HORiE PAULINyEo 



CHAPTER I. 



EXPOSITION OF THE ARGUMENT. 



The volume of Christian Scriptures contains thirteen 

 letters purporting to be written by Saint Paul ; it contains 

 also a book which, among other things, professes to deliver 

 the history, or rather memoirs of the history of this same 

 person. By assuming the genuineness of the letters, w^ 

 may prove the substantial truth of the history ; or, by as 

 Buming the truth of the history, we may argue strongly in 

 support of the genuineness of the letters. But I assume, 

 neither one nor the other. The reader is at liberty to sup- 

 pose these writings to have been lately discovered in the 

 library of the Escurial, and to come to our hands destitute 

 of any extrinsic or collateral evidence whatever ; and the 

 argument I am about to offer is calculated to show, that a 

 comparison of the different writings would, even under these 

 circumstances, aflbrd good reason to believe the persons and 

 transactions to have been real, the letters authentic, and the 

 narration in the main to be true. 



Agreement or conformity between letters bearing the 

 name of an ancient author, and a received history of that 

 author's life, does not necessarily establish the credit of 

 either ; because, 



1. The history may, like Middleton's Life of Cicero, or 

 Jortin's Life of Erasmus, have been wholly, or in part, com 

 piled froni the letters ; in which case it is manifest that th^ 



