LECTURE II.

ACTS ii. 36.

Let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ.

ONE of the most important and interesting subjects of inquiry to a student of the New Testament, is the method pursued by the first teachers of Christianity, in establishing its truth, and propagating its doctrines. Indeed, without attending to this, it is not possible to understand the exact and complete meaning of the sacred writings, nor the consistency and harmony of all their parts. If we find both our Lord himself and his Apostles, but especially his Apostles, pursuing on different occasions a very different line of demonstration and argument; at one time insisting particularly upon one truth or fact, and at another on another; it is evident that we ought not to form our own notions of the Christian scheme, either as to its proofs or

its doctrines, upon any one of these discourses, or epistles; but carefully to consider, when, and to whom each of them was written or addressed, and the particular view of the Christian teacher at the time, with reference to his grand object, of declaring, in due season, the whole counsel of God. Now it appears, in fact, as we should have expected to find in men of more than ordinary wisdom, that in addressing themselves to unbelievers, the Apostles adapted their preaching to the understandings and prepossessions of their hearers. In endeavouring to turn the Gentiles to God, they laboured first to dispossess them of those fundamental errors, which were most opposite to the spirit of the Gospel, and to instil into their minds those great truths, which lie at the very threshold and entrance of all religion, but particularly of the Christian religion. In preaching to the Jews, who had the privilege of being first invited to enter into the Gospel covenant, and whose minds were filled with magnificent notions of their expected Messiah, and of the perpetual obligation and sacredness of their law, the Apostles laboured principally to convince them, by a correct, but new interpretation of the prophecies, and by the miracles which Jesus had wrought, that he was indeed

the Messiah; and that to him alone they were to look, as the author of eternal salvation. When once they had succeeded in proving this truth to the satisfaction of an inquiring Jew, he would be prepared to receive Jesus Christ as a divine Teacher and Master; to submit to his authority in matters both of faith and duty; and to enter, in the fulness of a matured belief, into the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh.*

This observation will explain the reason why St. Peter, in his earnest exhortation to his countrymen at the feast of Pentecost, does not begin the process of conviction, by telling them at once, that Jesus, whom he preached, and whom they had crucified, was the incarnate Son of God; which if he had told them, they would probably not have listened to another word but he sets himself to prove that Jesus was their Messiah; and speaks of him as a man approved of God, by miracles and signs and wonders, which God did by him; as having been betrayed and crucified by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God; and as having been raised up from death, agreeably to those prophecies which were confessedly applicable to the * 1 Tim. iii. 16.

Messiah alone. Therefore, he concludes, let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ; that is, hath made him your true King and Messiah. And in his second discourse to the Jews, contained in the third chapter of the Acts, he speaks of Jesus as the Son of God, the Holy One and the Just, the Prince, or author of life, and tells them, Those things which God before hath showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ, or the Messiah, should suffer; he hath so fulfilled. But in the same Apostle's conversation with Cornelius, a devout Gentile, although a worshipper of the true God, he lays the principal stress upon these two things, that Jesus was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead; and that through his name, whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins.* In the first sermon which St. Paul preached to the Jews, as recorded in the thirteenth chapter of the Acts, he sets himself to prove from their Scriptures, that Jesus must be the Messiah; and that through him they might be justified from all those things, from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses; but to the

* Acts x. 42.

+ Acts xiii. 39.

heathen idolaters of Lycaonia his prayer was, that they should turn from those vanities of idolworship to the living God;* and to the Athenians. he proves, upon the plainest principles of philosophy, that the Godhead could not be likened unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device; nor ought to be worshipped under such similitudes: that their ignorance could no longer be excused, after that a revelation of the truth had been made; and that a day of judgment was appointed, and the Judge already predetermined and installed into his office, even Jesus Christ, whom God had raised from the dead.+

I have noticed this point at some length, in order to show, that these discourses of the Apostles, recorded in the Acts, are not to be regarded as summary and comprehensive statements of Christian doctrine; but simply as assertions and arguments, intended to convince the Jews, that Jesus was their promised Messiah, and the Gentiles, that he was a teacher sent from God. To those, who had already been converted to the truth as it was in Jesus, they spoke more largely and precisely of the interior parts of Christian doctrine and practice; but + Acts xvii. 29-31.

*Acts xiv. 15.