This was the title of a treatise written by Lord Lyttleton to which we have previously referred. We will now bring forward some of his arguments, the answer to which convinced himself against his disbelief that the conversion of the Apostle Paul was real.
We will take the heads of his arguments clothing them in our own words. We may mention that the treatises written by Lord Lyttleton and his friend, Gilbert West, can be seen today in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
The actual conversion of the Apostle Paul is described in Acts 9, and further the Apostle himself twice narrated it, first when he addressed the fanatical crowd from the castle stairs at Jerusalem, and again when he stood before King Agrippa to answer for himself.
Lord Lyttleton took up four points of view for examination: -
(1) Either Paul was an impostor, who said what he knew to be false, with intent to deceive; or
(2) He was an enthusiast, who imposed on him-self by the force of an over-heated imagination; or
(3) He was deceived by the fraud of others; or finally
(4) What he declared to be the occasion of his conversion did really happen, and therefore the Christian religion is a divine revelation.
In the consideration of these points of view, we begin by asking, was Paul an impostor?