It seems that the person who put the speech into the mouth of Peter, renouncing circumcision, was not satisfied with what he said at the time. Something had been omitted or overlooked. Peter had shed his Jewish skin, but the Lord had not given him a commission to preach the gospel to all nations, and this he must have to be the head of a universal church. At the council held at Jerusalem by the Apostles to settle the question of circumcision, Peter, according to the Acts, seizes the opportunity to supply the omission: "And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago, God made choice among us, that the Gentiles, by _my mouth_, should hear the word of the gospel, and believe." (Acts xv. 7.) Now there was no occasion for Peter to make this claim or assertion, for it had nothing to do with the subject before the council, and was not true. The account which Paul gives of what took place at the council is quite different, contradictory, and no doubt true. He says, when he stated before the council the trouble and vexations which were occasioned by this rite, and reasons why it should not be forced on the Gentiles, that Peter, James, and John agreed with him--gave him the right hand of fellowship, and then entered into a compact that he should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. (Gal. ii.) This agreement was never departed from; but not so with regard to circumcision. That Peter, James, and all the disciples disregarded the order of the Council in regard to that subject, is rendered clear by their subsequent conduct. After that, as much as two years, for the Council was held in A.D. 49 or A.D. 50, and the epistle to the Galatians was written in A. D. 52, Peter went to Antioch, where he found Paul. He ate with the uncircumcised until some Jewish converts came from Jerusalem at the instance of James, who found fault with his course. Peter, it seems, then changed front and stood up for circumcision. "I withstood him to the face," says Paul, for he was wrong. A discussion springs up. Paul claimed that men were not to be saved through old rites and ceremonies, nor by-works, but by faith. At this time, neither James nor Peter had given up their contracted notions on the Jewish rite. Nor had Peter as late as A. D. 57, twenty-four years after the death of Christ. Of the four parties which disturbed the peace of the church at Corinth at the time of Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, which was written in A. D. 57, the party of _Cephas_ was one. Peter was at the head of a party which held out for circumcision, seven years after the council at Jerusalem; and if he had not given it up then, when he was fifty-seven years old, there is no reason to believe he did after that. Nothing gave the men in the second century who undertook to put Peter at the head of a universal church so much trouble as this thing of