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Gen_49:27 Benjamin shall ravin [as] a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.
Ver. 27. Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf.] There are that think that this ought to be applied to St Paul the Benjamite; {a} who while he was Saul, not content to consent to St Stephen’s death, - though it be all one to hold the sack, and to fill it; to do evil, and to consent unto it, - "he made havoc of the Church," like a ravening wolf; "entering into houses also, and haling men and women to prison." Yea, he lies "breathing out threatenings and slaughter," {Act_9:1} panting and windless, as a tired wolf: and, having recovered himself, is marching toward Damascus for more prey, but, met by the chief Shepherd, of a wolf, he is made a lamb, {Isa_11:6} not once opening his mouth, unless it were to crave direction; "What wilt thou have me to do Lord?" After which time, he never persecuted the saints so fast, as now he pursues and "presses" hard { äéùêù , Php_3:14} "toward the high prize"; and as mad every whit he is thought to be for Christ, as ever he was against him. {2Co_5:13 Act_26:11} The Papists, some of them, have censured him for a hot-headed person, and said that there was no great reckoning to be made of his assertions. Is this blasphemy in the first or second table, say you? Porphyry, the philosopher, could say, that it was pity such a man as Paul was cast away upon our religion. And the monarch of Morocco told the English ambassador in King John’s time, that he had lately read Paul’s Epistles, which he liked so well, that were he now to choose his religion, he would, before any other, embrace Christianity. But every one ought, said he, to die in his own religion: and the leaving of the faith wherein he was born, was the only thing that he disliked in that apostle. {b}
{a} Sunt qui autumant hanc prophetiam Paulo applicari debere. - Bez., Annot. ad Act_8:3.
{b} Sandys’s Relation of West. Relig. Heyl., Geog., p. 714.