out the Temple. As for example,
circumcision, distinction of meats, and many others. And when, if
ever, they shall return to their own land, and rebuild the Temple,
they will then, according to the Old Testament, observe the whole,
and with greater splendour than ever.

CHAPTER XII.

ON THE CHARACTER OF PAUL AND HIS MANNER OF
REASONING.

As Christians lay great stress upon their argument for the truth of
their Religion, derived from the supposed miraculous conversion
of Paul; and since almost the whole of Systematic Christianity is
built upon the foundation of the Epistles ascribed to him, we shall
pay a little more attention to his character and writings.

Paul was evidently a man of no small capacity, a fiery temper,
great subtilty, and considerably well versed in Jewish Traditionary,
and Cabbalistic Learning, and not unacquainted with the principles
of the Philosophy called the "Oriental." He is said by Luke to have
been converted to Christianity by a splendid apparition of Jesus,
who struck him to the ground by the glory of his appearance. But
by the Jews and the Nazarene Christians, he is represented as
having been converted to Christianity from a different cause. They
say that being a man of tried abilities and of some note, he
demanded the High Priest's daughter in marriage, and being
refused, his rash and rageful temper, and a desire of revenge, drove
him to join the "sect of the Nazarenes," at that time beginning to
become troublesome to the Sanhedrim. However this may be,
whether he became a Christian from conviction, or from ambition;
it is certain from the Acts that he always was considered by the
Jewish Christians, as a suspected character; and it is evident that he
taught a different doctrine from that promulgated by the twelve
apostles. And this was the true cause of the great difficulty he was
evidently under of keeping steady to him, his Gentile converts. For
it is evident from the Epistles to the Galatians, and the Corinthians,
that the Jewish Christians represented Paul to them as not "sound
in the Faith," but as teaching a different doctrine from that of the
Twelve, and so influential were these representations, that Paul had
the greatest difficulty in keeping them to his System.

That there were two Parties, or Schools in the first Christian
church, viz. the adherents of the Apostles, and the Disciples of
Paul, is evident from the New Testament, and has been fully, and
unanswerably pro