78 KORJE PAULINA 



their return from C}-prus, they made a progress togethei 

 through the Lesser Asia ; and though two remarkable 

 speeches be preserved, and a few incidents in the course oi 

 their travels circumstantially related, yet is the account of this 

 progress, upon the whole, given professedly wdth conciseness : 

 lor instance, at Iconium, it is said that they abode a long time, 

 Acts 14:3; yet of this long abode, except concerning the 

 manner in which they were driven away, no memoir is in- 

 serted in the history. The whole is wrapped up in one short 

 summary, "They spake boldly in the Lord, which gave tes- 

 timony unto the word of his grace, and granted signs and 

 wonders to be done by their hands." Having completed 

 their progress, the two apostles returned to Antioch, " and 

 there they abode a long time with the disciples." Here we 

 have another large portion of time passed over in silence. 

 To this succeeded a journey to Jerusalem, upon a dispute 

 which then much agitated the Christian church, concerning 

 the obligation of the law of Moses When the object of that 

 journey was completed, Paul proposed to Barnabas to go again 

 and visit their brethren in every city where they had preach- 

 ed the word of the Lord. The execution of this plan carried 

 our apostle through Syria, Gilicia, and many provinces of 

 the Lesser Asia ; yet is the account of the whole journey 

 dispatched in four verses of the sixteenth chapter. 



If the Acts of the Apostles had undertaken to exhibit 

 regular annals of St. Paul's ministry, or even any continued 

 account of his life, from his conversion at Damascus to his 

 imprisonment at Eome, I should have thought the omission 

 of the circumstances referred to in our epistle a matter oi 

 reasonable objection. But when it appears from the histo- 

 Ty itself, that large portions of St Paul's life were either 

 passed over in silence, or only slightly touched upon, and 

 that nothing more than certain detached incidents and dis 

 courses is related ; when we observe, also, that the author 

 of the history did not join our apostle's society till a few years 

 before the writing of the epistle, at least that there is no 



