mentioned by Paul and {226} eliminated the whole of the Apostle's individuality would indeed be as remarkable as it is unfortunate. But supposing the Apostle Paul to have been aware of the formal proceedings narrated in the Acts, characterized by such unanimity and liberal Christian feeling, it would be still more astonishing and unfortunate that he has not only silently passed them over, but has conveyed so singularly different an impression of his visit.(1) As the Apostle certainly could not have been acquainted with the Acts, his silence regarding the council and its momentous decree, as well as his ignorance of the unbroken harmony which prevailed are perfectly intelligible. He of course only knew and described what actually occurred. The author of the Acts, however, might and must have known the Epistle to the Galatians, and the ingenuity with which the tone and details of the authentic report are avoided or transfigured cannot be ascribed to mere accident, but must largely be attributed to design, although also partly, it may be, to the ignorance and the pious imagination of a later age. Is it possible, for instance, that the controversy regarding the circumcision of Titus, and the dispute with Peter at Antioch, which are so prominently related in the Epistle, but present a view so different from the narrative of Acts, can have been undesignedly omitted? The violent apologetic reconciliation which is effected between the two accounts is based upon the foregone conclusion that the author of the canonical Acts, however he may seem to deviate from the Apostle, cannot possibly contradict him or be 1 "Our difficulty in reading this page of history arises not so much from the absence of light as from the perplexity of cross lights. The narratives of St. Luke and St. Paul only then cease to conflict, when we take into account the different positions of the writers and the different objects they had in view." Lightfoot, St Paul's Ep. to the Gal., p. 294. {227} in error; but the preceding examination has rendered such a position untenable, and here we have not to do with a canonized "St. Luke," but with an unknown writer whose work must be judged by the ordinary rules of criticism.