but we tore our garments, saying, we are men like
yourselves and have come to preach that you should turn from vanities
and false gods and worship the one true living God, who created the
earth, and all the firmament. The people heard us and promised to abjure
their idolatries, and would have abjured them for ever if the Jews from
the neighbouring cities had not heard of our preaching and had not
gathered together and denounced us in Lystra, where there were no Jews,
or very few. Nor were they content with denouncing us, but on a
convenient occasion dragged Barnabas and myself outside the town, stoned
us and left us for dead, for we, knowing that God required us, feigned
death, thereby deceiving them and escaping death we returned to the town
by night and left it next day for Derbe.

Now, Essenes, this story that I tell of what happened to us at Lystra
has been told with some care by me, for it is significant of what has
happened to me for twenty years, since the day, as you have heard, when
the Lord Jesus himself spoke to me out of the clouds and appointed me to
preach the Gospel he had given unto me, which, upheld by him, I have
preached faithfully, followed wherever I went by persecution from Jews
determined to undo my work. But undeterred by stones and threats, we
returned to Lystra and preached there again, and in Perga and Attalia,
from thence we sailed to Antioch, and there were great rejoicings in
Saigon Street, as we sat in the doorways telling of the churches that we
founded in Galatia, and how we flung open the door of truth to the
pagans, and how many had passed through.

But some came from Jerusalem preaching that the uncircumcised could not
hope for salvation, and that there could be no conversion unless the law
be observed, and the first observance of the law, they said, is
circumcision. We answered them as is our wont that it is no longer by
observances of the law but by grace, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that
men may be saved; and we being unable to yield to them or they to us, it
was resolved that Barnabas and Titus, a Gentile that we brought over to
the faith, should go to Jerusalem.

On the way thither we preached that the Saviour promised to the Jews had
come, and been raised from the dead, and the Samaritans hearkened and
were converted in great numbers, and the news of these conversions
preceding us the joy among the brethren was very great, for you, who
know the Scriptures, need not be told