2. As to the other consideration, whatsoever might be the force of it, if applied to a composition of modern times--after so many intervening centuries, during several of which the arts of literary composition have, with the benefit of the facilities afforded by the press, been the subject of general study and practice;--whatsoever on this supposition might be the force of it, applied to the style and character of Paul, little weight seems necessary to be attached to it. Of the confusion--designed or undesigned--in which the style of this self-named Apostle involves every point it touches upon, not a page can be read without presenting samples in abundance, to every eye that can endure to open itself to them: in this very work, some must probably have already offered themselves to notice; and before it closes, many will be presented in this express view: the point in question belongs to the field of chronology: and, of the perturbate mode of his operation in this field, a particular exemplification has been already brought to view, Ch. 2, in a passage, in which, of a long train of sufferings and perils,--some real, some to all appearance not so--the one first undergone is last mentioned.[39] From the order in which two events are mentioned by this writer, no argument, in any degree conclusive, can be deduced, for the persuasion, that that which stands first mentioned, was so much as intended by him to be regarded as that which first took place.
In the very passage, in which the giving the right hands of fellowship to him and Barnabas is mentioned, and immediately after these very words,--it is said--that "we _should go_ unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision." Thus, then, the conjunct excursion of Paul and Barnabas--an excursion, not commenced till about ten years after this same first visit, Acts 13 and 14, is mentioned, as an incident at _that_ time future. True it is, that the word directly expressive of the future is, in the English translation, but an interpretation, and as such marked. But, had any prior excursion of this kind taken place before, there seems no reason to suppose, that the event, which, by the context, would surely have been taken for an event then as yet to come,--would, had the intention been to represent it as no more than a repetition of what had taken place already, have received a form, so ill adapted to its intended purpose.