1817 Sept. 24  […?]

Not Paul

Ch Period before Conversion

§ Cloven tongues

Peter’s Speech

Immediately After these cloven tongues are reported to have been seen, and the confused concert of languages heard comes the report of a speech from Peter.

The result is that they (the auditors) were pricked to the heart such as were converts were baptized and the number of those converts is reckoned at three thousand.

With the account thus given of the effects it is curious to compare the account given of the cause: of the proximate cause at any rate viz. this speech which we have of Saint Peter.

It consists of three arguments: viz. a passage which in his eyes is a prophecy - a prophecy of Jesus from the prophet Joel 2. an appeal to the miracles of Jesus - to the personal knowledge which speaking to his auditors he informs them they themselves had of the miracle wrought by Jesus. 3 a passage out of the Psalms of King David.

1 As to the miracles alluded to, if of the persons present any there were that possessed any such personal knowledge that of itself should naturally /rationally/ speaking have sufficed for making converts of them /their conversion/: if by this knowledge of the miracles themselves that effect had not been produced, it seems rather difficult to conceive how it was that by the vague allusion there made to those same miracles the effect should have been produced. Shall it be said /we say/, that though to no one any miracle was known, yet to any number of others for aught any one could say such miracles in any number might be known to have been wrought?

For the production of the effect then, abstraction made of the cloven tongues and the concert of languages, all that remains in the character of a cause is composed of the two passages /quotations/ the passage from the prophet Joel, and the passage from David’s Psalms.

If by these passages either or both of them not to speak of imitation[?] any the least tendency was produced towards the production of the effect it must be allowed that in that particular instance not to say in that age and nation a small quantity of hearing[?] would go a good way, and that to operate in that way it was not necessary that between the thing to be proved and the proof it was not necessary that any very particular relation should have place.

 Go on to shew this.