MR. TAYLOR' S FIRST REPLY. 31 



Three Mosaic enactments alone enforced. 



accordingly " determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain 

 other of tbem, sliould go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles 

 and elders, about this question." The great subject thus 

 presented for the consideration and adjudication of this general 

 council was evidently the wJiole ^' Law of Moses/^ and the 

 extent of its obligation {Acts xv. 5) ; and the decision arrived 

 at, after " there bad been much disputing," excepted from ab- 

 rogation but three prohibitions of the "Law" as '^ necessary 

 things'^ to be abstained from ; namely, idolatry^ fornication, 

 and the eating of tliings strangled, and hlood.^ As Paley 

 very correctly states, " The observance of the Sabbath was not 

 one of the articles enjoined by the Apostles, in the fifteenth 

 chapter of Acts, upon them ' which from among the Gentiles 

 were turned unto God.' " {Mor. Phil. B. v. ch. 7.) 



If my friend J. N. B. will still contend that this '^ does not 

 affect the original law of the Sabbath,'' that "the key to the 

 whole fallacy is in the wrong sense given by the writer to the 

 term Law," and that "in this case, as the ichole context shoivs, 

 it is to be restricted to the Jewish ceremonial law," I can only 

 express a deep regret that he has read the Scriptures to so 

 little purpose, as thus glaringly to misconstrue their teaching. 

 " The whole context shows," tncontrovertihlf/, that the eccle- 

 siastical decree was 7iot " restricted to the Jewish ceremonial 

 law," by its actually specifying two provisions of the moi^al 

 laic ! So " wrong a sense given to the term Law," by my 

 friend, is really worse than a fallacy ! 



The obvious reason why these two points of the moral law 

 were at all referred to was that they were the only ones likely 

 to be transgressed by those just emancipated from the Boman 

 Paganism. Otherwise they would no more have been noticed 



^ Irenæus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrosius, Jerome, and Augustine, 

 in quoting or alluding to the Jerusalem canon, all omit the "things 

 strangled:" eyidently considering this included in the prohibition of 

 "blood." 



