[58] Acts xviii. 24; xix. 7.
[59] Acts vii. 44-49.
[60] Acts viii. 1.
[61] See especially the Notes on Paley's Horæ Paulinæ, Vol. I. pp.
349, 252. We subjoin in this connection a just and striking remark of
Mr. Jowett's. In inquiries of this sort, it is often supposed that, if
the evidence of the genuineness of a single book of Scripture be
weakened, or the credit of a single chapter shaken, a deep and
irreparable injury is inflicted on Christian truth, and may afford a
rest to the mind to consider that, if but one discourse of Christ, one
Epistle of Paul, had come down to us, still more than half would have
been preserved. Coleridge has remarked, that out of a single play of
Shakespeare the whole of English literature might be restored. Much
more true is it that in short portions or single verses of Scripture
the whole spirit of Christianity is contained. Vol. I. p. 352.
[62] Was it in reference to this mere _family-title_ to a _spiritual_
authority that Paul says of the Jerusalem Apostles, "Whatever they
were, it maketh no matter to me; God accepteth _no man's person_"?
(Gal. iii. 6.)
[63] Ap. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. II. 23.
[64] In proof of an essential unity of teaching, Mr. Jowett quotes
Paul as declaring that what they preached against him was "_not
another_" gospel, "for there was not, could not, be another." (I.
340.) But far from bearing this conciliatory turn, which is out of
character with the whole context, Gal. i. 6 affirms that what his
opponents have been preaching _is_ (1.) another gospel; and yet (2.)
_not_ another gospel, (not so good even as that,) but mere disturbance
and perversion, the negation of a gospel.
[65] Compare also Rom. xiv. 10; Phil. i. 6; 2 Tim. iv. 1. Nay, the
very passage in which he renounces the "knowing of Christ according to
the flesh," contains the doctrine (2 Cor. v. 10).
[66] With a curious inconsistency Mr. Stanley fixes _at the Apostle's
conversion_ the date after which he would no longer "know Christ
according to the flesh"; yet in the very next note declares, that this
state of mind must be referred to a more recent period than the
conversion.
"απο του νυν, from _the time of my conversion_." It is to be presumed
that this is also Mr. Stanley's interpretation of the νυν ουκετι of
the next clause, which only repeats specifically of "Christ" what has
just been said universally.
"ει και εγνωκαμεν κατα σαρκα χριστον, even though I have known; granting
that I have known." γινωσκομεν, i. e. κατα σαρκα, "henceforth we know
him no longer.... The words lead us to infer that something of this kind
had once been [prior, surely, to the "_henceforth_"] his own state of
mind, _not only_ in the time before his conversion, ... _but since_!"
How then can the "_henceforth_" serve as the _terminus a quo_, if the
same state lies on both sides of it?
[67] Jowett, II. 142.