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Not Paul, But Jesus
What was he to die for? By whose hands was he to die? By no danger, since he had ceased to be their declared persecutor, had any Christians, in their character of Christians, whether disciples or preachers, then, or at any time, been menaced;53 of no such danger, at any rate, is any, the slightest, intimation ever to be found: if any danger awaited him, it was by himself, by his own restless and insatiable ambition, by his own overbearing and ungovernable temper, that it was created. Had he but kept to his agreement; had the whole of the known world, with the single exception of Judea, been wide enough for him: no danger would have awaited him: – he and Jerusalem might have remained in peace.
What service that they could not, could he hope to do to the cause? For doctrine, they had nothing to do but to report the discourses; for proof, the miracles which they had witnessed. To this, what could he add? Nothing, but facts, such as we have seen, out of his own head, – or, at best, facts taken at second hand, or through any number of removes from them, – and, in an infinity of shapes and degrees, travestied in their passage.
In this account, the curious thing is – that upon the face of it, the Holy Ghost of prophet Agabus is mistaken: nothing happened in the manner mentioned by him: for, in the same chapter comes the account of what did happen, or at any rate is, by this same historian, stated as that which happened: – by no Jews is the owner of the girdle bound: dragged by the people out of the temple, – by that same people he is indeed attempted to be killed, but bound he is not: for, with his being bound, the attempt to kill him is not consistent: binding requires mastery, and a certain length of time, which killing does not: a single blow from a stone may suffice for it.
As to the Jews delivering him unto the hands of the Gentiles, – it is by the Gentiles that he is delivered out of the hands of the Jews: of the Jews, the endeavour was – to deprive him of his life; of the Gentiles, to save it.
SECTION 6.
PLAN OF THE APOSTLES FOR RIDDING THEMSELVES OF PAUL
In this important contest, the Holy Ghost of Agabus was predestinated to yield to the irresistible power of Paul's Lord Jesus. He made his entry into Jerusalem, Acts 21:17, and the very next day commenced the storm, by which, after having been on the point of perishing, he was driven, at last, as far as from Jerusalem to Rome, but the particulars of which belong not to the present purpose.
What is to the present purpose, however, is the company, which, upon this occasion, he saw. James, it may be remembered, was one of the three Apostles – out of the whole number, the only three who, on the occasion of the partition treaty, could be prevailed upon to give him the right hand of fellowship. Into the house of this James he entered: and there what he saw was an assembly, met together for the purpose, of giving him the advice, of which more particular mention will be made in its place. It was – to clear himself of the charge, – a charge made against him by the Jewish converts, – of teaching all the Jews, which are among the Gentiles, to forsake Moses, and of inculcating that doctrine by his own example, Acts 21:20-24. Well! at this assembly who were present? Answer – the Elders – all of them: of the Apostles with the single exception of James, at whose house it was held, not one: not even John, – not even Peter: – the two other Apostles, by whom on their part, the treaty had been entered into: – Peter, the chief of the Apostles; – John "the disciple," John 19:26; 20:2; 21:7-20, whom Jesus loved. The nerves of James it appears, from other tokens besides this, were of a stronger texture than those of either of these his two colleagues; he alone stood the brunt. As for Peter, he had been so "withstood to his face" by Paul on the occasion of his first visit, that he had no stomach to be so withstood a second time.
James, it may be remembered, was the Apostle, at whose motion, against the opinion and speech of Peter, the resolution insisting upon certain Jewish observances, on the part of heathen converts to the Church, was carried.
Here then, in support of the proposition maintained, by James, – here, was an assembly of the rulers of the Church convened: the Elders – the elected coadjutors of the Apostles all of them present: of the Apostles themselves, not one: James excepted, whose presence, it is evident, could not, on this occasion, be dispensed with. Of this assembly, the object, and sole object, was – the insisting upon Paul's taking, for the sake of the peace of the Church, a certain measure. Now, the measure thus insisted upon, what was it? The clearing himself of a certain charge then mentioned. And this charge, what was it? A charge – of which, consistently with truth, – of which without such direct falsehood, as if committed would be notorious, – he could not clear himself. In this case, one of two things would absolutely be the result. Either he would be rash enough to commit the falsehood, – in which case his reputation and power of disturbing the peace of the Church would be at an end; or, shrinking from the summons, he would virtually confess himself guilty: in which case likewise, he would find his situation, in the midst of an universally adverse multitude, no longer tenable.
For this clearance, a ceremony was prescribed to him: – a ceremony, the effect of which was – to declare, in a manner, beyond all comparison, more solemn and deliberate than that of anything which is commonly understood by the word oath, – that he had not done anything, of that which he stood charged with having done, and which it could not but be generally known that he had done. Witness those Epistles of his, which in another place we shall see, Ch. 12: – Epistles in which he will be seen, so frequently, and upon such a variety of occasions, and in such a variety of language, not only proclaiming the needlessness of circumcision – its uselessness to salvation, – but, in a word, on all points making war upon Moses.
No course was so rash, that Paul would shrink from it, no ceremony so awful, or so public that Paul would fear to profane it. Of the asseveration, to which he was called upon to give, in an extraordinary form, the sanction of an oath, the purport was universally notorious: the falsity, no less so: the ceremony, a solemnity on which the powers of sacerdotal ingenuity had been exhausted, in the endeavour to render is efficaciously impressive. Place of performance, the most sacred among the sacred: act of entrance, universally public, purpose universally notorious; operations, whatever they were, inscrutably concealed from vulgar eyes: person of the principal actor occasionally visible, but at an awful elevation: time, requisite for accomplishment, Acts 21:27, not less than seven days: the whole ceremony, effectually secured against frequent profanation, by "charges" too heavy to be borne by the united power of four ordinary purses.54 With all the ingredients of the most finished perjury in his breast, – perfect consciousness, fixed intentionality, predetermined perseverance, and full view of the sanction about to be violated, – we shall see him entering upon the task, and persevering in it. While the long drama was thus acting in the consecrated theatre, the mind of the multitude was accumulating heat without doors. The seven days necessary, were as yet unaccomplished, when indignation could hold no longer: they burst into the sacred edifice, dragged him out, and were upon the point of putting him to death, when the interference of a Roman officer saved him, and became the first link in that chain of events, which terminated in his visit to Rome, and belongs not to this place.
Thus much, in order to have the clearer view of the plan of the Apostles, and of the grounds of it, from which will be seen the unexceptionableness of it, it seemed necessary for us here to anticipate. But such rashness, with the result that followed – the Apostles, in their situation, how could they have anticipated it?
Baffled, in their former endeavours to keep the invader from entering the holy city – that holy city, with the peace of which his presence was so incompatible, such was the course which they devised and embraced from driving him out of it. For the carrying of this measure into effect, a general assembly of the governing body of the Church was necessary. At this assembly had no Apostle been present, it could not, in the eyes of the Church at large, have been what it was necessary it should appear to be. Though, of the whole number of the Apostles, no more than one was present, – yet, his being the house at which it was held, and the others, whether summoned or no, being expected of course, by the disciples at large, to be likewise present, – the Elders being likewise "all" of them present, – this attendance was deemed sufficient: as to the other Apostles – all of them but the one whose presence was thus indispensable, – abhorrence, towards the man, whose career had in their eyes commenced with murder, continued in imposture, and had recently been stained with perfidy, – rendered the meeting him face to face, a suffering too violent to be submitted to, when by any means it could be avoided.
On this occasion, the opinion, which, as we have seen, cannot but have been entertained by them, concerning Paul and his pretensions to Revelation, and to a share equal to their own in the confidence of Jesus, – must not, for a moment, be out of mind.
The whole fellowship of the Apostles, – all others, to whom, at the time, anything about the matter was known, believed his story to be, the whole of it, a pure invention. In their eyes it was a fabrication: though we, at this time of day – we, who of ourselves know nothing about it, take for granted, that it was all true.
For proving the truth of it, all we have are his own accounts of it: his own accounts, given, some of them, by himself directly: the rest ultimately, his being the only mouth from which the accounts we have seen in the Acts could have been derived. Bearing all this in mind, let us now form our judgment on the matter, and say, whether the light, in which the Apostles viewed his character and conduct, and the course pursued by them as above, was not from first to last, not only conformable to the precepts of their master, but a model of patience, forbearance, and prudence.
CHAPTER X
SECTION 1.
AT JERUSALEM, PAUL IS RECEIVED BY THE ELDERS AND JAMES, BUT BY NO OTHER APOSTLE
Spite of the opposing Holy Ghost, – spite of the Apostles, and their prophet, – there he is at Jerusalem. Now comes an incident – or say, rather, a relation – which is altogether curious.
At "Jerusalem," says the history, "the brethren received us gladly," Acts 21:17. The brethren? what brethren? the brethren, by whom Agabus, with his stage-trick, had been sent some sixty or seventy miles' journey, in the endeavour to keep him at a distance? the thousands of Jews thereupon immediately mentioned? those Jews, who, though believers in Jesus, are not the "less zealous of the law," and enraged at Saul for those breaches of it, with which he is charged?
That, by such of them, if any, by whom – by the appearance he made, with his suite, it had happened to be more or less overawed, – that by these, an appearance of gladness was assumed, seems credible enough: look for those, by whom he could have been received with real gladness – they will not, it should seem, be very easy to be found.
Not, till the next day after his arrival, do Paul and his suite present themselves to any in authority in this spiritual commonwealth. The first person, to whom, on this occasion, he presents himself, is James: that one of the Apostles, who, with the exception of Peter, is the person, and the only person, with whom Paul has, on the occasion of any of his visits, been represented as holding converse. Not with this James – not with any settled inhabitants of Jerusalem – has he had his lodging: only with Mnason,55 a man of Cyprus, whom, lest lodging should be wholly wanting, they had brought with them from Cæsarea. Of this so extensively apprehended arrival, there had been full time for ample notice: among the rulers, those, who, as well as James, chose to see him, were all present. Who were they? the elders – "all the elders." Of the Apostles, not so much as one, besides James. Let it not be said, that, under the word elders, the Apostles were meant to be included: on other occasions, on which elders are mentioned, Acts 15:4; 6:23, the Apostles are mentioned, as forming a body, distinct, as they naturally would be, – distinct from these same elders.
Salutations performed, he addresses the assembly in that strain, which was so familiar to him: boasting upon boasting, and, above all things, boasting that he does not boast: "declaring," says his historian; – declaring? what? declaring what was his business at Jerusalem? declaring what service, in his eyes the cause stood in need of, at his hands? Not he, indeed: to any such effect, declaration might not have been altogether so easy. What he declared, and that "particularly," was – what "things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry." Exactly on this, as on his last preceding visit, – when all, but himself, were speaking to the question before him – Peter on one side; after him, James on the other side – nothing, is either he, or his companion Barnabas, represented as saying, that belongs to the question; nothing, but "declaring what miracles and wonders, God had wrought among the Gentiles by them." Between what is represented, as having been said on the two occasions, – one difference, and no more than one, is visible. On the former occasion, "miracles and wonders"; on this latter occasion, no miracles no wonders: – nothing more than things. Supposing any of them particularized – neither miracles nor wonders had, it should seem, been fortunate enough to obtain credence: for that reason, it should seem, that, on this occasion, all mention of them is dropped.
Hearing of these things, what did these elders? Being things that "God," as they were informed, "had wrought," they could do no less than glorify "the Lord." Acts 21:19-20. As in Paul's Epistles, so here, in the Acts, – by the Lord, it is Jesus, who, as far as it appears, is the person, all along meant to be designated. Here, God, it may be observed, is the person, by whom everything good, that is done, is done: Jesus – the Lord Jesus – the person, who is glorified for it.
To make his boasts, was his business with them: but, to subscribe to those same boasts, was not their business with him.
Their business was – to inform him, of the storm of unpopularity, which by his audacity he had brought upon himself: to inform him of the storm, and to point out the only course, which, in their view of the matter, presented a chance for his escape from it. "Thou seest," – say they, – "thou seest how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law. And they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses; saying, that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after their customs," Acts 21:20. "What is it, therefore?" add they, "the multitude must needs come together: for they will hear that thou art come."
SECTION 2.
LOW TONE ASSUMED BY HIM ON THIS OCCASION
On more accounts than one, remarkable, – and not a little instructive, is the account we have of this last recorded visit: and, in particular, as to what concerns the reception he experienced from the ruling powers of the Church.
It is, in some particulars, more especially to be depended upon, – inasmuch as, at this important meeting, the author of the Acts – if he is to be believed – was himself present.
The first remarkable circumstance is – that, on this occasion, Paul, the self-elected Apostle – instead of taking the lead, and introducing his companions – keeps behind, and is introduced by them: such was the pliancy, with which – even on this expedition, of invasion and projected conquest, – an expedition, – undertaken, in spite of everything that could be done, both on the part of the intended objects of the conquest, and on the part of his own adherents – such was the pliancy, with which this man, among whose boasts was that of being all things to all men, could bend himself to circumstances.
Acts 21:15-18. "And after those days, we took up our carriages, and went to Jerusalem. There went with us, also, certain of the disciples of Cæsarea, and brought with them one Mnason of Cyprus, an old disciple, with whom we should lodge." At Jerusalem, not so much as a house, to harbour them, could they have been assured of, but for this old disciple – fellow countryman, of Paul's old patron, the Son of Consolation, Barnabas. Not even with him could they have been assured of this token of friendship, had he not either been already of their party, or detached himself to meet them, and afford them the assurance: although, at Cæsarea, – from some cause, of which, while the effect is brought to view, no intimation is given, – they were fortunate enough to obtain a hospitable reception, Acts 21:8, at the house of Philip. This, however, be it observed, was not Philip, the Apostle, whether it may have been Philip, styled here the Evangelist: – one of the seven trustees, or directors, Acts 6:5, to whom, with his six colleagues, under the name, so inexpressively rendered, in the English, by the word Deacons, – the management of the common fund had, by the suffrages of the disciples, been committed, must be left to conjecture.
17. "And when we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren," Acts 21:17, "received us gladly." What brethren? The Apostles, or any one of them? no: The elders? no. Who then? – Who, but such of the members of the Church, as, notwithstanding the general repugnancy, – as testified at Tyre, and afterwards, by prophet Agabus, at Cæsarea, – could, by the influence of the Cypriot Mnason, or otherwise, be prevailed upon to see them.
And, to whom was it, that this sort of reception, whatsoever it was, was afforded? Was it to Paul? No: it was to those, who, on other occasions, were with him; but, with whom, on this occasion, his prudence forced his pride to submit to be.
Witness the next verse, Acts 21:18; "And the day following," not till the day following, "Paul went in with us unto James." With them– with these his attendants – did Paul, then and there, go in: – not they with him.
At the house of James – mark well, now – who were the persons present? Answer – "all the elders." But, forasmuch as these elders were, all of them, present, – notice, within the compass of the two fragments of two days, – notice, to and by all of them must have been given and received: for it has just been seen, whether, between any of them, on the one hand, – and Paul, or, so much as any one of his attendants, on the other, – there could have been any such sort of good understanding, as to have produced any the least personal intercourse, but at, and on, the occasion of the general and formal meeting: – a meeting, which – as will be seen presently – had, for its sole object, the imposing upon him, in the event of his continuance at Jerusalem, an obligation: an obligation – to a man in his circumstances – it has been seen, of how perilous and repulsive a nature.
Such, then, was the notice, as to have brought to the place, all the Elders – All the Elders? – good. But, these Elders– Elders among the disciples in ordinary, – on an occasion such as this, what were they in comparison of the Apostles – the only known chosen servants, and constant companions of Jesus? Well, then, while – at this meeting – this formally convened meeting – those Elders were, every one of them, present – what was the number of Apostles present? Answer – Besides James, not one.
And – why James? – manifestly, because it was at his house, that the meeting was held.
And – why at his house? Because, on the occasion, and for the purpose, of the partition treaty, – that treaty, so necessary to the peace of the Church, – on the one hand; and, to the carrying on of Paul's scheme of dominion, on the other hand; – James was one, of the only three, who could ever endure the sight of the self-declared Apostle: Peter and John, as hath been seen, being the two others: – and, because, when, for the purpose of investing the meeting, in the eyes of the disciples at large, with the character of a meeting of the ruling administrative body – the Apostles, – less than that one, if there were any, there could not be. This one, James – under the pressure of the present emergency – prevailed upon himself to be: and, to be so irksome an intercourse – notwithstanding the obviousness of the demand for as great a number, as could be collected, of that primarily influential body – of no other of the Apostles, could the attendance be obtained: not even of Peter, who, on a former occasion, had brought himself to endure the hateful presence.
SECTION 3.
POSTERIOR TO ALL HIS SUPPOSED MIRACLES, HIS SILENCE PROVES THEM UNREAL
Now, then, as to miracles. Had Paul, really and truly, ever received from Jesus, any such preeminent and characteristic appendage and mark of Apostleship, – here, of all others, was an occasion, on which it concerned him to make proof of it. Here was an occasion, on which, with the design, and for the purpose – the palpable, and almost universally and so strenuously opposed design and purpose – of constituting himself the superior of the Apostles, he was presenting himself – though in circumstances of such humiliation – in the character of an equal, with whom they had treated on equal terms. Here – in order to impose silence on all gainsayers – here was the occasion, for his bringing to public view, this most important of all items in the list of his credentials. The Apostles, to whom – without any exception, by Jesus, if the Evangelist, Mark 16:15-18, is to be believed – this power had, previously to his ascension, been imparted, – these, if any, were the men – not to say the only men – qualified to form a judgment on the question – whether, by any other individual, and, more especially, by the individual before them, namely, by this their self-declared colleague, any such extraordinary power had, on any, and what, occasion, been exercised or possessed. Of all imaginable occasions, this was the one, on which he had most at stake, in the being able to make proof of so matchless an endowment: – of an endowment, which in the character of a proof, in support of all his claims, would, in the very nature of it, have been so perfectly irresistible.
Well, then: this proof of his title – did he use every endeavour, or make any offer, to produce it? No: not so much did he venture upon, as, in any the most general terms, to assert, or, so much as insinuate, the existence of it. According to his own statement, what was the general description of the tokens brought forward by him, for the purpose of obtaining acceptance? Were they signs and wonders? Oh, no! His historiographer, indeed – in that, or any other such indeterminate, and conveniently ambiguous phrase – his historiographer, at some twenty or seven-and-twenty years' distance, might venture, Acts 14:3, to speak of his exploits – of the effects produced by his exertions: in the like terms, in writing to his Corinthian disciples, he might, even himself, venture, for once, to speak of his own exploits.56 But, before an assembly, so composed, was this boast, loose, and conveniently ambiguous, as it was, – in his eyes, too much to venture. Acts 21:19 – Behold here the passage: "And when he had saluted them, he declared particularly" – what? what – signs and wonders? No: but simply – "what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry."