Marcion, is by consulting the inspiration of true prophecy, which, always existing in the world, was consummated in Christ, and passing on to his representatives the apostles, ultimately became vested in the episcopal leaders of the Catholic church.

The Paulinism of the second century came round in most of its forms to the same practical issue; the preservation of a continuously divine economy by acknowledging unity in diversity,' and the termination of speculative controversies by means of episcopal organization. The idea of an internal change, of a transition from the beggarly "elements" of a waning Judaism to the "perfection" of the religion of Christ, is assumed as a completed fact in the Epistle of Barnabas, where the Mosaic ceremonies are described as having been from the first intended typically, to have been originally devised to foreshadow a specifically Christian meaning. The Epistle to Diognetus, the Kerugma Petrou, contain many gnostic ideas; the "Colossians" and "Ephesians" combine affinities of this kind with an emphatic advocacy of ecclesiastical unity. The first Epistle ascribed to John2 denounces the docetic heresies of the second century; and the so-called "Pastoral letters" especially shew how Pauline theology, originally the basis of free Christian thought, began, in its progress towards hierarchical Catholicism, to confront and to denounce its gnostic result. But the rude force of authority was not the only or the best way of meeting the wayward tendencies of cultivated thought. There remained the more delicate task of refuting it by conceding its truest postulates, and by presenting in an unimpeachable form all that

1 Comp. Heb. i. 1.

2 Ch. ii. 19, iv. 2.

3 See 1 Tim. vi. 20, where Marcion's "Antitheses" are alluded to. In these letters an emphatic and repeated insistance on "good works" is superadded to the Pauline definition of faith (2 Tim. i. 9; Titus iii. 5); and the writer controverts dualism under all its assumed forms; whether in Scripture (2 Tim. iii. 16), in practical life (1 Tim. iv. 3, 4; v. 23), or in regard to any fundamental differences in human nature, considered as hylic, psychic, etc., 1 Tim. ii. 4, iv. 10; Titus ii. 11.

it contained that was really suited for general acceptance. This, the appropriate task of Asiatic theology, is performed by the hand of a master in the fourth gospel; a gospel which, for many cogent reasons it is impossible to receive as apostolic, and which antiquity significantly designates as "Pneumatic," or, in other words, as freely applying scriptural and traditional data to embody a spiritual idea.

The Acts of the Apostles.

The minutiae of evidence forming the basis of these inferences, spreading as they do through many elaborate volumes, can here of course be but briefly stated. The chief obstacle to the historical comprehension of Christianity is the fragmentary character and unchronological misplacement of its literature; obscurities vanish when the proper arrangement is restored, each document falling naturally into intelligible sequence. The book first confronting us in this respect is the "Acts of the Apostles." Here the above stated view is seemingly contradicted. St. Paul appears from the first in cordial co-operation with the older apostles; antagonism comes only from Jews or Greeks, and all traces of theological disagreement among Christians are carefully suppressed. But we must ask, is the book really or only quasi-historical; a narrative of events, or only a theological diatribe in narrative form? Does it agree with St. Paul's own authentic declarations; and if not, which is the more entitled to credit? For we are in fact reduced to the alternative of disbelieving the Acts, or of discrediting the solemn asseverations of the apostle. His object in "Galatians" is to assert the absolute originality and independence of his Gentile mission.

Clem. Alex. in Euseb., H.E., 6, 14. Mr. A. S. Farrer, in his Bampton Lectures for 1862, p. 392, inaccurately states that, according to the Tübingen School, the gospel called after St. John is a "treatise of Alexandrian philosophy."-I may take the opportunity of saying that at p. 451 of the abovenamed work Mr. Farrer attributes to me an "absurd" opinion about mediation, which I not only do not recognise as mine, but am unable even to understand.

For this purpose he enumerates all the occasions of encountering his apostolic predecessors; expressly declaring that his authorization was not from man, but from the revelation of Jesus Christ; that immediately after his conversion he conferred not with flesh and blood, nor consulted the apostles in Jerusalem, but that he went into Arabia and returned to Damascus; that after three years he went to Jerusalem to visit Peter, remaining with him only a fortnight; thence returning to Syria and Cilicia, and continuing unknown except by hearsay to the Christians in Judæa. The Acts contradict this statement in every particular. Here it is intimated that St. Paul's mission was originally Jewish as well as Gentile; that very soon after his conversion ("μepai tives” or "ikavai"),1 after some hesitation and distrust on the part of the general apostolic body, who as yet had not it seems had time to convince themselves as to his character and sincerity, he entered into close intimacy and correspondence with them; preaching with their concurrence "to the Jews" in Jerusalem and throughout Judæa. Of this hesitation or timidity in the apostles his own account is entirely silent. There is no general interview or intimacy, no public preaching before the Judæans or Hellenists; and assuredly he could not have remained personally unknown to the Judæan Christians after making himself so deliberately and prominently conspicuous. The circumstances of the second journey mentioned in Galatians are as irreconcileable as the first. Of the three subsequent journeys mentioned in Acts, to which that of Galatians ch. ii. may possibly be referred, that of ch. xi. 30 is excluded, not merely by an entire difference of time and circumstances, but especially by this, that in the inter

1 Acts ix. 19, 23.

2 Ch. ix. 29, xxvi. 20.

3 The journey of the 11th chapter being synchronous with the death of Agrippa, i.e., only eight to ten years, not seventeen, after St. Paul's

conversion.

view related in Acts xv.,-where the motives and circumstances are generally similar,—no allusion whatever occurs to any prior interview or consideration of the same subjects. Nor does the later journey of Acts xviii. 22 tally with that in question; for in the same way that Acts xv. excludes an earlier decision of the same kind, Galatians ii. is inconsistent with any such earlier decision as that of Acts xv.; the apostle was bound to enumerate in Galatians all the previous journeys connected with the subject of his ministry; and could not have entertained the apprehensions he there expresses had the matter at issue been previously discussed and settled. It follows that Galatians ii. describes the circumstances ostensibly alluded to in Acts xv., the same conditional recognition of Gentile by Jewish Christianity. But how different and entirely irreconcileable the two accounts! In one, a private conference between St. Paul and the apostolic "pillars" or leaders, suggested by a revelation; in the other, a public official mission from the church of Antioch. In one, Paul negotiating as principal without any mention of delegation; in the other, acting in the secondary character of a mere executive commissioner carrying out a public decree (xvi. 4); a decree too based upon a compromise. contradictory to his fundamental principle; consultation and deliberation on a matter which, in the "Galatians," he treats as already peremptorily settled by his own authority (v. 2)! The contest about Titus (implied in the word "vaуkaσon"), the whole of the quarrel at Antioch, are carefully suppressed; the "ovdev TрoσaveOEVTO" of Galatians is directly contradicted; and it is observable that St. Paul not only omits to mention the decree when, had it existed, it would have been his obvious policy to appeal to it, but gives instructions of an entirely

1 Gal. ii. 2.

2 As when an attempt was made to force circumcision upon the Galatians (Gal. v.).

different and contradictory kind. In Galatians St. Paul at once proceeds with his avocations in Syria and Cilicia; in Acts he is forwarded by sea to Tarsus, whence, after the first Gentile conversions at Antioch had already been effected by certain Cypriots and Cyrenians (xi. 20), and approved by Barnabas as representing the Jerusalem authorities, he who boasted of taking no instruction or commission whatever from man, and who thought himself "not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles," is sent for as a help and ultimately installed as a subordinate in the Gentile mission by certain obscure individuals of the church at Antioch (Acts xiii. 1)! Only the inveterate habit of assuming that everything in the Bible must necessarily agree, without any attention to the fact of agreement, can make us blind to such palpable inconsistencies. In Acts the peculiar doctrines of St. Paul are scarcely alluded to. His advocacy is limited, evidently with design, to righteousness and temperance, the resurrection and the judgment,— "repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus" (xx. 21); in short, to a general Christian monotheism, quite irrespective of his peculiar opinions, and which might have been embraced by any liberal Jew. The only speech in which he is made to allude at all to the doctrine of justification, that at Pisidian Antioch, (ch. xiii. 39) distorts its meaning, as if, instead of the sole means of salvation, it were only a superadded and collateral one, just as it is in fact represented in the Epistle of James (ch. ii. 22). Indeed, the character and conduct of St. Paul are most unworthily misrepresented throughout. What pains to make him appear as a scrupulous legalist! What repeated assurances as to his orthodox Pharisaic sentiments! What care in emphasising his early persecutions of Christianity, and his repeated journeys to Jerusalem, undertaken either to consult the central authorities, or else interrupting his most important mis1 As in the instance of idol meats, 1 Cor. viii. 4, 9.