3.  This threw a new light on the independent position of Paul.  That he anxiously refused to learn from the other apostles, and “conferred not with flesh and blood,”—­not having received his gospel of many but by the revelation of Jesus Christ—­had seemed to me quite suitable to his high pretensions.  Any novelties which might be in his doctrine, I had regarded as mere developments, growing out of the common stem, and guaranteed by the same Spirit.  But I now saw that this independence invalidated his testimony.  He may be to us a supernatural, but he certainly is not a natural, witness to the truth of Christ’s miracles and personality.  It avails not to talk of the opportunities which he had of searching into the truth of the resurrection of Christ, for we see that he did not choose to avail himself of the common methods of investigation.  He learned his gospel by an internal revelation.[25] He even recounts the appearance of Christ to him, years after his ascension, as evidence co-ordinate to his appearance to Peter and to James, and to 500 brethren at once. 1 Cor. xv.  Again the thought is forced on us,—­how different was his logic from ours!

To see the full force of the last remark, we ought to conceive how many questions a Paley would have wished to ask of Paul; and how many details Paley himself, if he had had the sight, would have felt it his duty to impart to his readers.  Had Paul ever seen Jesus when alive?  How did he recognize the miraculous apparition to be the person whom Pilate had crucified?  Did he see him as a man in a fleshly body, or as a glorified heavenly form?  Was it in waking, or sleeping, and if the latter, how did he distinguish his divine vision from a common dream?  Did he see only, or did he also handle?  If it was a palpable man of flesh, how did he assure himself that it was a person risen from the dead, and not an ordinary living man?

Now as Paul is writing specially[26] to convince the incredulous or to confirm the wavering, it is certain that he would have dwelt on these details, if he had thought them of value to the argument.  As he wholly suppresses them, we must infer that he held them to be immaterial; and therefore that the evidence with which he was satisfied, in proof that a man was risen from the dead, was either totally different in kind from that which we should now exact, or exceedingly inferior in rigour.  It appears, that he believed in the resurrection of Christ, first, on the ground of prophecy:[27] secondly, (I feel it is not harsh or bold to add,) on very loose and wholly unsifted testimony.  For since he does not afford to us the means of sifting and analyzing his testimony, he cannot have judged it our duty so to do; and therefore is not likely himself to have sifted very narrowly the testimony of others.