1817 Oct r 27

Not Paul

Ch. 1 Paul no Apostle

The specific miracles produced by Acts[?] were of course the best that could be trumped up.

To be equal to the chiefest of them, this is what he claims. Yet even taking for true the most favourable of all his discordant accounts of revelations received by him discordant as they are, on what ground, consistently with the Gospel history can his pretension to any equality be maintained. By Jesus, just before his ascension, by Jesus according to Mark, to all his Apostles was the power of working miracles conferred: miracles of divers sorts therein mentioned: a casting out devils, speaking with new tongues, taking up serpents understood without receiving harm, drinking poison in like manner without harm: and healing sickness. Look at the Acts, of some of those powers the exercise is indeed though in a way that will come to be considered in its place, ascribed to Paul to him whose pretence it was to be the chiefest among all those to whom those powers were imparted. But look to Paul himself, amongst all his boastings no such boasting as that of his being possessed of any such powers shall we, on any occasion find him venturing to make: he whose claim to the having received a special revelation cryingly in need of support from every imaginable quarter he whose claim stood on no broader nor firmer ground than that of a vision pretended to have been seen by himself.

Mark XVI. 17. 18

‘Signs and wonders’ then in the plural and in the lump, on one single occasion we shall indeed, according to the author of the Acts find him speaking of himself as having done. But in the history of the Acts doing signs and wonders what shall we find it amount to? b Making such progress as was regarded as extraordinary or so said to be: making extraordinary progress this and nothing more.

by him who is said to have made it it was meant to cause others to look upon as extraordinary:

b Infrà Ch.