and would have abjured them for ever if the Jews from the neighbouring cities had not heard of our preaching and had not gathered together and denounced us in Lystra, where there were no Jews, or very few.  Nor were they content with denouncing us, but on a convenient occasion dragged Barnabas and myself outside the town, stoned us and left us for dead, for we, knowing that God required us, feigned death, thereby deceiving them and escaping death we returned to the town by night and left it next day for Derbe.

Now, Essenes, this story that I tell of what happened to us at Lystra has been told with some care by me, for it is significant of what has happened to me for twenty years, since the day, as you have heard, when the Lord Jesus himself spoke to me out of the clouds and appointed me to preach the Gospel he had given unto me, which, upheld by him, I have preached faithfully, followed wherever I went by persecution from Jews determined to undo my work.  But undeterred by stones and threats, we returned to Lystra and preached there again, and in Perga and Attalia, from thence we sailed to Antioch, and there were great rejoicings in Saigon Street, as we sat in the doorways telling of the churches that we founded in Galatia, and how we flung open the door of truth to the pagans, and how many had passed through.

But some came from Jerusalem preaching that the uncircumcised could not hope for salvation, and that there could be no conversion unless the law be observed, and the first observance of the law, they said, is circumcision.  We answered them as is our wont that it is no longer by observances of the law but by grace, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that men may be saved; and we being unable to yield to them or they to us, it was resolved that Barnabas and Titus, a Gentile that we brought over to the faith, should go to Jerusalem.

On the way thither we preached that the Saviour promised to the Jews had come, and been raised from the dead, and the Samaritans hearkened and were converted in great numbers, and the news of these conversions preceding us the joy among the brethren was very great, for you, who know the Scriptures, need not be told that the conversion of the Gentiles has been foretold; nor was it till we began to talk about the abrogation of the law that James and the followers of James rose up against us.  We wondered, and said to each other:  were ever two brothers as unlike as these?  Though myself had never seen the Lord in the flesh, I knew of him from Peter, and we whispered together with our eyes fixed on the long, lean man whose knees were reported callous from kneeling in the Temple praying that God might not yet awhile destroy the world.  It was sufficient, so it was said, for him to hold up his hand to perform miracles, and we came to dislike him and to remember that he had always looked upon Jesus our Lord with suspicion during his lifetime.  Why then, we asked, should he come into power derived from his brother’s glory?