it is clear, from the final resolve to limit their preaching to the circumcision, that the elder Apostles in no way abandoned their view of the necessity of the initiatory rite. The episode at Antioch is a practical illustration of this statement. Hilgenfeld ably remarks:--"When we consider that Peter was afraid of the circumcised Christians, there can be no doubt _that James, at the head of the primitive community, made the attempt to force heathen Christians to adopt the substance of Jewish legitimacy, by breaking off ecclesiastical community with them_."(1) The Gentile Christians were virtually excommunicated on the arrival of the emissaries of James, or at least treated as mere Proselytes of the Gate; and the pressure upon the Galatian converts of the necessity of circumcision by similar Judaizing emissaries, which called forth the vehement and invaluable Epistle before us, is quite in accordance with the circumstances of this visit. The separation agreed upon between Paul and the elder Apostles was not in any sense geographical, but purely ethnological.(2) It was no mere division of labour,(3) no suitable apportionment of work. The elder Apostles determined, like their Master before them, to confine their ministry to Jews, whilst Paul, if he pleased, might go to the Gentiles; and the mere fact that Peter subsequently goes to Antioch, as well as many other {285} circumstances, shows that no mere separation of localities, but a selection of race was intended. If there had not been this absolute difference of purpose, any separation would have been unnecessary, and all the Apostles would have preached one Gospel indifferently to all who had ears to hear it; such strange inequality in the partition of the work could never have existed: that Paul should go unaided to the gigantic task of converting the heathen, while the Twelve reserved themselves for the small but privileged people. All that we have said at the beginning of this section of the nature of primitive Christianity, and of the views prevalent amongst the disciples at the death of their Master, is verified by this attitude of the Three during the famous visit of the Apostle of the Gentiles to Jerusalem, and Paul's account is precisely in accordance with all that historical probability and reason, unwarped by the ideal representations of the Acts, prepare us to expect. The more deeply we go into the statements of Paul the more is this apparent, and the more palpable does the inauthenticity of the narrative of the Council appear.