equality with the Jew, but defiled him by contact.(1) The attitude of the Christian Jew to the merely Christian Gentile, who had not entered the community by the portal of Judaism, was, as before, simply that of the Jew to the proselyte of the Gate. The Apostles could not upon any other terms have then even contemplated the conversion of the Gentiles. Jesus had limited his own teaching to the Jews, and, according to the first Gospel, had positively prohibited, at one time at least, their going to the Gentiles, or even to the Samaritans, and if there had been an order given to preach to all nations it certainly was not accompanied by any removal of the conditions specified in the Law.(2) It has been remarked that neither party, in the great discussion in the Church regarding the terms upon which Gentiles might be admitted to the privileges of Christianity, ever appealed in support of their views to specific instructions of Jesus on the subject.(3) The reason is intelligible enough. The Petrine party, supported as they were by the whole weight of the Law and of Holy Scripture, as well as by the example and tacit approval of the Master, could not have felt even that degree of doubt which precedes an appeal to authority. 2 Dr. Lightfoot says: "The Master himself had left no express instructions. He had charged them, it is true, to preach the Gospel to all nations, but how this injunction was to be carried out, by what changes a national Church must expand into an universal Church, they had not been told. He had indeed asserted the sovereignty of the spirit over the letter; he had enunciated the great principle--as wide in its application as the law itself--that' man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man.' He had pointed to the fulfilment of the law in the Gospel. So fer he had discredited the law, but he had not deposed it or abolished it. It was left to the Apostles themselves under the guidance of the Spirit, moulded by circumstances and moulding them in turn, to work out the great change." St. Paul's Ep. to Gal. 286. {144} The party of Paul, on the other hand, had nothing in their favour to which a specific appeal could have been made; but in his constant protest that he had not received his doctrine from man, but had been taught it by direct revelation, the Apostle of the Gentiles, who was the first to proclaim a substantial difference between Christianity and Judaism,(1) in reality endeavoured to set aside the authority of the Judaistic party by an appeal from the earthly to the spiritualized Messiah. Even after the visit of Paul to Jerusalem about the year 50, the elder Apostles still retained the views which we have shown to have been inevitable under the circumstances, and, as we learn from Paul himself, they still continued mere "Apostles of the Circumcision," limiting their mission to the Jews.(2)