being fresh from the fountain of religious knowledge, claimed great authority in reference to all delicate points of this nature. At last, after long and violent disputes between these old-school and new-school theologians, it was resolved to refer the whole matter to the twelve apostles themselves, at Jerusalem, who might well be supposed qualified to say what they considered to be the essential doctrines and observances of Christianity. Paul and Barnabas, therefore, with some of the rest engaged in the discussion, went up to Jerusalem as a delegation, for this purpose, and presented the whole difficulty to the consideration of the apostles. So little settled, after all, were the views and feelings of these first preachers of Christianity about the degree of freedom to be enjoyed by the numerous Gentile converts, that all the Jewish prejudices of many of them burst out at once, and high ground was taken against any dispensation in favor of Gentile prejudices. After a long discussion, in full assembly of both apostles and church-officers, Peter arose in the midst of the debate, taking the superiority to which his peculiar commission and his long precedence among them entitled him, and in a tone of dignified decision addressed them. He reminded them, in the first place, of that unquestionable call by which God had chosen him from among all the apostles, to proclaim to the heathen the word of the gospel, and of that solemn sign by which God had attested the completeness of their conversion, knowing, as he did, the hearts of all his creatures. The signs of the Holy Spirit having been imparted to the heathen converts with the same perfection of regenerating influence that had been manifested in those of the Jewish faith who had believed, it was manifestly challenging the testimony of God himself, to try to put on them the irksome yoke of the tedious Mosaic ritual, a yoke which not even the Jewish disciples, nor their fathers before them, had been able to bear in all the appointed strictness of its observances; and much less, then, could they expect a burden so intolerable, to be supported by those to whom it had none of the sanctions of national and educational prejudice, which so much assisted its dominion over the feelings of the Jews. And all the disciples, even those of Jewish race, must be perfectly satisfied that their whole reliance for salvation should be, not on any legal conformity, but on that common favor of their Lord, Jesus Christ, in which the Gentile converts also trusted.