The life and work of St. Paul

THE BEGINNING OF A LONG MARTYBDOM. 127
with whom they had to deaL It was, throughout life, Paul's unhappy fate to
kindle the most virulent animosities, because, though conciliatory and courteous
by temperament, he yet carried into his arguments that intensity and forthlightness
which awaken dormant opposition. A languid controversialist will
always meet with a languid tolerance. But any controversialist whose honest
belief in his own doctrines makes him terribly in earnest, may count on a life
embittered by the anger of those on whom he has forced the disagreeable task
of re-considering their own assumptions. No one likes to be suddenly
awakened. The Jews were indignant with one who disturbed the deep
slumber of decided opinions. Their accredited teachers did not like to be
deposed from the papacy of infallible ignorance. They began at Damascus to
feel towards Saul that fierce detestation which dogged him thenceforward to
the last day of his Me. Out of their own Scriptures, by their own methods
of exegesis, in their own style of dialectics, by the interpretation of prophecies
of which they did not dispute the validity, he simply confounded them. He
could now apply the very same principles which in the mouth of Stephen he
had found it impossible to resist. The result was an unanswerable proof that
the last aeon of God's earthly dispensations had now dawned, that old things
had passed away, and all things had become new.
If arguments are such as cannot be refuted, and yet if those who hear
them will not yield to them, they inevitably excite a bitter rage. It was so
with the Jews. Some time had now elapsed since Saul's return from Arabia, 1
and they saw no immediate chance of getting rid of this dangerous intruder.
They therefore took refuge in what St. Chrysostom calls " the syllogism of
violence." They might at least plead the excuse aud how bitter was the
remorse which such a plea would excite in Saul's own conscience that they
were only treating him in the way in which he himself had treated all who
held the same opinions. Even-handed justice was thus commending to his
own lips the ingredients of that poisoned chalice of intolerance which he had
forced on others. It is a far from improbable conjecture that it was at this
early period that the Apostle endured one, and perhaps more than one, of
those five Jewish scourgings which he tells the Corinthians that he had
suffered at the hands of the Jews. For it is hardly likely that they would
resort at once to the strongest measures, and the scourgings might be taken
as a reminder that worse was yet to come. Indeed, there are few more
striking proofs of the severity of that life which the Apostle so cheerfully
nay, even so joyfully endured, than the fact that in his actual biography not
one of these five inflictions, terrible as we know that they must have been, is
so much as mentioned, and that in his Epistles they are only recorded, among
trials yet more insupportable, in a passing and casual allusion. 2
But we know from the example of the Apostles at Jerusalem that no such
pain or danger would have put a stop to his ministry. Like them, he would
have seen an honour in such disgrace. At last, exasperated beyond all en-
* cts Ix. 23, wtfxu Uswu. s See Excursus XI., " On Jewish Scourging*. 5