other, subsisted between the Christians,) has been well illustrated by a tract of Ferrarius de Epistolis Ecclesiasticis, referred to by Wolf." (Bloomfield. Vol. IV. p. 611.)
"Ephesus was the metropolis of proconsular Asia. It was situated at the mouth of the river Cayster, on the shore of the Aegean sea, in that part anciently called Ionia, (but now Natolir,) and was particularly celebrated for the temple of Diana, which had been erected at the common expense of the inhabitants of Asia Proper, and was reputed one of the seven wonders of the world. In the time of Paul, this city abounded with orators and philosophers; and its inhabitants, in their gentile state, were celebrated for their idolatry and skill in magic, as well as for their luxury and lasciviousness. Ephesus is now under the dominion of the Turks, and is in a state of almost total ruin, being reduced to fifteen poor cottages, (not erected exactly on its original site,) and its once flourishing church is now diminished to three illiterate Greeks. (Rev. ii. 6.) In the time of the Romans, Ephesus was the metropolis of Asia. The temple of Diana is said to have been four hundred and twenty-five feet long, two hundred and twenty broad, and to have been supported by one hundred and twenty-seven pillars of marble, seventy feet high, whereof twenty-seven were most beautifully wrought, and all the rest polished. One Ctesiphon, a famous architect, planned it, and with so much art and curiosity, that it took two hundred years to finish it. It was set on fire seven times; once on the very same day that Socrates was poisoned, four hundred years before Christ." (Horne's Introd. Whitby's Table. Wells's Geog. Williams on Pearson.)
After this successful effort to confirm and complete the conversions
already effected, Paul went about his apostolic labors in the
usual way,—going into the synagogue, and speaking boldly, disputing
the antiquated sophistry of the Jews, and urging upon all,
the doctrines of the new revelation. In this department of labor,
he continued for the space of three months; but at the end of that
time, he found that many obstacles were thrown in the way of the
truth by the stubborn adherents of the established forms of old
Judaism, who would not allow that the lowly Jesus was the Messiah
for whom their nation had so long looked as the restorer of
Israel. Leaving the hardened and obstinate Jews, he therefore,
according to his old custom in such cases of the rejection of the
gospel by them, withdrew from their society, and thenceforth went
with those who had believed among the more candid Greeks, who,
with a truly enlightened and philosophical spirit, held their minds
open to the reception of new truths, even though they might not
happen to accord with those which were sanctioned to them by
the prejudices of education. After leaving the synagogue, his new
place of preaching and religious instruction was the school of one
Tyrannus,—doubtless one of those philosophical institutions with
which every Grecian city abounded. This continued his field
of exertion for two years, during which his fame became very
widely established,—all the inhabitants of Ionic and Aeolic Asia,
having heard of the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and
Greeks. Among the causes and effects of this general notoriety,
was the circumstance, that many miraculous cures were wrought
by the hands of Paul; and many began even to attach a divine
