cus journey-companions none." The latter fact is indisputable, in consequence of the omission of the names of those who journeyed with St. Paul. In the former case, however, the name of Ananias happens to have been preserved, and even the name of the person in whose house Ananias resided; our lawyer therefore suggests, that the number of Judas's house, in the street called Straight, ought to have been recorded; and that the absence of such a specification is fatal to the entire instrument!!! The sixth section is, if possible, more ingenious.

"SECTION 6. Gamaliel-Had he part in Paul's Plan?Gamaliel-in the working of this conversion, may it not be that Gamaliel a person whose reality seems little exposed to doubthad rather a more considerable share, than the above-mentioned unknown and unknowable Ananias.

It

"Gamaliel was a doctor of law'-a person of sufficient note to have been a member of the council, in which the chief priests, under the presidency of the high priest, took cognizance of the offence with which Peter and his associates had a little before this been charged, on the occasion of their preaching Jesus. Under this Gamaliel, had Paul, he so at least is made to tell us, studied. Between Paul and this Gamaliel, here then is a connexion: a connexion-of that sort, which, in all places, at all times, has existence -and of which the nature is every where and at all times so well understood-the connexion between protegé and protector. was by authority from the governing body, that Paul was, at this time, lavishing his exertions in the persecution of the Apostles and their adherents: -who then so likely, as this same Gamaliel, to have been the patron, at whose recommendation the commission was obtained? Of the cognizance which this Gamaliel took of the conduct and mode of life of the religionists in question-the result was favourable. 'Let them alone,' were his words (Acts v. 38.). The maintenance, derived by the protegé, on that same occasion, from the persecution of these innoxious men-this maintenance being at once odious, dangerous, and precarious,-while the maintenance, derivable from the taking a part in the direction of their affairs, presented to view a promise of being at once respectable, lucrative, and permanent; what more natural then, that this change, from left to right, had for its origin the advice of this same patron-advice, to which, all things considered, the epithet good could not very easily be refused."

Having faithfully extracted these specimens of conjectural criticism, the remainder of Mr. Smith's lucubrations need not detain us long. He asserts that "neither the Divine commission nor the inward conversion of St. Paul were ever credited by the Apostles or their Jerusalem disciples." That Barnabas was the sole means of that apparent recognition

.

which took place on Paul's first visit to Jerusalem, the Apostles being afraid to resist the recommendation of the wealthiest member of their church, and that wealthy individual being determined (for what reason Mr. Smith does not inform us) to patch up a treaty between St. Peter and St. Paul. He likewise omits to mention whether Barnabas kept the secret after, and during the violent quarrel which occurred between him and St. Paul. But doubtless these omissions will be supplied in a future edition. The main point is certain-as certain as four hundred pages of ribaldry, lies, and nonsense can make it; and Mr. Bentham, or whatever other alias this writer may choose to assume, has no doubt that the Apostles, whom he affects to esteem and even patronize, were bullied by Barnabas and bribed by Paul into conniving at a gross imposture, the obvious effect of which was, to undermine their own authority, divide their infant church, and corrupt the truth which had been committed to their charge.

Many other discoveries are announced in the progress of the work. In one place Mr. Gamaliel informs us that "none of the Apostles ever quitted Jerusalem for any considerable length of time." In another he throws a new light upon St. Paul's last visit to Jerusalem; and assures us that the advice which he received from the Apostles, Acts xxi. 23, 24.-Do therefore this that we say to thee. We have four men which have a vow on them. Them take, and purify thyself with them, and be at charges with them, &c. signified that he should make oath that he had never taught the Jews to forsake Moses. The advice was given under the idea that it would be indignantly rejected by Paul. But Paul consented to perjure himself rather than confess his guilt. And he was attacked in the Temple, and dragged away, and almost murdered, not by the Jews, but by the Christians, from their indignation at so gross a falsehood. What a heap of stuff is here! The oath, its falsehood (supposing it to have been ever dreamed of before the days of Gamaliel Smith) the purification which Mr. Smith conceives to be a ceremony somewhat akin to kissing the book, the indignation of the multitude at that oath when we are expressly told that this wrath arose from a different cause, the sudden and miraculous conversion of Jewish persecutors into Jewish Christians, these are the feats of our learned writer in the second half of his ponderous tome; and they defy all rivalry or imita

tion.

"Perjurious was the purpose of the exculpatory oath commenced by Paul in the Temple." p. 254. Blasphemous

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was the purpose of the nonsensical trash put forth by Bentham, under the name of Gamaliel Smith!

"Perjurious Paul," is the heading, or running title of twenty of these infamous pages. As many more are designated by the term "Simple Falsehoods," and we suspect that it was nothing less than an error of the press, one of those oversights of human frailty from which we, and our authors and our readers so frequently suffer, that these words were not inserted conspicuously in the title page and prefixed to each of the sixteen chapters, and each of the eighty sections into which this voluminous piece of impertinence is divided. Having given sufficient specimens of the religious part of the performance; we close our extracts with a bit of radicalism worthy of its venerable parent. On the subject of St. Paul at Ephesus; thus speaketh poor old Jeremy.

"The Judge by whom the principal cause was tried, and the plaintiffs nonsuited, is styled, we see the Town Clerk: the more appropriate and respected title would not on this occasion have been ill-applied to him. Except what we have here been seeing, we know nothing of him that is positive: but, seeing thus much of him, we see that he was an honest man: and an honest man is not ill pourtrayed by negatives. He had no coronet playing before his eyes: no overpaid places and sinecures for relatives. He had not been made judge, for publishing a liturgy of the church of Diana, with an embroidery composed of his own comments,or for circulating, with anonymous delicacy, a pious warning, never to be absent from the shrine of Diana, when the sacred cup was proffered by the hands of holy priests. Accordingly when the charge of blasphemy was brought before him,-being a heathen, he found no difficulty in treating it, in that gentle and soothing mode, in which, when, from the bosom of an established church it enters into a man, the spirit, which calls itself the spirit of Christianity, renders him so averse to the treating it. If, when his robes were off, he spoke of Diana what we now think of her, he did not, when they were on, foam or rave, or declare that all, who would not swear to their belief in her, were not fit to believed or so much as fit to live.

By him, one man was not robbed of his rights, because another man, when called upon as a witness, refused to perjure himself. By him, a man was not refused to be heard as a witness, nor refused protection for the fruits of his industry, nor deprived of the guardianship of his children, because he waited to see Diana, before he declared himself a believer in her existence. In the open theatre was pronounced the judgment we have seen. He did not, by secret sittings, deprive men of the protection of the public eye. He did not, we may stand assured-for we see how far the people

of Ephesus were from being tame enough to endure it he did not keep men's property in his hands, to be plundered by himself, his children, or his creatures, till the property was absorbed, and the proprietors sent broken-hearted to their graves. He did not-for the people of Ephesus would not have endured it-wring out of distress a princely income, on pretence of giving decisions, declaring all the while his matchless incapacity for every thing but prating or raising doubts. He did not display,-he could not have displayed the people of Ephesus could not have endured it-any such effrontery, as, when a judicatory was to sit upon his conduct, to sit himself down in it, and assume and carry on the management of it. He would not have sought impunity-for if he had sought it in Ephesus, he would not have found it there he would not have sought impunity, in eyes lifted up to heaven, or streaming with crocodile tears.

"Thus much as to his negative merits. But, we have seen enough of him, to see one great positive one. When, from the inexhaustible source of inflammation, a flame was kindled, he did not fan the flame, he quenched it.

ones.

"The religion of Diana having thus come upon the carpet, a reflection which could not be put by, is-spite of all efforts of the church-silversmiths, in how many essential points, negative as they are, the religion of Diana had, on the ground of usefulness, the advantage of that, which is the religion of Paul, and is called the religion of Jesus. Diana drove no men out of their senses, by pictures or preachments of never-ending torments. On pretence of saving men from future sufferings, no men were consigned by it to present No mischievous, no pain-producing, no real vice, was promoted by it. It compelled no perjury, no hypocrisy it rewarded none. It committed, it supported, it blessed, it lauded, no depre dation, no oppression in any shape: it plundered no man of the fruits of his industry, under the name of tithes. For the enrichment of the sacred shrines,-money, in any quantity, we may venture to say, received: received, yes: but in no quantity extorted. One temple was sufficient for that goddess. Believing, or not believing in her divinity,-no men were compelled to pay money, for more temples, more priests, or more shrines.

、

"As to the religion of Jesus, true it is, that so long as it continued the religion of Jesus, all was good government, all was equality, all was harmony: free church, the whole; established church, none: monarchy, none; constitution, democratical. Constitutive authority, the whole community: legislative, the Apostles of Jesus; executive, the Commissioners of the Treasury: not Lords Commissioners, appointed by a King Herod, but trustees or stewards; for such should have been the word, and not deacons,-agents elected by universal suffrage. In this felicitous state, how long it continued we know not. What we do know, is-that, in the fourth century, despotism took possession of it, and made an instrument of it. Becoming established, it became noxious,-pre

ponderantly noxious. For, where established is the adjunct to it, what does religion mean? what but depredation, corruption, oppression, hypocrisy? depredation, corruption, oppression, hypocrisy-these four: with delusion, in all its forms and trappings, for support. P. 389.

And this is close reasoning. This is the man in comparison with whom Locke had no acuteness, and Newton no discernment. This is the " illustrious" Mr. Bentham of the Westminster Review, whose disciples are to give the law on politics and religion, whose Chrestomathic is to abolish the Propria qua maribus, and re-organize perishing Britain, and who is employed at this moment in finding sense for a score of silly scribblers who believe that the trash which we nau seate in the Black Dwarf and the Examiner will be greedily. swallowed in a new Quarterly Review. Dr. Kitchiner, Mr. Bowring, and Mr. Mill may be clever men in their way; but lighter than hydrogen must they be to keep such a load of blasphemy afloat. We believe better things of the British Public. The Liberal is dead and gone, "Not Paul" is ordered for execution, and the Westminster, as it deserves, will share its fate.

It is hardly worth while to give a serious answer to the nonsense upon which we have commented. But if there be any one who reads it without derision, any one who supposes that there must be some meaning at the bottom of this deep well; we would request him to remember a few facts. There is not the slightest ground to believe that St. Paul's conver sion was denied by the Christians. The disputes that did exist related to his independent authority and apostleship; if therefore the Acts of the Apostles were written in support of St. Paul, the point and the only point which the author would endeavour to establish would be this independent authority. Whereas the ingenuity of Gamaliel Smith is exbausted in attempting to shew that the conversion is not adequately proved. By those for whom the Acts were written (supposing them to have been written for a particular purpose) the conversion was never doubted. And yet, because it is not proved according to the forms of modern law; because the names of the eye-witnesses are not recorded, and the numbers of their dwelling places set forth, Mr. Smith pronounces the whole a fabrication: the joint work of Gamaliel and Barnabas, and the commencement of corruption in the primitive church. With artful or childish ig norance, the man reads a plain narrative, and has not the least idea what it is about. He mistakes a piece of scripture history for a controversial pamphlet; and quarrels with a