Paul, however, did not get his great reputation by mere imposition and
reaction. It is only in comparison with Jesus (to whom many prefer him)
that he appears common and conceited. Though in The Acts he is only
a vulgar revivalist, he comes out in his own epistles as a genuine
poet,--though by flashes only. He is no more a Christian than Jesus was
a Baptist; he is a disciple of Jesus only as Jesus was a disciple of
John. He does nothing that Jesus would have done, and says nothing that
Jesus would have said, though much, like the famous ode to charity, that
he would have admired. He is more Jewish than the Jews, more Roman
than the Romans, proud both ways, full of startling confessions and
self-revelations that would not surprise us if they were slipped into
the pages of Nietzsche, tormented by an intellectual conscience that
demanded an argued case even at the cost of sophistry, with all sorts
of fine qualities and occasional illuminations, but always hopelessly in
the toils of Sin, Death, and Logic, which had no power over Jesus. As we
have seen, it was by introducing this bondage and terror of his into the
Christian doctrine that he adapted it to the Church and State systems
which Jesus transcended, and made it practicable by destroying the
specifically Jesuist side of it. He would have been quite in his place
in any modern Protestant State; and he, not Jesus, is the true head and
founder of our Reformed Church, as Peter is of the Roman Church. The
followers of Paul and Peter made Christendom, whilst the Nazarenes were
wiped out.