thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company with, or to come unto, one of another nation;
but God hath shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. Therefore came
I without gainsaying;”876 indicating by these words, that he would not have come to them
unless he had been commanded. Neither, for a like reason, would he have given them baptism
so readily, had he not heard them prophesying when the Holy Ghost rested upon them.
And therefore did he exclaim, “Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized,
who have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?”877 He persuaded, at the same time, those
that were with him, and pointed out that, unless the Holy Ghost had rested upon them,
there might have been some one who would have raised objections to their baptism. And
the apostles who were with James allowed the Gentiles to act freely, yielding us up to the
Spirit of God. But they themselves, while knowing the same God, continued in the ancient
observances; so that even Peter, fearing also lest he might incur their reproof, although
formerly eating with the Gentiles, because of the vision, and of the Spirit who had rested
upon them, yet, when certain persons came from James, withdrew himself, and did not eat
with them. And Paul said that Barnabas likewise did the same thing.878 Thus did the apostles,
whom the Lord made witnesses of every action and of every doctrine—for upon all occasions
do we find Peter, and James, and John present with Him—scrupulously act according to
the dispensation of the Mosaic law, showing that it was from one and the same God; which
they certainly never would have done, as I have already said, if they had learned from the
Lord [that there existed] another Father besides Him who appointed the dispensation of
the law.
876 Acts x. 28, 29.
877 Acts x. 47.
878 Gal. ii. 12, 13.
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Chapter XII.—Doctrine of the rest of the apostles.