“So I arose: but behold, I was wholly blind. Being led into the city by my companions I lay some days still under the heavy hand of the Lord, pondering many thoughts and doubting whether it would please the Lord to restore to me my sight; and during all this time I spoke many things not according to my own knowledge, for I was no longer master of myself. Among other matters the Lord caused me to make mention of one Ananias, one of the chief among the saints in Damascus (whom I had purposed to have slain) saying that it was the Lord’s will that he should come to me and make me whole. Whereof when the rumor came to the ears of Ananias, he, being also moved by a vision of the Lord which he himself received, came to me and laid his hands upon me, and straightway my senses returned to me, and presently I began to see a little, and in no very long space I was made whole and received my sight as before.”
§ 6. HOW PAULUS WAS PREPARED FOR THE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL.
“When I was recovered of my blindness, some of the brethren in Damascus would have had me go up to Jerusalem that I might be instructed in the faith by those that had been disciples before me. But the Lord suffered it not, but bade me go into Arabia; where, for the space of two years, I remained, giving myself wholly to prayer, and to the reading of the Scriptures, and pondering the purposes of God. And here it pleased the Lord to reveal many mysteries unto me and more especially the mystery of the New Temple and the heavenly Jerusalem. And the grace of the Lord was poured out upon me very abundantly, working for me good out of evil, enabling me to discern the truth the more clearly perchance because I had once fought against it. For as I had ever been wont to say, ‘If the Nazarenes be right, then are the Jews wrong, and if Jesus be the Messiah, then are the Law and the Temple destined to pass away,’ so now, believing that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, I had the less difficulty in believing that the Law must needs pass away, and all things must be changed.
“At the same time it was revealed to me in the spirit that the outward fashion of all things must change but the will of God abideth for ever; for in spite of death, and sin, and all the devices of Satan, the purposes of the Highest are unchangeable; which have been, and shall be, fulfilled, in many diverse shapes, yet ever remain the same; and how the redemption of the world through Christ and the casting away (in part and for a time) of Israel, together with the bringing in of the Gentiles, were not by chance—as if the purposes of the Unchangeable were changed—but fore-ordained before the foundation of the world; even as it was also fore-ordained that Adam should fall, and Abel should be slain, and that Ishmael and Esau should be rejected to the intent that Isaac and Jacob might be chosen; in all these things I now discerned the unchanging purpose of the Lord triumphing over Satan from the first, and out of sin and death drawing forth life and righteousness. Also, as regards the death of the Lord Jesus upon the cross, I no longer felt shame at it, nor passed lightly over it in my doctrine (as some do still, my Onesimus); for I perceived that it was a sacrifice fore-ordained, yea, the only true sacrifice and oblation for the sins of men, whereof all former sacrifices had been but shadows.