These letters, without borrowing from the
history, or the history from them, unintentionally confirm the account
which the history delivers, in a great variety of particulars. What
belongs to our present purpose is the description exhibited of the
apostle's sufferings: and the representation, given in our history, of
the dangers and distresses which he underwent not only agrees in general
with the language which he himself uses whenever he speaks of his life
or ministry, but is also, in many instances, attested by a specific
correspondency of time, place, and order of events. If the historian put
down in his narrative, that at Philippi the apostle "was beaten with
many stripes, cast into prison, and there treated with rigour and
indignity;" (Acts xvi. 23, 24.) we find him, in a letter to a
neighbouring church, (I Thess. ii. 2.) reminding his converts that,
"after he had suffered before, and was shamefully entreated at Philippi,
he was bold, nevertheless, to speak unto them (to whose city he next
came) the Gospel of God." If the history relates that, (Acts xvii. 5.)
at Thessalonica, the house in which the apostle was lodged, when he
first came to that place, was assaulted by the populace, and the master
of it dragged before the magistrate for admitting such a guest within
his doors; the apostle, in his letter to the Christians of Thessalonica,
calls to their remembrance "how they had received the Gospel in much
affliction.
Pages:
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81