The true commencement of this epistle will be found in the first verse of the second chapter. Here we discover quite a different spirit. Here commence the plain, simple and pure doctrines of the Christian faith, which in the end will secure the victory. Peter and James are each examples to prove that a mind wedded to a single idea, which had for ages entered into the religion of a people, may be contracted and fettered by it, and yet be free to expand under the influence of the true genius of Christianity, and become liberal on other subjects. Neither Peter nor James could shake off the Jewish notion of circumcision, for it began with the father of that people by the command of God, and was to be binding on his descendants to the end of time. With them, like all the laws of God, the law of circumcision was unchangeable. But notwithstanding all this, they each had heart enough to take in the great truths of Christianity as declared by the lips of its founder. These men, who were slaves to one idea, who dogged the footsteps of Paul because he taught the doctrine of the uncircumcision, could yet teach men the duty to "love thy neighbor as thyself." (James ii. 8.) No two writings can be more unlike than the two epistles ascribed to Peter. The second is filled with the boasting and controversial bitterness of the times of the Gnostics. In the primitive churches the authenticity of this epistle was a subject of doubt. It was not, as stated, included in the Syriac version of the New Testament, which cannot be accounted for, except that it was not in existence when it was compiled, at the beginning of the second century. But the internal evidence furnished by the epistle itself is sufficient to prove that it never was written by Peter.