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Here the apostle offers several arguments to satisfy the Galatians, that both his commission to preach the gospel, and also the gospel which he preached to them, were not from man, but our Lord Jesus Christ. And the first argument to prove it, as a convictive evidence of it, was his bitter enmity against the Christian religion, and his mighty zeal for the Jewish religion, in which he was educated and brought up: All which he mentions as a thing publicly known, leaving them to infer from thence, that so great and sudden a change could not be the effect of human persuasion, but divine revelation; In time past I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it.
Where note, that although our apostle did not shun to make an open confession of his wicked life, before his conversion, that he might thereby make evident, that his conversion was immediately from God, yet he makes an open confession only of his open sins, such as they had heard of in time past, without discovering his secret sins, which had been kept from the knowledge of the world, the divulging whereof would but have multiplied scandals and stumbling-blocks unto others. To confess our secret sins to God, is safe; to confess our open sins to the world, is sufficient.
Observe farther, the commendable proficiency which St. Paul made in the Jewish religion, wherein he was educated, I profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals. He was also a zealous maintainer of the Jewish customs, and unwritten traditions, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. From St. Paul's example we may infer, that it is a special duty incumbent upon all persons to make religion the matter of their choice; and having espoused it, to be the more serious and zealous in it; to labour to advance and grow both in the knowlege and in the practice of it; and that to a degree of eminecy, excelling and outstripping others: I profited in the Jewish religion above many my equals, or contemporaries.