As to the parcels of stripes, the self-constituted Apostle takes credit for, they would have been,--supposing them administered,--administered, all of them, according to law, meaning always the law of _Moses_: for, it is in that law, (namely in Deuteronomy XXV. 3) that the clause, limiting to nine-and-thirty, the number to be given at a time, is to be found. Of these statements of Paul's, let it not pass unnoticed, the place is--a formal and studied Epistle, not an extempore speech: so that the falsehood in them, if any, was not less deliberate than the Temple perjury.
Of all these same boasted bodily sufferings, eight in the whole, when put together,--one was, at the outset, reserved for consideration: let us see what light, if any, is cast upon it by the Acts. One beating, the Acts informs us of: and it was a beating by order of magistrates: and accordingly, a beating according to law. But the law, according to which it was given, was not Jewish law: the magistrates, by whose order it was given, were not Jewish magistrates. The magistrates were heathens: and it was for being Jews, and preaching in the Jewish style, that Paul, and his companion Silas, were thus visited. It was at Philippi that the affair happened: it was immediately preceded by their adventure with the divineress, as per Acts 16:16; 34, Chap. 13: and brought about by the resentment of her masters, to whose established business, the innovation, introduced by these interlopers, had given disturbance: it was followed--immediately followed--by the earthquake, which was so dexterous in taking irons off. Whether therefore this beating was in Paul's account comprised in the eight stripings and beatings, seems not possible, humanly speaking, to know: not possible, unless so it be, that Paul, being the wandering Jew, we have sometimes heard of, is still alive,--still upon the look-out, for that aërial voyage, which, with or without the expectation of an aërostatic vehicle, we have seen him so confident in the assurance of.
Remains the battle with the beasts. What these same beasts were, how many there were of them,--how many legs they respectively had--for example, two or four--in what way he was introduced into their company,--whence his difference with them took its rise,--whether it was of his own seeking, or by invitation that he entered the lists with these his antagonists,--how it fared with _them_ when the affair was over,--(for as to the hero himself, it does not appear that he was much the worse for it);--these, amongst other questions, might be worth answering, upon the supposition, that these antagonists of his were real beings and real beasts, and not of the same class as the arch-beast of his own begetting--Antichrist. But, the plain truth seems to be, that if ever he fought with beasts, it was in one of his visions: in which case, for proof of the occurrence, no visible mark of laceration could reasonably be demanded. Meantime, to prove the negative, as far as, in a case such as this, it is in the nature of a negative to be proved,--we may, without much fear of the result, venture to call his ever-devoted scribe. To this same Ephesus,--not more than a twelvemonth or thereabouts, before the date of the Epistle--he brings his patron,--finds appropriate employment for him,--and, off and on, keeps him there for no inconsiderable length of time. There it is, that we have seen, Chap. 13, §. 7., his handkerchiefs driving out devils as well as diseases: there it is, and for no other reason than that _he_ is there--there it is, that we have seen so many thousand pounds worth of magical books burnt--and by their owners: there it is, that with a single handkerchief of his,--which so it were but used, was an overmatch for we know not how many devils,--we saw a single devil, with no other hands than those of the man he lodged in, wounding and stripping to the skin no fewer than seven men at the same time. If, then, with or without a whole skin at the conclusion of it, he had really had any such rencounter, with one knows not how many beasts, is it in the nature of the case, that this same historiographer of his, should have kept us ignorant of it? To be shut up with wild beasts, until torn to pieces by them, was indeed one of the punishments, for which men were indebted to the ingenuity of the Roman lawyers: but, if any such sentence was really executed upon our self-constituted Apostle, his surviving it was a miracle too brilliant not to have been placed at the head of all his other miracles: at any rate, too extraordinary to have been passed by altogether without notice. The biographer of Daniel was not thus negligent.