no HOR^ PAULINA. 



Another difficulty arises from the account of Peter's con 

 duct towards the Gentile converts at Antioch, as given in 

 the epistle, in the latter part of the second chapter ; which 

 conduct, it is said, is consistent neither with the revelation 



lem." In my opinion, this delivery of the decree was confined to the 

 chui-ches to which St. Paul came, in pursuance of the plan upon which 

 he set out, " of visiting the brethren in every city where he had preach- 

 ed the word of the Lord;" the history of which progress, and of all 

 that pertained to it, is closed in 4he fifth verse, when the history in- 

 forms us that " so were the churches established in the faith, and in- 

 creased in number daily." Then the history proceeds upon a new 

 section of the narrative, by telling us that "when they had gone 

 throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they assayed to go into 

 Bithynia." The decree itself is directed to "the brethren which are 

 of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia;" that is, to church*^« 

 already founded, and in which this question had been stirred. And 

 I think the observation of the noble author of the Miscellanea Sacra 

 is not only ingenious but highly probable, namely, that there is ha this? 

 place a dislocation of the text, and that the fourth and fifth verses of 

 the sixteenth chapter ought to follow the last verse of the fifteenth, so 

 as to make the entire passage run thus : " And they went through 

 Syria and Cilicia," to the Christians of which country the decree was 

 addressed, "confirming the churches; and as they went through the 

 cities, they delivered them the decrees for to keep, that were ordained 

 of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem ; and so were the 

 churches established in the faith, and mcreased in number daily.'' 

 And then the sixteenth chapter takes up a new and unbroken para- 

 graph : "Then came he to Derbe and Lystra," etc. When St. Paul 

 came, as he did into Galatia, to preach the gospel, for the first time, 

 in a new place, it is not probable that he would make mention of the 

 decree, or rather letter, of the church of Jerusalem, which presupposed 

 Christianity to be known, and which related to certain doubts that 

 had risen in some established Christian communities. 



The second reason which Mr. Locke assigns for the omission of tlie 

 decree, namely, that "St. Paul's sole object in the epistle was to 

 acquit himself of the imputation that had been charged upon him of 

 istually preaching circumcision," does not appear to me to be strictly 

 brue. It was not the sole object. The epistle is written in general 

 opposition to the Judaizing inclination wluch he found to prevail 

 among his converts. The avowal of his own doctrine, and of his 

 steadfast adherence to that doctrine, formed a necessary pari- of the 

 iosira of his letter, but was not the whole of it. 



