1817 Oct 13

Not Paul

Heading for

§. Languages many -

tongues cloven.

§. 3. At meetings, many languages heard - cloven tongues seen.

Acts II. 1 to 47.

In the scene as above painted /depicted/ Upon examination, the incident /circumstance/ of the cloven tongues excepted, nothing presents itself as foreign to the ordinary course of nature. As being Among the talents of this author has been mentioned one in which he has since found so many sharers viz. that of putting an extraordinary and even a miraculous gloss upon the most ordinary occurrences. In all the several countries here enumerated there seems no reason to doubt but that at that time Jews were to be found born as well as resident, as would probably be found to be the case even at this present time. To the language of the country in which he was bred, one /none/ of these would /could/ avoid adding an acquaintance with the language of the Jewish Scriptures: in that language a Jew therefore need but speak, and he would be understood by inhabitants of all those different regions, speakers of all those different languages. So far as regards /concerns/ language, this much and no more is what will be found there asserted in the texts.

On the occasion of this annual festival, religion, commerce and ecclesiastical polity combined to produce an assemblage of Jews from all foreign countries in which fraternities of that religion were established: at the end of such a course of social /private/ concern with each as zeal and opportunity had happened to produce, a meeting was got together to hear a speech from him. Without supposing that of all the matter here put into his mouth so much as a single sentence ever found utterance from it no /there/ may without difficulty give credence to that which is stated as the result of it: viz.

On the subject of religion the gift of eloquence has no where been found incompatible with illiterateness and ignorance. In this same history to Peter the gift of eloquence is ascribed from first to last: witness his eight reported speeches and presently[?] Acts IV. 13. with this gift we shall find coupled in his instance in express terms the infirmity of ‘ ignorance’.