what he did not teach, as best we may. But the task will be difficult to those only who look in the gospels for a minute, dogmatic, and sententious creed-not to those who seek only to learn Christ's spirit, that they may imbibe it, and to comprehend his views of virtue and of God, that they may draw strength and consolation from those fountains of living water 1. "The character of the record is such that I see not how any great stress can be laid on particular actions attributed to Jesus. That he lived a divine life, suffered a violent death, taught and lived a most beautiful religion-this seems the great fact about which a mass of truth and error has been collected."-Theodore Parker, Discourse, p. 188. CHAPTER XII. THE LIMITS OF APOSTOLIC WISDOM AND AUTHORITY. We now come to the very important question-as to the amount of authority which belongs to the teaching of the Apostles. Are they to be implicitly relied on as having fully imbibed Christ's spirit? and as faithful, competent, infallible expounders of his doctrine? May we, in a word, regard their teaching as the teaching of Jesus himself? What their teaching was we know with perfect certainty, though not with all the fulness that might be desired. We have the teaching itself in the epistles, and a record of it in the Acts. The latter work is not perfectly to be relied on. It conveys a vivid, and on the whole, in all probability, a faithful, picture of the formation of the early Christian Churches, their sufferings, their struggles, their proceedings, and the spirit which animated them ;—and, being written by a participator in those events, and a companion of Paul' through a portion of his missionary wanderings, must be regarded as mainly historical; and we shall, therefore, make use of the narrative with considerable confidence. But, as a source for discovering the special doctrines preached by the Apostles, it is of questionable safety, inasmuch as the writer evidently allowed himself the freedom indulged in by all historians of antiquity-of composing speeches in the names of his actors; 1 Luke is generally considered to be the same as Silas. It is remarked that when Silas is represented in the narrative as being with Paul, the narrator speaks in the first person plural. "We came to Samothrace," &c., &c., xvi. 11. Romans xvi. 21. Col. iv. 14. 2 Thess. i. 1. 2 Timothy iv. 11. Philemon, verse 24. -and thus the discourses, both of Paul and Peter, can only be regarded as proceeding from Luke himself, containing, probably, much that was said, but much, also, that was only fitting to have been said, on such occasions. We have already adduced one unmistakable instance of this practice in a previous chapter, where Luke not only gives the speech of Gamaliel in a secret Council of the Sanhedrim, from which the Apostles were expressly excluded', but makes him refer, in the past tense, to an event which did not take place till some years after the speech was delivered. In the same way we have long discourses delivered by Stephen, Peter, and Paul, at some of which Luke may have been present, but which it is impossible he should have remembered verbatim ;-we have the same invalid argument regarding the resurrection of Christ put into the mouths of two such opposite characters as Peter and Paul (ii. 27; xiii. 35);—we have another account of a conversation in a secret Council of the Jews (iv. 15-17);—we have the beautiful oration of Paul at Athens, when we know that he was quite alone (xvii. 14, 15);—we have the private conversation of the Ephesian craftsmen, when conspiring against the Apostles (xix. 25, 27);—we have the private letter of the Chief Captain Lysias to Felix (xxiii. 26); we have two private conversations between Festus and Agrippa about Paul (xxv. 14-22, and xxvi. 31, 32) ;—and all these are given in precisely the style and manner of an ear-witness. We cannot, therefore, feel certain that any particular discourses or expressions attributed by Luke to the Apostles were really, genuinely, and unalteredly, theirs. In the Epistles, however, they speak for themselves, and so far there can be no mistake as to the doctrines they believed and taught. Before proceeding further we wish to premise one remark. The Epistles contained in our Canon are twenty-one in number, viz. 14 of Paul (including the Hebrews), 3 of John, 2 of Peter, 1 of James, and 1 of Jude. But the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews is more than doubtful; the second of Peter, the second and third of John, and even those of James and Jude, were at a very early period reck 1 Acts v. 34. oned among the spurious or doubtful writings'. The epistles of certain or acknowledged genuineness are thus reduced to fifteen, viz. 13 of Paul, 1 of John, and 1 of Peter. Thus, of fifteen epistles, of which we can pronounce with tolerable certainty that they are of apostolic origin, 2 only proceeded from the companions of Jesus, and the remaining 13 from a man who had never seen him, save in a vision, nor heard his teaching, nor learnt from his disciples;—a converted persecutor, who boasted that he received his instructions from direct supernatural communications". We will now proceed to establish the following propositions: -- I. That the Apostles differed from each other in opinion, and disagreed among themselves. II. That they held and taught some opinions which we know to have been erroneous. III. That both in their general tone, and in some important particulars, their teaching differed materially from that of Christ as depicted in the synoptical gospels. I. Infallible expounders of a system of Religion or Philosophy cannot disagree among themselves as to the doctrines which compose that system, nor as to the spirit which should pervade it. Now, the Apostles did disagree among themselves in their exposition of the nature and constituents of their Master's system-and this, too, in matters of no small significance: they are not, therefore, infallible or certain guides. Putting aside personal and angry contentions, such as those recorded in Acts xv. 39, which, however undignified, are, we fear, natural even to holy men ;-the first recorded dispute among the Apostles we find to have related to a matter of the most essential importance to the character of Christianity-viz. whether or not the Gospel should be preached to any but Jews-whether the Gentiles were to be admitted into the fold of Christ? We find (c. xi.) that when the Apostles and brethren in Judea heard that Peter had ventured to visit Gentiles, to eat with them, to preach 1 De Wette, i. 69-83. See also Hug, 583-650. The epistle of James we are still disposed to consider genuine; that of Jude is unimportant; the second of Peter, and the third of John, are almost certainly spurious. 2 Galatians i. 11-19. to them, and even to baptize them, they were astonished and scandalised by the innovation, and "contended with him." The account of the discussion which ensued throws light upon two very interesting questions;-upon the views entertained by Jesus himself (or at least as to those conveyed by him to his disciples), as to the range and limit of his mission ;-and upon the manner in which, and the grounds on which, controversies were decided in the early Church. We have been taught to regard Jesus as a prophet who announced himself as sent from God on a mission to preach repentance, and to teach the way of life to all mankind, and who left behind him the Apostles to complete the work which he was compelled to leave unfinished. The mission of Moses was to separate and educate a peculiar people, apart from the rest of the world, for the knowledge and worship of the one true God:-The mission of Christ was to bring all nations to that knowledge and worship-to extend to all mankind that Salvation which, in his time, was considered to belong to the Jews alone, as well as to point to a better and a wider way of life. Such is the popular and established notion. But when we look into the New Testament we find little to confirm this view, and much to negative it. Putting aside our own prepossessions, and inferences drawn from the character of Christ, and the comprehensive grandeur of his doctrine, nothing can well be clearer from the evidence presented to us in the Scriptures, than that Jesus considered himself sent, not so much to the world at large, as to the Jews exclusively,—to bring back his countrymen to the true essence and spirit of that religion whose purity had in his days been so grievously corrupted; and to elevate and enlarge their views from the stores of his own rich and comprehensive mind. It will be allowed by all that the Apostles, at the commencement of their ministry after the crucifixion of their Lord, had not the least idea that their mission extended to any but the Jews, or that their Master was anything but a Jewish Messiah and Deliverer. Their first impatient question to him when assembled together after the resurrection, is said to have been, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" The whole of the account we are 1 Acts i. 6. |