hat difficulties always attend imperfect information.

CHAPTER VII.

UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES.

Between the letters which bear the name of Saint Paul in our collection
and his history in the Acts of the Apostles there exist many notes of
correspondency. The simple perusal of the writings is sufficient to
prove that neither the history was taken from the letters, nor the
letters from the history. And the undesignedness of the agreements
(which undesignedness is gathered from their latency, their minuteness,
their obliquity, the suitableness of the circumstances in which they
consist to the places in which those circumstances occur, and the
circuitous references by which they are traced out) demonstrates that
they have not been produced by meditation, or by any fraudulent
contrivance. But coincidences, from which these causes are excluded, and
which are too close and numerous to be accounted for by accidental
concurrences of fiction, must necessarily have truth for their
foundation. This argument appeared to my mind of so much value
(especially for its assuming nothing beside the existence of the books),
that I have pursued it through Saint Paul's thirteen epistles, in a work
published by me four years ago, under the title of Horae Paulinae. I am
sensible how feebly any argument which depends upon an induction of
particulars is represented without examples. On which account I wished
to have abridged my own volume, in the manner in which I have treated
Dr. Lardner's in the preceding chapter. But, upon making the attempt, I
did not find it in my power to render the articles intelligible by fewer
words than I have there used. I must be content, therefore, to refer the
reader to the work itself. And I would particularly invite his attention
to the observations which are made in it upon the first three epistles.
I persuade myself that he will find the proofs, both of agreement, and
undesignedness, supplied by these epistles, sufficient to support the
conclusion which is there maintained, in favour both of the genuineness
of the writings and the truth of the narrative.

It remains only, in this place, to point out how the argument bears upon
the general question of the Christian history.

First, Saint Paul in these letters affirms, in unequivocal terms, his
own performance of miracles, and, what ought particularly to be
remembered, "That miracles were the signs of an Apostle." (Rom. xv. 18,
19. 2 Cor. xii. 12.) If t