Acts of the Apostles.--Schemes to exalt Peter at the expense
of Paul.
The Acts of the Apostles dates between A. D. 140 or 150 and A. D. 170.
The book, _as we now find it_, was not in existence before Justin's
_Apology_, because before his time there were no miracles, as will
be shown; while the Acts abounds in those of the most extravagant
character. Between A. D. 140 or 150, and A. D. 180, is the time when
the war among the different sects raged with the greatest violence, and
frauds and forgeries were practised by all parties without remorse or
shame. It was during this time that Lazarus was made to rise superior to
death, and assume his place among men, after his body had become putrid
and began to decay. There was nothing too false or extravagant for
parties to assert at this period of the world, and the only wonder
is, that the absurd stories of the age have passed down to subsequent
generations as truths of a revealed religion.
The book of the Acts, in its present form, came to light soon after
the doctrine of the Apostolic succession was conceived, for it is very
evident that the first half is devoted to give prominence to Peter among
the Apostles, who was to be made the corner-stone of the Church. As
all other churches are made to bow to the supremacy of Rome, so all the
Apostles must be subordinate to Peter. This is so obvious that the work
is overdone. On the day of Pentecost he is put forward to explain the
miracle of the cloven tongue, and show that it was in accordance with
what the prophet Joel had foretold--which if Peter did say what he is
made to say, only proved his ignorance of what the prophet meant. His
miraculous powers are wonderful. He cured a man forty years old, who
had been lame from his birth, so that he leaped and walked. His power
extends over death, and he raises Dorcas from the grave. He is now chief
speaker. Ananias and his wife Sapphira fall down dead before him. So
extraordinary is his power over diseases, "that they brought forth the
sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that _at the
least the shadow of Peter_ passing by might overshadow some of them."
(Acts v. 15.)
It is surprising that the incredulity of the Jews did not give way
before such wonderful works; but it seems it did not, and the only
effect produced on their minds was to send Peter to prison. Peter is
twice committed to prison for doing good, and the sole object in sending
him there is to give an opportunity to the Lord to deliver him, and show
that he is under the special protection and guardianship of God. "And
behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the
prison; and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise
up quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands. And the angel said
unto him, Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals: and so he did. And he
saith unto him, Cast thy garment about thee, and follow me." (Acts xii.
7, 8.) "And when Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I know of a
surety that the Lord hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of
the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of the
Jews" (verse 11).
The person over whom the Lord had manifested so much care, must
certainly have been set apart to act some great part in his providences
towards our race. At the time we are writing about, the struggle between
the followers of Peter and Paul was raging; the latter claiming that the
Apostle of the Gentiles was of equal authority as to doctrine with
Peter or any of the Apostles; while the former insisted that Paul had a
special commission--to convert the Gentiles--and as he had performed
his work, his mission ceased, and he was no longer to be regarded as an
authority in the church. No less a person than God himself can settle
the dispute, and the cunningly devised stories of Cornelius, and Paul's
conversion, are introduced into the Acts in order to give the Lord an
opportunity to decide between the two parties.
Cornelius, a devout man, is laboring under what is called religious
conviction, and is in doubt what to do. He stands in need of a spiritual
adviser, and when in this condition of mind, "He saw in a vision
evidently about the ninth hour of the day, an angel of God coming in to
him, and saying unto him, Cornelius. And when he looked on him he was
afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers
and thy alms are come up for a memorial before God. And now send men to
Joppa, and call for one _Simon_, whose surname is Peter." (Acts x. 3,
4, 5.) The centurion was sent to Peter, because he was the depositary of
divine light, and the dispenser of spiritual gifts--an intimation from
God to all the world, for all ages, where men must look to, to find the
true interpreter and expounder of religious faith. Cornelius did as he
was commanded.
But it was not enough that this was true of Peter; but it must be shown
that Paul was but a simple missionary, whose powers ended with his
death. To do this, the story of his conversion in the Acts is told,
notwithstanding it is in direct conflict with what Paul says himself
on the subject. When Ananias was requested by the Lord to call on Paul
while he was still prostrate from the effects of the blow he received
near Damascus, he declined to do so--apparently in fear of Paul, on
account of his previous treatment of Christians. This gave the Lord
an opportunity to tell Ananias, why he is anxious to do as he was
requested. "But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen
vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the
children of Israel: for I will shew him how great things he must suffer
for my name's sake." (Acts ix. 15, 16.)
The Lord has now settled all disputes between the followers of Peter
and Paul, and the office of each is settled and defined. Under such a
judgment, pronounced by God himself, no wonder the influence of Paul
ceased to be felt in the latter part of the second century, and Peter
proportionally increased in weight and authority. This attempt to put up
Peter and put down Paul, determines the date of the Acts, and fixes
it somewhere between A.D. 150 and A.D. 170, a period in the century
prolific of spurious writings. It may be called the Petrine age of
Christianity.
When Paul made his defence before the Jews at Jerusalem, and explained
to them the mode of his conversion, it would be dangerous, or at least
suspicious, to leave out the story of Cornelius; but as it differed so
much from the one he gives in second Corinthians, it was necessary to
omit the one given in the epistle entirely. But the fraud is easily
detected. The account as given in the Acts, to the sixth verse
inclusive, is as it was doubtless delivered by Paul; but from this
point the story diverges from the one given by himself, and is a sheer
fabrication. "And it came to pass, that, as I made my journey, and was
come nigh unto Damascus about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a
great. light round about me." (Acts xxii. 6.) Then according to Paul's
account, given in his letter to the Corinthians, he was caught up to the
third heaven, and there heard unspeakable words which it was not lawful
for man to utter. What transpired between God and Paul, all took place
in heaven, where no man could bear witness. The account in the Acts,
which commences in the seventh verse, says that after the light shone
from heaven, Paul fell to the ground, and did not ascend to heaven, but
was led by the same light to Damascus. This version is to let in the
story of Ananias. He could not bear witness to what passed between the
Lord and Paul in the third heaven, but he might if the scene was laid
on the earth. Besides, what passed between the Lord and Paul the latter
does not pretend to state, for the words he heard were unspeakable and
not lawful for man to utter. There is nothing in the story in the Acts
that is unspeakable or unlawful to be repeated, unless it is to be
regarded as a piece of blasphemy.
Had Paul told the story as given in the Acts in his defence, there was
nothing in it to arouse the Jews to such a pitch of madness as to cause
them to insist that he should be put to death. There was more in it to
provoke a sneer than to excite anger. The scene in Jerusalem, when Paul
was compelled to make his defence, was in A.D. 58, and he could have
appealed to Ananias, who in the course of nature might still be living,
and others, if the story was true. It was not the story in the Acts
that incensed the Jews. When Paul claimed he was taken up to heaven, and
there met the Lord and talked to him face to face, he had reached,
in the minds of his hearers, a point in blasphemy that drove them to
frenzy, so that they exclaimed: "Away with such a fellow from the earth:
for it is not fit that he should live." The Jews listened to Stephen
with patience until he exclaimed, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and
the Son of man standing at the right hand of God," when they could stand
it no longer, and ran upon him with one accord and stoned him to
death. It is clear that Paul's defence, made before the Jews, of his
conversion, is omitted, and the story of Ananias substituted, to aid the
enemies of Paul in placing Peter over him.
When we find the same story variously stated by Paul, and in the Acts,
there should be no hesitation in choosing between the two. The Acts,
like the works of the early fathers, bears so many marks of forgeries,
to suit the emergencies and wants of the day, that very little contained
in either is of any historic value. The epistles of Paul had obtained
a large circulation before the time when the men of the second century
inaugurated an era of forgeries, and long before the Acts were in
existence; so that the forgers were compelled to exercise great caution
when they came to deal with the epistles, and only ventured to insert
passages into the genuine writings to give the sanction of his name to
the doctrines of the Alexandrian or Johannean school, or some dogma of
the day. Such passages are scattered all through the epistles, but
we can easily point them out, for they are doctrinal and exceedingly
pointed.
Peter disappears at the end of the twelfth chapter; but enough has been
done to make him chief among the Apostles, and claim for him a spiritual
supremacy in all matters which relate to the church. John, afterwards
the great light of Asia, only plays the part of an esquire to Peter, his
lord and superior. They are often together, but John is not suffered to
speak. It was designed that John, who was to take Asia in charge, should
stand next to Peter; but the writer, by imposing silence on him on
all occasions, took care that the supremacy of Peter was not put in
jeopardy. The preaching of Philip in Samaria was a device to show that
Peter and John were superior to the rest of the Apostles in their power
to confer the Holy Ghost. Philip made many converts, both men and women,
and he baptized them--but his baptism was not sufficient. "Now when the
Apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the
word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John. They laid their hands
on them, and they received the Holy Ghost."--Acts viii. 14, 17.
According to Paul, and this is made clear by the quarrels between him
and Peter, as related in the epistles, the latter was tenacious to the
last for the Jewish rite of circumcision, and we have no evidence, and
no reason to believe, that he ever gave it up. A sectarian Jew would
never answer to be the head and founder of a Catholic church. The
sectarian character of Peter must be got rid of, and we see studied
efforts in the Acts to do so. We have seen that Peter, in the first
words he addressed to Cornelius, took the opportunity to declare that he
believed in the doctrine that God was no respecter of persons. But this
was not enough, in the opinion of the writer of the Acts, or at least
the first half, and to make Peter's emancipation from his old Jewish
opinions more conspicuous, and enable him to explain how it happened
that the change was brought about, the vision of Peter on the house-top
is produced. He went up upon the house-top to pray, about the sixth
hour, and became very hungry; but while they were preparing something
for him to eat, he had a trance, "And saw heaven opened, and a certain
vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the
four corners, and let down to the earth: wherein were all manner of
four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things,
and fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter, kill
and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten anything
that is common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him again the second
time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. This was done
thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven."
The command of the Lord to Peter to eat, was a command to give up his
Jewish views and notions; for that all flesh was alike, and equally
proper to be taken on an empty stomach. Peter was at a loss to
understand the vision, and while he was revolving the subject in
his mind, Cornelius and his party came to be instructed by him, in
accordance with the directions of the Lord. When Cornelius, who was
of the Gentiles, made at known the object of his visit, Peter at once
understood the import of the vision, and exclaimed, "Of a truth I
perceive that God is no respecter of persons," and that the gospel of
Christ is to supply the spiritual wants of all nations, as the beasts
and fowls are to furnish food for the hungry.
The conversion of Peter receives further importance and prominence
from the defence he is compelled to make before the brethren, for his
disregard of the rite of circumcision in the baptism of Cornelius. Peter
makes a speech, in which he declares that he was commanded by God, not
less than three times, to give up his old Jewish notions; and no sooner
was the command given than Cornelius, a Gentile, who was sent to him by
God, made his appearance. The command from God to Peter, and the arrival
of the centurion, who was instructed by the Lord to come to him, left
him no choice in the matter, and that he baptized the Gentile, in
obedience to the commands of the Lord. The reason was sufficient. "When
they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God,
saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto
life." (Acts. xi. 18.) The wall between Jew and Gentile is now broken
down, and Peter a fit subject for the head of a universal or catholic
church.
It seems that the person who put the speech into the mouth of Peter,
renouncing circumcision, was not satisfied with what he said at the
time. Something had been omitted or overlooked. Peter had shed his
Jewish skin, but the Lord had not given him a commission to preach
the gospel to all nations, and this he must have to be the head of a
universal church. At the council held at Jerusalem by the Apostles
to settle the question of circumcision, Peter, according to the Acts,
seizes the opportunity to supply the omission: "And when there had been
much disputing, Peter rose up and said unto them, Men and brethren,
ye know how that a good while ago, God made choice among us, that
the Gentiles, by _my mouth_, should hear the word of the gospel, and
believe." (Acts xv. 7.) Now there was no occasion for Peter to make this
claim or assertion, for it had nothing to do with the subject before
the council, and was not true. The account which Paul gives of what took
place at the council is quite different, contradictory, and no doubt
true. He says, when he stated before the council the trouble and
vexations which were occasioned by this rite, and reasons why it should
not be forced on the Gentiles, that Peter, James, and John agreed with
him--gave him the right hand of fellowship, and then entered into a
compact that he should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised.
(Gal. ii.)
This agreement was never departed from; but not so with regard to
circumcision. That Peter, James, and all the disciples disregarded the
order of the Council in regard to that subject, is rendered clear by
their subsequent conduct. After that, as much as two years, for the
Council was held in A.D. 49 or A.D. 50, and the epistle to the Galatians
was written in A. D. 52, Peter went to Antioch, where he found Paul.
He ate with the uncircumcised until some Jewish converts came from
Jerusalem at the instance of James, who found fault with his course.
Peter, it seems, then changed front and stood up for circumcision. "I
withstood him to the face," says Paul, for he was wrong. A discussion
springs up. Paul claimed that men were not to be saved through old rites
and ceremonies, nor by-works, but by faith. At this time, neither James
nor Peter had given up their contracted notions on the Jewish rite.
Nor had Peter as late as A. D. 57, twenty-four years after the death of
Christ. Of the four parties which disturbed the peace of the church at
Corinth at the time of Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, which
was written in A. D. 57, the party of _Cephas_ was one. Peter was at the
head of a party which held out for circumcision, seven years after the
council at Jerusalem; and if he had not given it up then, when he was
fifty-seven years old, there is no reason to believe he did after that.
Nothing gave the men in the second century who undertook to put Peter
at the head of a universal church so much trouble as this thing of
circumcision, which we can readily detect by the pains and labors they
have taken to free him from it. But the stain will not wash out.
The story told in the Acts about the way in which Peter was
disenthralled from his narrow Jewish notions, is wholly inconsistent
with the subsequent history of the church at Jerusalem. After the
Lord had taken so much pains to prove to the disciples that a new
dispensation had commenced, and the wall between the Jews and Gentiles
was broken down, there was no reason why they should not all dispense
with the practice of circumcision. But they never did. The fifteen first
Bishops of Jerusalem, commencing with James and including Judas, were
all circumcised Jews. (Eus., Ex. 77., B., iv. ch. v. Sulpicius Severus,
vol. 11-31.) With the twelve disciples, jealousy of Paul, who fought
this Jewish practice to the last, seemed to be the most active feeling
of their natures, and we seldom hear of them unless they were dogging
his footsteps, and stirring up the Jews against him. It was through
their intrigues that the doors of the synagogue were slammed in his face
wherever he went.
The doctrine of ordination, through which that deposit of divine riches
which Irenaeus says Christ left with the Apostles is made to flow in an
uninterrupted current through all time, is conspicuously presented in
the Acts. When Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch, and about to start
for the West, on a mission to preach to the Gentiles, the Lord said,
"Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called
them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them,
they sent them away." (Acts xiii. 2, 3.) Nothing could impose so great a
humiliation as this upon Paul. The Lord again interferes and assigns him
to a special duty, and to make this humiliation complete, he is ordered
to receive his commission at the hands of the Apostles. Who laid their
hands on Barnabas and Paul, is not stated, nor is it of any importance,
as the object of the statement is to make it apparent that the latter,
the great light of the Gentiles, submitted to the rite of ordination by
the imposition of hands, administered by some one of the Apostles.
Will any one believe this story to be true? If he does, he does not
understand the character of Paul. There is nothing he would resent with
so much feeling, as he would such an admission on his part that he was
less than an Apostle. When it was claimed he was not, his soul took
fire, and in his address to the Galatians, in the first chapter, he
delivers himself in this defiant strain: "_Paul, an Apostle, (not of
men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised
him from the dead_.) But when it pleased God, who separated me from my
mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that
I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with
flesh and blood: Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were
Apostles before me." (Gal. i. I, 15, 16, 17.) Is this the Paul who
patiently submits to receive his commission from an Apostle to preach
the doctrines of Christ to the nations of the earth at Antioch, when he
is about to commence his labors?
It is not enough that Paul should submit to receive the Holy Ghost at
the hands of the Apostle, and in this way be authorized to preach the
gospel; but he gives the ordinance his full sanction by conferring
ordination on others. "And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at
Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts, came to Ephesus;
and finding certain disciples, he said unto them, Have ye received the
Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so
much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. And when Paul had laid
his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with
tongues, and prophesied." (Acts xix. 1, 2, 6.) No stronger proof could
be given that the followers of Paul were opposed to the Episcopacy
and the doctrine of succession and ordination, and contended against
a government by Bishops with zeal to the last, than the labored and
frequent efforts that are made to show that he himself gave his sanction
to the order.
For Paul's persistence in claiming a human origin for Christ, there
was a studied effort in the second century to destroy his claims as an
Apostle; but after his epistles had undergone alterations so as to
make Christ the Son of God in the sense of the Catholics of the second
century, he was restored to favor, and his powers wonderfully magnified.
He is now able to work miracles, and his power to heal diseases is such,
that whatever comes in contact with his person, is so filled or imbued
with holy energy, that its curative properties are sufficient to put
death at defiance.
It is clear that the Acts of the Apostles is not the work of one
century, but of two. The real itinerary of Paul commences in the
thirteenth chapter, and from this to the end of the Acts, we can trace
his footsteps in his various journeys among the churches, until he
finally enters the gates of Rome, in the spring of A.D. 61.