The whole company of envoys, both Barnabas and Paul, the original
messengers of the Syrian church, and Jude and Silas, the deputies
of the apostolic college, presented the complete results of the
Jerusalem consultation before a fall meeting of the whole congregation
of believers at Antioch, and read the epistle of the council to them.
The sage and happy exhortations which it contained were not only
respectfully but joyfully received; and in addition to the comfort
of these, _the first written words of Christian inspiration_, the two
envoys, Jude and Silas, also discoursed to the church, commenting at
more length on the apostolic message of which they were the bearers,
and confirmed their hearers in the faith. After remaining there for
some time, Jude bade them farewell, and returned to his apostolic
associates; but Silas was so much pleased with the opportunities thus
afforded him of doing good among the Gentiles, of whom he himself
also was one, as his name shows,――that he stayed in Antioch after the
departure of Jude, and labored along with Paul and Barnabas, teaching
and preaching the word of the Lord, with many others also. This is
commonly understood to be the time of Paul’s dissension with Peter, as
mentioned in the epistle to the Galatians. The circumstances of this
disagreeable occurrence have already been narrated and commented on,
in the Life of Peter,――nor need anything additional be presented here
in relation to Paul, except the observation, that his dispute with
the chief apostle, and his harsh censure of his conduct, are very much
in accordance with the impressions of his character, given in other
passages of his life. He was evidently a man of violent and hasty
passions; and is uniformly represented, both by his historian and by
himself, as exceedingly bitter and harsh in his denunciations of all
who differed from him on practical or speculative points, both before
and after his calling to the apostleship; and this trait is manifested
on such a variety of occasions, as to be very justly considered an
inseparable peculiarity of his natural disposition and temperament.
Doubtless there are many to whom it seems very strange, that the
Apostle Paul should ever be spoken of as having been actually and truly
angry, or ever having made an error in his conduct after his conversion;
but there are instances enough to show that it was not a mere modest
injustice to himself for him to tell the Lystran idolaters that he was
a man of like passions with them,――but a plain matter of fact, made
evident not only by his own noble and frank confession, but by many
unfortunate instances throughout his recorded life. Yet there are a
great many Protestants, who have been in the habit of making such a
kind of idol or demi-god out of Paul, that they are as little prepared
as the Lystrans to appreciate the human imperfections of his character;
and if Paul himself could at this moment be made fully sensible of the
dumb idolatrous reverence with which many of his modern and enlightened
adorers regard him, he would be very apt to burst out in the same
earnest and grieved tone, in which he checked the similar folly of
the Lystrans,――“Sirs! why do ye these things? I also am a man of like
passions with yourselves.”――“The spirit of divine truth which actuated
me, and guided me in the way of light, by which I led others to
life eternal, still did not make me anything more than a man,――a man
in moral as in bodily weakness, nor exempt from liabilities to the
accidents of passion, any more than to the pains of mortal disease. The
Spirit that guided my pen in the record of eternal truth, and my tongue
in the preaching of the word of salvation, did not exalt me above the
errors, the failings and distresses of mortality; and I was still all
my lifetime subject to the bondage of sin, groaning under that body
of death, and longing for the day when I should pass away from the
frailties and distresses of earth, to that state of being which alone
is wholly sinless and pure.”
“From the opposition to St. Peter, which they suppose to be
before the Council at Jerusalem, some would have it, that this
Epistle to the Galatians was written before that Council; as
if what was done before the Council could not be mentioned in a
letter written after the Council. They also contend, that this
journey, mentioned here by St. Paul, was not that wherein he
and Barnabas went up to that Council to Jerusalem, but that
mentioned Acts xi. 30; but this with as little ground as the
former. The strongest reason they bring, is, that if this
journey had been to the Council, and this letter after that
Council, St. Paul would not certainly have omitted to have
mentioned to the Galatians that decree. To which it is answered,
1. The mention of it was superfluous; for they had it already,
see Acts xvi. 4. 2. The mention of it was impertinent to the
design of St. Paul’s narrative here. For it is plain, that his
aim, in what he relates here of himself, and his past actions,
is to shew, that having received the gospel from Christ by
immediate revelation, he had all along preached that, and
nothing but that, everywhere; so that he could not be supposed
to have preached circumcision, or by his carriage, to have shewn
any subjection to the law; all the whole narrative following
being to make good what he says, ♦chap. i. 11, ‘that the gospel
which he preached was not accommodated to the humoring of men;
nor did he seek to please the Jews (who were the men here meant)
in what he taught.’ Taking this to be his aim, we shall find the
whole account he gives of himself, from that verse 11 of chap.
i., to the end of the second chapter, to be very ♠clear and
easy, and very proper to invalidate the report of his preaching
circumcision.” (Locke’s Paraphrase.)
♦ “ehap.” replaced with “chap.”
♠ “ctear” replaced with “clear”
“I conceive that this happened at the time here stated, because
Paul intimates in Galatians ii. 11, that he was in Antioch when
Peter came there; and Peter had never been to Antioch before
Paul was in that city after the Council of Jerusalem; and
besides the dissension between Paul and Barnabas, who was the
intimate friend of Peter, appears to have originated here.”
Pearson’s Annales Paul. (A. D. 50.)
A fine exhibition of a quibbling, wire-drawn argument, may be
found in Baronius, (Annales, 51,) who is here put to his wits’
end to reconcile the blunt, “round, unvarnished tale,” in Paul’s
own account, (in Galatians ii. 11‒14,) with the papistical
absurdity of the moral infallibility of the apostles. He lays
out an argument of five heavy folio pages to prove that, though
Paul quarreled thus with Peter, yet neither of them was in the
slightest degree to blame, &c. But the folly of explaining away
the Scriptures in this manner, is not confined wholly to the
bigoted, hireling historian of papal Rome; some of the boldest
of protestants have, in the same manner, attempted to reconcile
the statement of Paul with the vulgar notions of apostolic
infallibility. Witsius (Vita Pauli, iv. 12,) expends a paragraph
to show that neither of them was to blame; but following the
usual course of anti-papist writers, he represents the great
protestant idol, Paul, in altogether the most advantageous
light, according to the perfectly proverbial peculiarity of
the opponents of the church of Rome, who, in their apostolic
distinctions, uniformly “rob Peter to pay Paul.”