as the account states miraculously, (Acts xii. 3--17.) and made his
escape from Jerusalem.

These things are related, not in the general terms under which, in
giving the outlines of the history, we have here mentioned them, but
with the utmost particularity of names, persons, places, and
circumstances; and, what is deserving of notice, without the smallest
discoverable propensity in the historian, to magnify the fortitude, or
exaggerate the sufferings, of his party. When they fled for their lives,
he tells us. When the churches had rest, he remarks it. When the people
took their part, he does not leave it without notice. When the apostles
were carried a second time before the Sanhedrim, he is careful to
observe that they were brought without violence. When milder counsels
were suggested, he gives us the author of the advice and the speech
which contained it. When, in consequence of this advice, the rulers
contented themselves with threatening the apostles, and commanding them
to be beaten with stripes, without urging at that time the persecution
further, the historian candidly and distinctly records their
forbearance. When, therefore, in other instances, he states heavier
persecutions, or actual martyrdoms, it is reasonable to believe that he
states them because they were true, and not from any wish to aggravate,
in his account, the sufferings which Christians sustained, or to extol,
more than it deserved, their patience under them.

Our history now pursues a narrower path. Leaving the rest of the
apostles, and the original associates of Christ, engaged in the
propagation of the new faith, (and who there is not the least reason to
believe abated in their diligence or courage,) the narrative proceeds
with the separate memoirs of that eminent teacher, whose extraordinary
and sudden conversion to the religion, and corresponding change of