on ignorance of fuch phænomena, might make them imagine it to be a vifion from God. Nay even the voice or found they heard in the air, might be an explosion attending this meteor, or at least there are thofe who would rather recur to such a fuppofition as this, however incredible, than acknowledge the miracle. But how will this account for the diftinct words heard by St. Paul, to which he made anfwer? How will it account for what followed upon it when he came to Damafcus, agreeably to the fenfe of those words which he had heard? How came Ananias to go to him there, and fay, "He was chofen by God to know his will, and fee that Just one, and hear the voice of his mouth?" Acts xxii. 14. xxvi. 16. Or why did he propofe to him to be baptized ? What connection was there between the meteor which Saul had feen, and thefe words of Ananjas? Will it be faid that Ananias was kiful enough to take advantage of the fright he was in at that appearance, in order to make him a Chriflian? But could Ananias infpire him with the vifion in which he faw him before he came? If that vifion was the effect of ima

gination, how was it verified fo exactly in fact? Acts ix. But allowing that he dreamt by chance of Ananias's coming, and that Ananias came by chance too, or, if you pleafe, that having heard of his dream, he came to take advantage of that, as well as of the meteor which Saul had feen, will this get over the difficulty? No, there was more to be done. Saul was ftruck blind, and had been fo for three days. Now had this blindness been natural from the effects of a meteor or lightning upon him, it would not have been poffible for Ananias to heal it, as we find that he did, merely by putting his hands on him and speaking a few words, A&ts ix. 17. 18. xxii. 13. This undoubted-, ly furpaffed the power of nature; and if this was a miracle, it proves the other to have been a miracle too, and a miracle' done by the fame Jefus Chrift. For Ananias, when he healed Saul spoke to him thus, "Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jes fus that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, has fent me, that thou might est receive thy fight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost." Acts ix. 17.

And that he faw Chrift both now and after this time,

fay, prefer that benvolence to faith and to miracles, to thofe religious opinions which he had embraced, and to thofe fupernatural graces and gifts which he imagined he had acquired, nay even to the merit of martyrdom? Is it not the genius of enthuto fet moral virtue infinitely below it of faith, and of all moral virtues that leaft which is moft particularly by Sul, a fpirit of candour,

appears not only by what he relates Acts xxii. 17, 18. but by other paffages, in his epiftles, 1 Cor. ix. 1. xv. 8. From him

as (he afferts in many places of his epiftles) he learned the gofpel by immediate revelation, and by him he was fent to the Gentiles, Acts xxii. 21. xxiii. 11. Among thofe Gentiles from Jerufalem, and round about to Illyricum, he preached the gofpel of Chrift, with mighty Signs and wonders wrought by the power of the Spirit of

God to make them obedient to his preaching, as he teftifies himself in his epistle to the Romans, Rom. xv. 19. and of which a particular account is given to us in the Acts of the Apoftles; figns and wonders indeed, above any power of nature to work, or of impofture to counterfeit, or of enthufiafm to imagine. Now does not fuch a feries of miraculous acts, all confequential to and dependent upon the first revelation, beyond all poffibility of doubt or deceit? And if he could fo have impofed on himself as to think that he worked them when he did not, (which supposition cannot be admitted, if he was not all that time quite out of his fenfes) how could fo distempered an enthusiast make fuch a pro