account yet writing with so little appearance of design, that his work leaves us uninformed as to many portions of Apostolic history; and his plan has never yet been perfectly elucidated by the most sagacious of his commentators. Abounding as it does in beauties of a high order, it seems entirely free from art or contrivance. Its style is the naked reflection of truth, and not the colouring of ingenious authorship. Unpretending throughout, it is absolutely plain, when the subject is so; and the narrative rises spontaneously with its animating theme. Its very eloquence is that of scrupulous fidelity. Its purity never savours of refined taste. In such a work appearances of candour are little short of proofs: and he can know but little of human character, or must possess an immoderate love of paradox, who without some reason that is yet to be discovered, can attach to them a construction of an opposite nature.

Appeals, however, to general probabilities are not always decisive. It may be asserted, in defiance of the obvious aspect of the passage itself-in defiance of the general texture of the narrative in which it occurs-in defiance of the character of the author as pourtrayed in the manner in which his work is composed, that candour has been affected in the instance before

us, in order to attach credibility to the history; and the importance of such credibility to the cause in which the writer was engaged may be pleaded in behalf of the bold assertion.

Now, however, the considerations above stated might suffice to the refutal of an assertion so unfounded, it may not be amiss for the question to be further mooted; because by descending to a minute investigation of the work, to elicit evidence on the point in dispute, we shall have an opportunity of bringing together several passages, which may not perhaps have been hitherto noticed in a collective form, and which, beyond their coincidence with the one in dispute, are worthy, on their own merits, of very attentive consideration. The importance of the subject to which they relate, as it is the only inducement for so circumstantial a scrutiny, will constitute perhaps a sufficient apology, if a concise induction of these passages in order as they occur, should trespass on the limits of the present undertaking.

The first quotation is so far deserving of regard, that it not only lays down with the utmost clearness, a distinction, which should have been obvious to every candid mind, but scrupulously disclaims on the part of the Apostles any meritorious superiority of virtue, or inherent power over their brethren and

fellow country-men. In the account given in chapter three of a miracle performed by two of their number, we read that "as the lame man which was healed held Peter and John, all the people ran together unto them, in the porch that is called Solomon's, greatly wondering. But when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this, or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we have made this man to walk?"

A similar instance of candour occurs at the thirteenth verse of the next chapter. "Now when they (the Rulers, Elders, and Scribes) saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled," &c.

For the next we are indebted to Paley, who has remarked on its ingenuousness. It occurs at the forty-first verse of the tenth chapter. "Him (Jesus Christ) God raised up the third day, and shewed him openly, not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead." It is only necessary to add, that in reading this passage, the objection derivable from it is immediately met by the adduction of another in an Epistle of St. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 6.) "After that, he

was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present; but some are fallen asleep." What then induces this almost instantaneous connection in our minds of these distinct and separate passages, but a feeling of uneasiness at the very semblance of weakness in a matter of such importance? and what prevented the historian from anticipating that uneasiness in a Christian, or the cavil connected with it in a heathen, writing as he did in an age when the fact was exposed to more extensive denial, and the means of confutation were much more precarious? And what prevented him from making such alterations in the expression as would have obviated the one and the other; which, on the supposition of his relating actual occurrences, his own knowledge must have enabled him to do; or the lowest degree of contrivance, on that of his composing a fictitious story? If we allow him the possession of candour, the answer is plain-if not, it is neither clear nor convincing.

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The next quotation is from the fourteenth chapter. Long time, therefore, abode they" (Paul and Barnabas) "speaking boldly in the Lord, which gave testimony to the word of his grace, and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands. But the multitude of

the city was divided, and part held with the Jews, and part with the Apostles." Here another objection would immediately arise. How could any part of the multitude resist the evidence of signs and wonders? A Christian would be at no loss to remove the difficulty, but to other readers it was natural enough. The historian must either have foreseen it or not. If he did, where was his contrivanceif he did not, where his subtlety? It was moreover a gratuitous confession of partial success: Allow him candour, and his conduct is intelligible.

The account given in chapter sixteen, of the deliberation held at Jerusalem, relative to the question, how far the Gentile converts were bound to obey the requisitions of the Mosaic ritual, is another proof of artlessness. There was no apparent necessity for any notice of this council in a work the scope of which was professedly limited, yet not only are the difficulties acknowledged, which agitated the minds of the Apostles on this subject, but the reasons which governed their ultimate decision detailed with a minuteness that evinces the strictest scrupulosity, and such a choice of the facts to be recorded, as is altogether inconsistent with disingenuous art, or the subordination of the history to the support of imposture.