;

force it, they conducted him to the Areopagus, or the chief court of justice. Here then our venerable teacher is summoned in the most solemn manner, to maintain and to defend the divinity of Jesus, if so be indeed he taught that doctrine or to repel the accusation brought against him as groundless and unjust. And it is curious to observe which alternative Paul thought it proper to choose. "And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent, because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world BY THAT MAN whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead." Ver. 31, 32.

Now if we examine the contents of this passage, it will appear to us to have been directly levelled against the serious charge of acting contrary to the laws in introducing a new God. Because he holds forth Jesus, the person raised from the dead, as a man; declaring that he rose not by virtue of his own power, but by the power of God, and that in coming again to raise the dead, and to pass upon mankind a final decision, he will not act with an authority of his own, but is to be only an instrument in the hands, and subordinate to the sovereignty of God. Accordingly we find that the accusation being thus clearly refuted, our illustrious Apostle was dismissed.

"And a certain Jew, named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught accu

rately the things of the Lord, knowing only his baptism by John. And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue; whom when Aquila and Priscilla heard, they took him unto them and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly. And when he was disposed to pass into Achaia, the brethren wrote exhorting the disciples to receive him, who when he was come, helped them much which had believed through grace. For he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, shewing by the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ." Acts xviii. 24...

This is one of those many passages in the New Testament, the full import of which cannot well be discerned or illustrated by mere philological learning, but requires a knowledge of the leading facts which the writer had before him, in order to be fully comprehended. The impostors who rose in the school of the Baptist maintained, in opposition to the Apostles, that the divinity dwelling in Jesus, and not Jesus himself, constituted the Christ, and that a strict adherence to the Levitical code formed the true grounds of acceptance with God. In professing these doctrines, they widely deviated from John their Master, who preached the necessity of repentance and reformation as the means of escaping the wrath to come, and bore an unequivocal testimony to Jesus as the coming Saviour Apollos, however, refused to adopt the innovations of the apostate disciples, but adhered strictly to the things which John had taught; and this is the precise idea, which the historian inculcates, when he says that Apollos accurately taught the things

of the Lord, knowing only his baptism by

John.

The information which John communicated was of course very defective, and came far short of that knowledge of the divine will, which through Christ the Apostles afterwards attained. Under this defect Apollos must have laboured, while he had not yet received any instruction in the college of Nazareth. Fortunately for him, and for the interests of the Gospel, his deficiency was supplied on the present occasion. Aquila and Priscilla, having heard him, took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of the Lord more perfectly.

Again, the disciples of John, even after they were compelled to acknowledge the Messiah in the person of Jesus, insisted on ritual obser vances as the means of being saved. They therefore, with the Scribes and Pharisees, who nominally embraced the Gospel, were said to be believers through the works of the law. On the contrary, the Apostles, with their faithful followers, pleaded, as the medium of salvation, the privilege of that exemption from all ceremonial observances, conferred upon them by an efficient faith in Jesus. For this reason, they are here and elsewhere, in contradistinction to their false brethren, styled "Believers through grace or favour." Apollos, being a man of integrity, as well as of learning, and now fully instructed in the Christian doctrine, sided of course with the apostolic teachers against his former fellow disciples, the Gnostic deceivers. And it is said of him, that, after passing over into Achaia, he helped them much who believed

through favour. The other main ground, in which he supported the apostolic teachers, in opposition to the impostors, was that Jesus, and not a celestial being within him, was the Christ. "With firmness he refuted the Jews, and that in public, demonstrating from the scriptures that the Christ was JESUS.'

We have already seen (Eccles. Resear. p. 229) how Josephus and Luke speak of the prevalence of the Gospel at Antioch. What the latter has added in the sequel of his narrative, is worthy of our notice. "Now some who came down from Judea (meaning to Antioch) were teaching the brethren, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved. As therefore Paul and Barnabas differed with them in opinion, and could not settle the dispute, the brethren determined that Paul and Barnabas, with some of their number, should go up to Jerusalem, to the Apostles and elders, about this question." Acts xv. 1.

The question here alluded to was of supreme importance, namely, Whether salvation was to be attained by the ceremonies of the law, which being performed by the body, are often styled the works of the law, or by the cultivation of those divine, social, and personal virtues, resulting from a firm faith in a life to come through the resurrection of Jesus: which belief in contradistinction to the works of the law, is sometimes called the faith (is), and at other times the favour (xags). The exact meaning of these terms, as used by the Apostles, is to be ascertained by considering what it was which the pretended converts, with whom they dis

puted, urged as the means of being saved. Now, it is quite certain, that the latter insisted on the rite of circumcision, and other ceremonial observances, as the grounds of salvation. The former then must have maintained, that a gracious exemption from those observances, or such an efficacious belief in the Gospel as superseded the use of them, formed those grounds. How different from this is the sense, which the orthodox Christians in modern days have connected with these terms! Because the Apostles rejected the mere performance of external ordi-, nance under the phrase works of the law, as being not the true medium of acceptance with God, the monstrous conclusion has hence been drawn, that they rejected the moral virtues as the means of attaining to this end. In the room of these virtues, as no other than shining guilt, is substituted the necessity of believing some tenets which none can comprehend, and of receiving some divine endowment called grace or spiritual seed, which none can command, but which depends upon the arbitrary will and favour of the Almighty.

When Paul and Barnabas arrived in Jerusalem, and referred the dispute to the arbitration of the Apostles, Peter rose and sanctioned their opinion in a short speech, which, when fully comprehended, will appear full of good sense and conclusive reasoning. First, he argues that the Holy Spirit having descended upon those Gentiles whom he had converted, was a proof that God did not consider the rite of circumcision as necessary. Acts xv. 8. His next argument against circumcision is that it affected only