hbouring church, (I Thess. ii. 2.) reminding his converts that,
"after he had suffered before, and was shamefully entreated at Philippi,
he was bold, nevertheless, to speak unto them (to whose city he next
came) the Gospel of God." If the history relates that, (Acts xvii. 5.)
at Thessalonica, the house in which the apostle was lodged, when he
first came to that place, was assaulted by the populace, and the master
of it dragged before the magistrate for admitting such a guest within
his doors; the apostle, in his letter to the Christians of Thessalonica,
calls to their remembrance "how they had received the Gospel in much
affliction." (1 Thess. i. 6.) If the history deliver an account of an
insurrection at Ephesus, which had nearly cost the apostle his life, we
have the apostle himself, in a letter written a short time after his
departure from that city, describing his despair, and returning thanks
for his deliverance. (Acts xix. 2 Cor. i. 8--10.) If the history inform
us, that the apostle was expelled from Antioch in Pisidia, attempted to
be stoned at Iconium, and actually stoned at Lystra; there is preserved
a letter from him to a favourite convert, whom, as the same history
tells us, he first met with in these parts; in which letter he appeals
to that disciple's knowledge "of the persecutions which befell him at
Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra." (Acts xiii. 50; xiv. 5, 19. 2 Tim. 10,
11.) If the history make the apostle, in his speech to the Ephesian
elders, remind them, as one proof of the disinterestedness of his views,
that, to their knowledge, he had supplied his own and the necessities of
his companions by personal labour; (Acts xx. 34.) we find the same
apostle, in a letter written during his residence at Ephesus, asserting
of himself, "that even to that hour he laboured, working with his own
hands." (1 Cor. iv 11, 12.)

These coincidences, together with many relative to other parts of the
apostle's history, and all drawn from independent sources, not only
confirm the truth of the account, in the particular points as to which
they are observed, but add much to the credit of the narrative in all
its parts; and support the author's profession of being a contemporary
of the person whose history he writes, and, throughout a material
portion of his narrative, a companion.

What the epistles of the apostles declare of the suffering state of
Christianity the writings which remain of their companions and immediate
follo