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
conduct, had before been circumstantially described. This person, in
conjunction with another, who appeared among the earlier members of
the society at Jerusalem, and amongst the immediate adherents of the
twelve apostles, (Acts iv. 36.) set out from Antioch upon the express
business of carrying the new religion through the various provinces of
the Lesser Asia.
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