The life and work of St. Paul

542 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
have been passed over by the Sanhedrin as, at the worst, a harmless delusion.
Nay, some of the Pharisaic Sanhedrists may even have been nominally
Christians. 1 But the fury against St. Paul was kindled by the far more
burning questions which arose out of his doctrine of the nullity of the Law,
and the admission of the Gentiles to equal privileges with the seed of Abraham.
Did not, then, the words of the Apostle suggest a false issue P And had he
any right to inflame an existing animosity P * And could he worthily say,
"I am a Pharisee ? " Was ho not in reality at variance with the Pharisees
in every fundamental particular of their system P Is not the Pharisaic spirit
in its very essence the antithesis of the Christian ? s Did not the two greatest
Epistles which he had written prove their whole theology, as such, to be false
in every line ? Was it not the very work of his life to pull down the legal
prescriptions around which it was their one object to rear a hedge ? Had not
they been occupied as none knew better than himself in riveting the iron
fetters of that yoke of bondage, which he was striving to shatter link by link P
Was there not the least little touch of & suggestio falsi in what he said ? Let
us make every possible deduction and allowance for a venial infirmity for ; a
sudden and
"
momentary economy," far less serious than that into which his
great brother- Apostle had swerved at Antioch ;
and let us further admit that
there is a certain nationality in the chivalry of rigidly minute and scrupulously
inflexible straightforwardness, which is, among Northern nations, and among
the English in particular, the hereditary result of centuries of training. Let
us also acknowledge, not without a blush of shame, that certain slight
managements and accommodations of truth have in later ages been reckoned
among Christian virtues. Tet, after all these qualifications, we cannot in
this matter wholly see how St. Paul could say without qualification, in
such an assembly, " I am a Pharisee." If we think him very little to
blame for his stern rebuke of the High Priest; if, referring his conduct
to that final court of appeal, which consists in comparing it with the
precepts and example of his Lord, we can quite conceive that He who called
Herod rt a fox" would also have called Ananias "a whited wall;" on the
other hand, we cannot but think that this creating of a division among
common enemies on the grounds of a very partial and limited agreement with
certain other tenets held by some of them, was hardly worthy of St. Paul ;
and knowing, as we do know, what the Pharisees were, we cannot imagine his
Divine Master ever saying, under any circumstances, "I am a Pharisee."
Moreover, the device, besides being questionable, was riot ev&i jk&itic. It
1
Acts xv. 5.
3 Those who, in the teeth of all Scripture, will not believe that an Apostle can make
it to
a mistake, have built disastrous conclusions on this action of St. Paul's, quoting
sanction the Machiavellian policy of the Komans, " Divide et impera." Corn. 4 Lapide,
on this passage, says, " Bellum haereticorum est pax ecclesiae," a maxim on which the
Romish Church has sometimes acted (see "Wordsworth, ad loc.). On the other hand,
Luther says, with hia robust good sense, "Non mihi placet studium illud sanctos nimii
efferendi et excusandi si sacra) scripture vim negat."
Matt, jnriii. 35, 27 ; John xii. 43 ; Rom. ii.