3

Cilicia.1 Forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us, have troubled you with words, saying ye must be circumcised, and keep the law, to whom we gave no such commandment: it seemed good unto us being assembled together,' to send chosen men unto you, with our beloved Barnabas and Paul,-men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth. For it seemed good to us, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things-that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and frora blood, and from things strangled, and from unchastity; from plainers could hardly belong to the presbyters of the church) appears to assume this. The first kal oi, verse 24, must have occasioned the omission of the second.

4

1 The χαίρειν here wants the ἐν κυρίῳ, which is so common in the Pauline Epistles; but it deserves notice that, as a salutation only, this xaipei is found in the Epistle of James.

2 The words γενομένοις ὁμοθυμαδόν, I do not understand with Meyer, "being unanimous," but, "when we were met together;" as dμolvμaddy often denotes in the Acts, not, "of one mind," but, "together," as in v. 46. We may see from the Alexandrian version, and Josephus (Antiq. xix. 9, § 1), how the change of meaning has been formed.

3 The explanation of this passage, Acts xv. 27, is in every way difficult. If we refer Tà avrà to what goes before, the sense will be,-they will announce to you the same things that Barnabas and Paul have announced to you. So I understood the words in the first edition of this work. The words dià λóyou are not exactly against this interpretation: for though these words contained the reference to what followed in writing, they might be thus connected with them; namely, as we now in writing also express the same principles. But since mention is not made before of the preaching of Barnabas and Paul, and we must therefore supply something not before indicated, and since the words did λόγου contain a reference to what follows, and therefore not καταγγέλλειν, but arayyéλλew is here used, I now prefer the other interpretation, although in this case likewise, it is difficult to supply what is necessary. In Irenæus we find a reading which presents the sense required by the connexion in a way that removes all difficulties, but must be considered as an exposition; τὴν γνώμην ἡμῶν, instead of τὰ αὐτὰ, annuntiantes nostram sententiam. Iren. iii. 12, 14.

In the explanation also of Acts xv. 28, I depart, and with greater confidence, from my former view. Agreeably to the manner in which dokeiv is every where placed with the dative of the person as the subject, I cannot help so understanding it with the words τῷ ἁγίῳ πνεύματι, especially since if it meant, by the Holy Spirit, according to the New Testa ment idiom, we should expect ev to be prefixed. It is therefore stated first, it has so pleased the Holy Spirit-then, we as his organs have resolved. Although the affair was determined according to both, it was important

which if ye keep yourselves,' ye shall do well. well."

Fare ye

We may conclude from this epistle, that those who had raised the controversy in the Antiochian church, had appealed to the authority of the apostles and presbytery. Perhaps they represented themselves as delegates of the church at Jerusalem, as this was afterwards made of importance by the adversaries of Paul-but they were not acknowledged as such. We see how important it was for the apostles to accredit Paul and Barnabas as faithful preachers of the gospel and to give a public testimony to their agreement in spirit with them. Yet we cannot help remarking the brevity of the epistle - the want of a pouring forth of the heart towards the new Christians of an entirely different race-the absence of the development of the views on which the resolutions passed were founded. The epistle was without doubt dictated in haste, and must be taken only for an official document, as the credentials of an oral communication. But they depended more on the living word, than on written characters. Hence, while the written communication was so brief, they sent living organs to Antioch, who would explain every thing more fully according to the sense of this meeting.

Thus Paul and Barnabas, having happily attained their object at Jerusalem, returned to the Gentile Christians at Antioch with these pledges of Christian fellowship, and accompanied by the two delegates. Barnabas took also his nephew Mark with him from Jerusalem, to be an assistant in the common work. He had formerly accompanied them on their first missionary travels in Asia, but had not remained faithful to his vocation; giving way to his feelings of attachment for his native country, he had left them when they entered Pamphylia. At Jerusalem, Barnabas met with him again, and perhaps by his remonstrances, brought him to a sense of his former misconduct, so that he once more joined them.

This decision of the Apostolic Assembly at Jerusalem, to mention first, that this resolution was not formed according to human caprice, but that the Holy Spirit so willed it. I translate in the text, not verbally, but according to the sense.

1 The expression in Acts xv. 29, è ☎v diaτnpoûvtes ÉαUTOùs, is remarkably similar to that in James i. 27, ἄσπιλον ἑαυτὸν τηρεῖν ἀπὸ τοῦ κόσμου.

forms an important era in the history of the apostolic church. The first controversy which appeared in the history of Christianity was thus publicly expressed and presented without disguise; but it was at the same time manifested, that, by this controversy, the unity of the church was not to be destroyed. Although so great and striking a difference of an outward kind existed in the development of the church among the Jews and of that among the Gentiles, still the essential unity of the church, as grounded on real communion of internal faith and life, continued undisturbed thereby, and thus it was manifest that the unity was independent of such outward differences: it became henceforth a settled point, that though one party observed and the other party neglected certain outward usages, yet both, in virtue of their common faith in Jesus as the Redeemer, had received the Holy Spirit as the certain mark of their participating in the kingdom of God. The controversy was not confined to these outward differences; but, as we might conclude from the peculiar nature of the modes of thinking among the Jews, which mingled itself with their conceptions of Christianity, it involved several doctrinal differences. The latter, however, were not brought under discussion; those points only were touched which were most palpable, and appeared the most important from the Jewish standing-point of legal observances. While they firmly held ne ground of faith,-faith in Jesus as the Messiah, and a consciousness of fellowship in the one spirit proceeding from him, they either lost sight altogether of these differences, or viewed them as very subordinate, in relation to the points of agreement, the foundation of the all-comprehending kingdom of God. At a later period these differences broke out with greater violence, when they were not overpowered by the energy of a Christian spirit progressively developed, and insinuating itself more deeply into the prevalent modes of thinking. Even by this wise settlement of the question, so serious a breach could not be repaired, where the operation of that Spirit was wanting from whom this settlement proceeded. As those who were addicted to Pharisaism were, from the first, accustomed to esteem a Christianity amalgamated with complete Judaism, as alone genuine and perfect, and rendering men capable of enjoying all the privileges of the kingdom of God, it was hardly possible that these decisions could produce

an entire revolution in their mode of thinking; whether it was that they looked upon the decisions of the assembly at Jerusalem as not permanent, or that they explained them according to their own views and interests, as if indeed, though they had not commanded the observance of the law to Gentile Christians, they were designed to intimate that it would be to their advantage, if voluntarily, and out of love to Jehovah, they observed the whole law. And as they had not hesitated, before that assembly was called at Jerusalem, to appeal to the authority of the apostles, although they were by no means authorized to do so, they again attempted to make use of this expedient, of which they could more readily avail themselves on account of the great distance of most of the Gentile churches from Jerusalem.1

Thus we have here the first example of an accommodation of differences which arose in the development of the church, an attempt to effect a union of two contending parties; and we here see what has been often repeated, that union can only be attained where it proceeds from an internal unity of Christian consciousness; but where the reconciliation is only external, the deeply-seated differences, though for a brief period repressed, will soon break out afresh. But what is of the greatest importance, we here behold the seal of true catholicism publicly exhibited by the apostles, and the genuine apostolic church. The existence of the genuine catholic church, which so deeply-seated a division threatened to destroy, was thereby secured.

We are now arrived at a point of time in which the Gentile church assumed a peculiar and independent form; but before

The Acts of the Apostles might lead us to suppose, if we could not compare its statements with the Pauline Epistles, that the division between the Jewish and Gentile Christians had been completely healed by the decision of the apostolic assembly; but we know that the reac tion of the Judaizing party against the freedom of the Gentile Christian church, very soon broke out afresh, and that Paul had constantly to combat with it. In this silence of the Acts, I cannot find the slightes trace of an apologetical tendency for Paul against the Judaizers; in that case, I should rather have expected the Author would have mentioned these subsequent disturbances, and have opposed to them these decisions. Nor can I think an intentional silence probable in relation to the events of a period so deeply agitated by religious concerns. The Acts generally says nothing of the inward development of the Christian church; hence it is silent on so many other things which we would gladly know.

we trace its further spread and development in connexion with the labours of Paul, let us first glance at the constitution of the church in this new form of Christian fellowship.

CHAPTER V.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH, AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL USAGES OF THE GENTILE CHRISTIANS.

THE forms under which the constitution of the Christian community at first developed itself, were, as we have before remarked, most nearly resembling those which already existed in the Jewish church. But these forms, after their adoption by Jewish Christians, would not have been transferred to the Gentile churches, if they had not so closely corresponded to the nature of the Christian community as to furnish it with a model for its organization. This peculiar nature of the Christian community distinguished the Christian church from all other religious associations, and after Christianity had burst the fetters of Judaism, showed itself among the free and self-subsistent churches of the Gentile Christians. Since Christ satisfied once for all that religious want, from the sense of which a priesthood has every where originated,—since he satisfied the sense of the need of mediation and reconciliation, so deeply seated in the consciousness of the separation from God by sin, there was no longer room or necessity for any other mediation. If, in the apostolic epistles, the Old Testament ideas of a priesthood, a priestly cultus and sacrifices are applied to the new economy, it is only with the design of showing, that, since Christ has for ever accomplished that which the priesthood and sacrifices in the Old Testament prefigured, all who now appropriate by faith what he effected for mankind, stand in the same relation with one another to God, without needing any other mediation,-that they are all by communion with Christ dedicated and consecrated to God, and are called to present their whole lives to God as an acceptable, spiritual thank-offering, and thus their whole con