THE LIFE OF
THE APOSTLE PAUL.
This great apostle of the Gentiles was a native of Tarsus, and a descendant from the ancient stock of Abraham. He was horn about two years before the blessed Jesus, and belonged to the tribe of Benjamin, the youngest son of Jacob, who thus prophesied of him: “Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey; and at night he shall divide the spoil;” a prophetical character which Tertullian and others will have to be accomplished in our apostle. For, in his youth, or morning of his days, he persecuted the chnrches, destroying the flock of the Almighty; he devoured the prey: in his declining age, or evening of his day, he became a physician of the nations, feeding and distributing with the greatest care and assiduity the sheep of Christ; that great shepherd of Israel, he divideth the spoil.
Tarsus, the place of the apostle’s nativity, was the metropolis of Cilicia, and situated about three hundred miles distant from Jerusalem; it was exceedingly rich and populous, and a Roman municipium, or free corporation, invested with the privileges of Rome by the two first emperors, as a reward for the citizens’ firm adherence to the Cæsars, in the rebellion of Crassns. St. Paul was therefore born a Roman citizen, and he often pleads this privilege on his trials.
It was common for the inhabitants of Tarsus to send their children into other cities, for learning and improvement; especially to Jerusalem, where they were so numerous, that they had a synagogue of their own, called the Synagogue of the Cilicians. To this capital Paul was also sent, and brought up at the school of the eminent Rahhi, Gamaliel, in the most exact knowledge of the law of Moses. Nor did he fail to profit by the instructions of the great master; for he so diligently conformed himself to its precepts, that, the asserts of himself, that touching the righteousness of the law, he was blameless, and defied even his enemies to allege any thing to the contrary, even in his youth. He joined himself to the sect of the Pharisees, the most strict order of the Jewish religion; but at the same time, the
