which is entitled ‘the Preaching of Paul’. In which book, contrary to every scripture, you will find Christ, who alone never sinned at all, both confessing his own sin and being compelled almost against his will by his mother Mary to receive the baptism of John; and further, that when he was baptized, fire appeared upon the water, which is recorded in no gospel. And that after so long a time Peter and Paul (after their conference (comparison) on the gospel at Jerusalem, after their common counsels, their dispute, their settling of a course of action (?)) at last met in Rome as if then first known to each other: and some other things of the kind absurdly and disgracefully concocted, all of which you will find heaped together in that book.
The author, it may be noted, is wrong in his statement that the baptism story was not recorded in any Gospel: it was found, wholly or partly, in the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Ebionite Gospel.
The other is in Lactantius’ Institutes, iv. 21. 2:
(Jesus) also revealed all things to come (to his disciples) which Peter and Paul preached at Rome, and that preaching continues in writing, for a memorial. Wherein, with many other wondrous things, they said that this too would come to pass, that after a little time God would send a king who would attack the Jews and lay their cities even with the ground and besiege them till they were exhausted with hunger and thirst: then would they feed on the bodies of their own kin, and devour one another: finally, that they would be taken and fall into the enemies’ hands and see their wives maltreated before their faces, their maidens outraged and prostituted, their boys carried off, their infants dashed to the earth, all, in a word, wasted by fire and sword, and themselves captive and banished for ever from their land, because they rejoiced against the beloved and approved Son of God.
No other trace of a book called a Preaching of Paul remains, and, as I say, its existence is doubtful.
Commodian, the strange Christian poet, who according to some critics, was an African of the third century, and according to others lived in Gaul in the fifth, has in his Carmen Apologeticum (624 sqq.) ane to the Acts of Peter and of Paul. Speaking of God’s power, he says:
And whatever he willeth he can do: making dumb things to speak; he made Balaam’s ass speak to him when he beat it; and a dog to say to Simon: ‘Thou art called for by Peter!’ For Paul when he preached, he caused dumb persons (or perhaps mules) to speak of him[1]: he made a lion speak to the people with God-given voice. Lastly, a thing which our nature does not permit—he made an infant five months old speak in public.
- ↑ The manuscript has multi, which may be for muti or muli. Or, keeping multi (as Zahn), we should translate, ‘For Paul when he
