barnabas, who had been sent from Jerusalem for 

 the purpose, preached to the Gentiles at Antioch with the greatest 

 success. But the views he had formed of Christianity as a universal 

 religion suggested to him the propriety of enlarging the sphere of his 

 labours, and of carrying the gospel to more remote provinces. To 

 this work he and Barnabas were divinely appointed (Acts xiii.); and 

 he commenced his fir.-t apostolic journey in 45, ten years after his 

 conversion. In company with Barnabas and Mark the evangelist, he 

 Bailed from Seleucia, and successively visited Salamis and Paphos in 

 the Isle of Cyprus; Perga in Pamphylia, and Antioch in Pisidia; 

 Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, in Lycaonia ; and made converts and 

 founded churches in these places. At the end of two years he 

 returned to Antioch in Syria. While at Antioch he was engaged in a 

 most important controversy with some Jewish Christians, who asserted 

 that circumcision was necessary to be observed by converts to the new 

 faith. St. Paul, on the other hand, contended that Christianity entirely 

 superseded the Mosaic Law, and required conformity to none of its 

 ritea, The question was referred to a council of apostles and elders at 

 Jerusalem, who, after much deliberation, decided in favour of the view 

 which St. Paul had taken. The decision was declared to have received 

 the sanction of the Holy Ghost, and it was communicated to the 

 Gentile converts at Antioch and other places. 



In the year 50 St. Paul commenced his second apostolic journey. 

 Leaving Antiocb, and passing through Syria and Cilicia, he traversed 

 the whole extent of Asia Minor and came to Troaa. From Troas, in 

 obedience to the direction of a vision, he sailed over into Europe; and 

 after preaching the gospel at Philippi, Thessalonica, Berooa, and 

 Athens, arrived at Corinth, where he abode a year and a half, and was 

 eminently successful in establishing an important Christian commu- 

 nity in that learned, wealthy, aud voluptuous city. From Corinth he 

 sailed to Ephesua, and thence to Cae.'area ; and, taking Jerusalem in 

 his way, returned to Antioch in 53. During this journey he wrote 

 his two Epistles to the Thessalonians, and his Epistle to the Galatians; 

 the two former, and probably the latter, from Corinth. 



Having remained a short time at Antioch, he in 54 set out upon his 

 third and last apostolic journey. He visited the churches in Galatia 

 and 1'hrygia, and thence came to Ephesus, where he lived about two 



BIOO. DIV. VOL. IV. 



years. Here, and in the neighbouring district of Asia Minor, he 

 preached the gospel with so much success that not only were great 

 numbers converted to Christianity, but those who practised iucan- 

 tations and magical arts and other gross superstitions, for which 

 Ephesus was notorious, renounced their practices, burnt their books 

 and divining instruments, and professed their faith in the new religion. 

 After the disturbance raised by Demetrius the silversmith, of which 

 an account is given in the 19th chapter of the Acts, the apostle 

 deemed it prudent to leave Ephesus. He went to Troas, and thence 

 passed over into Europe, visiting the churches which he had planted 

 in Macedonia and Greece. From Corinth, where he remained about 

 three months, ho returned by Macedonia to Asia; and taking an 

 affectionate farewell of the elders of the Ephesian church at Miletus, 

 embarked for Cicsarea, and in 58 terminated his journey at Jerusalem. 

 On this journey he wrote his first Epistle to the Corinthians, from 

 Ephesus; his first Epistle to Timothy, the one to Titus, and the 

 second to the Corinthians, from Macedonia ; and his Epistle to the 

 Romans, from Corinth. These journeys occupied him about thirteen 

 years. 



When St. Paul was at Jerusalem some Asiatic Jews, seeing him in 

 the Temple, endeavoured to excite the populace against him by 

 denouncing him as a dangerous and destructive agitator, who was 

 aiming to abolish all distinction between Jew and Gentile, teaching 

 things contrary to the law of Moses, and polluting the holy Temple 

 by introducing the uncircumcised heathen within its preciucts. The 

 mob, roused by this appeal to their passions and their prejudices, 

 would have murdered the apostle had he not been rescued by the 

 officer of the Temple guard. The subsequent events his examination 

 before the Sanhedrim, his defence before Felix aud Agrippa, his long 

 confinement at C&sarea, his appealing to the emperor, and his arrival 

 at Rome in 61, after a most tempestuous passage are circumstan- 

 tially related in the latter chapters of the Acts. He remained in Rome, 

 iu his own hired house, under the custody of a soldier, for two years, 

 and wrote his epistles to the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 

 Hebrews, and to Philemon. The Scripture history here leaves him; 

 but it is probable that after his first imprisonment at Rome, which 

 terminated in 63, he visited Judaea, Asia Minor, and Greece, and 

 returned to Rome in 65, where he was imprisoned a second time. 

 " Knowing his departure to be at hand," he wrote his second Epistle 

 to Timothy ; and it is supposed he suffered martyrdom iu the 

 year 66. 



St. Paul was an extraordinary man, and peculiarly fitted for the 

 times in which he lived and the mission to which he was called. He 

 was accomplished iu all the learning of the age ; was brought up at 

 the feet of one of the most skilful jurists of the East ; possessed a 

 powerful intellect, which was cultivated with the greatest care ; was 

 strong in feeling, firm iu resolution, quick in perception, and sound in 

 the decisions of his judgment. He had too much penetration to be 

 himself easily deceived, and too much honesty to attempt to deceive 

 others. His devoted attachment to the old aud time-honoured insti- 

 tutions of his nation, and the zeal and ability he displayed in their 

 defence his ambition, mental power, and restless activity and the 

 well-grounded apprehensions with which the preaching of Jesus and 

 his disciples had filled the imaginations of many, and which he alone 

 seemed competent to dissipate, combined to make him an object of 

 general attention to his countrymen, and prepare for him a career of 

 distinction and emolument. His conversion therefore, which involved 

 the loss of all his brilliant prospects, has, next to the miracles and 

 resurrection of our Lord, been justly contemplated as one of the 

 most striking and memorable events connected with the early history 

 of Christianity. 



From being a furious zealot, a fierce aud unrelenting persecutor of 

 the disciples of Jesus Christ, St. Paul became a disciple himself, and 

 a most energetic advocate of the faith which he had once attempted to 

 destroy. After his conversion St. Paul was indefatigable in preaching 

 the gospel. His perseverance never tired his courage was never 

 daunted. He was the main instrument of carrying the Christian 

 religion among the Gentiles; and in this mission his labours were 

 continued through a period of many years, and spread over a territory 

 of vast extent. Judaea, Syria, and especially Asia Minor were filled 

 with monuments of his zeal. He also passed over into Europe, where 

 he made converts and planted churches. In this righteous cause he 

 was deterred by no difficulties and no persecutions. He groups 

 together in one passage the dangers which he had encountered : he 

 speaks of toils, stripes, prisons, deaths of being stoned and ship- 

 wrecked of perils in the city and in the wilderness, on dry land and 

 on the ocean, from false friends and open foes of watchings and 

 weariness, of hunger aud thirst, of cold and uakedness. " We see 

 him," says Paley, " in the prosecution of his purpose, travelling from 

 country to country, enduring every species of hardship, assaulted by 

 the populace, punished by the magistrates, scourged, beat, stoned, left 

 for dead ; expecting wherever he came the same treatment ; yet, when 

 driven from one city, preaching in the next; unsubdued by anxiety, 

 waut, labour, persecution, and the prospect of death." 



The exertions of this great apoatle in the cause of Christianity were 

 not confined to bodily toil and personal instruction. He was the 

 author of fourteen epistles to individuals, and to churches, on various 

 points of Christian doctrine, practice, and discipline. These epistles 



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