clamour of the Jews; the complaint of artificers interested in the support of the popular religion; the reason assigned to induce Paul to give satisfaction to the Christians of Jerusalem.  Had it not been for these occasions it is probable that no notice whatever would have been taken of the number of converts in several of the passages in which that notice now appears.  All this tends to remove the suspicion of a design to exaggerate or deceive.

Parallel testimonies with the history are the letters of Saint Paul, and of the other apostles, which have come down to us.  Those of Saint Paul are addressed to the churches of Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, the church of Galatia, and, if the inscription be right, of Ephesus; his ministry at all which places is recorded in the history:  to the church of Colosse, or rather to the churches of Colosse and Laodicea jointly, which he had not then visited.  They recognise by reference the churches of Judea, the churches of Asia, and “all the churches of the Gentiles.”  (Thess ii. 14.) In the Epistle to the Romans (Rom. xv. 18, 19.) the author is led to deliver a remarkable declaration concerning the extent of his preaching, its efficacy, and the cause to which he ascribes it,—­“to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed, through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ.”  In the epistle to the Colossians, (Col. i. 23.) we find an oblique but very strong signification of the then general state of the Christian mission, at least as it appeared to Saint Paul:—­“If ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven;” which Gospel, he had reminded them near the beginning of his letter (Col. i. 6.), “was present with them, as it was in all the world.”  The expressions are hyperbolical; but they are hyperboles which could only be used by a writer who entertained a strong sense of the subject.  The first epistle of Peter accosts the Christians dispersed throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

It comes next to be considered how far these accounts are confirmed or followed up by other evidence.

Tacitus, in delivering a relation, which has already been laid before the reader, of the fire which happened at Rome in the tenth year of Nero (which coincides with the thirtieth year after Christ’s ascension), asserts that the emperor, in order to suppress the rumours of having been himself the author of the mischief, procured the Christians to be accused.  Of which Christians, thus brought into his narrative, the following is so much of the historian’s account as belongs to our present purpose:  “They had their denomination from Christus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius