Not Paul, but Jesus · Jeremy Bentham
FOOTNOTES:
Acts 19:5-7. After "they," the above twelve, v. 7, disciples, v. 9, "were baptized, v. 5, in the name of the Lord Jesus;" when Paul, v. 6, "had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied." Here then, if, by thus laying on of hands, it is by _Paul_ that any operation is performed, it is the conferring of "the Holy Ghost." But this power, whence had Paul received it? Not from Jesus, had the self-constituted Apostle received this gift, whatever it was, any more than he had baptism, by which ceremony, as appears from Acts 8:16, it was regularly preceded: as in the case of the magician it actually had been. Not from Jesus: no such thing is anywhere so much as pretended. Not from the Apostles, or any of them; from two, for example, by commission from the rest--as in the case of Peter and John, Acts 8:14-19:--no such thing is anywhere so much as pretended. In no such persons could this--would this--their self-declared superior, have vouchsafed to acknowledge the existence, of a power in which he had no share. On this occasion, as on every other, independently of the Apostles did he act, and in spite of the Apostles.
As to the "_speaking with tongues and prophesying_," these are pretensions, which may be acknowledged without much difficulty. _Tongues_ are the organs most men speak with. As to _prophesying_, it was an operation that might as well be performed after the fact as before the fact: witness in Luke 22:64, "Prophesy, who is it that smote thee?" Read the Bible over from beginning to end, a _prophet_, whatever else be meant, if there be anything else meant, you will find to have been _a politician: to prophesy_ was to talk _politics_. Make a new translation, or, what would be shorter, a list of _corrigenda_, and instead of _prophet_ put _politician_,--a world of labour, now employed in explanations, will be saved. _Acts, part false, part true: Author not Saint Luke._
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.