216 HOK^ PAULINiK. 



such a man as Paul, a preacher of Christianity, in the age 

 which M^e assign to him, and not beheve that there was also 

 at the same time such a man as Peter and James, and other 

 apostles, who had been companions of Christ during his life, 

 and who after his death published and avowed the same things 

 concerning him which Paul taught ? Judea, and especially 

 Jerusalem, was the scene of Christ's ministry. The fatness- 

 es of his miracles lived there. St. Paul, by his own account, 

 as well as that of his historian, appears to have frequently vis- 

 ited that city ; to have carried on a communication with the 

 church there ; to have associated with the rulers and elders 

 of that church, who were some of them apostles ; to have 

 acted, as occasions ofiered, in correspondence, and sometimes 

 in conjunction with them. Can it, after this, be doubted, but 

 that the religion and the general facts relating to it, which 

 St. Paul appears by his letters to have delivered to the sev- 

 eral churches which he established at a distance, were at the 

 same time taught and published at Jerusalem itself, the place 

 where the business was transacted ; and taught and published 

 by those who had attended the founder of the institution in 

 his miraculous, or pretendedly miraculous, ministry ? 



It is observable, for so it appears both in the epistles and 

 from the Acts of the Apostles, that Jerusalem, and the soci- 

 ety of believers in that city, long continued the centre from 

 which the missionaries of the religion issued, with which all 

 other churches maintained a correspondence and coimection, 

 to which they referred their doubts, and to Avhose relief, in 

 times of public distress, they remitted their charitable assist- 

 ance. This observation I think material, because it proves 

 that this was not the case of giving our accounts in one 

 country of what is transacted in another, without affording 

 the hearers an opportunity of knowing whether the things 

 related were credited by any, or even published, in the place 

 where they are reported to have passed. 



Y. St. Paul's letters furnish evidence — and what better 

 evidence than a man's o^vn letters can be desired? — -of the 



