152. But, when Paul and Barnabas came back from their first missionary tour to Antioch, they found that a still more decisive settlement of this question was required; for Christians of the strictly Jewish sort were coming down from Jerusalem to Antioch and telling the Gentile converts that, unless they were circumcised, they could not be saved. In this way they were filling them with alarm, lest they might be omitting something on which the welfare of their souls depended, and they were confusing their minds as to the simplicity of the gospel. To quiet these disturbed consciences it was resolved by the church at Antioch to appeal to the leading apostles at Jerusalem, and Paul and Barnabas were sent thither to procure a decision. This was the origin of what is called the Council of Jerusalem, at which this question was authoritatively settled. The decision of the apostles and elders was in harmony with Paul's practice: the Gentiles were not to be required to be circumcised; only they were enjoined to abstain from meat offered in sacrifice to idols, from fornication, and from blood. To these conditions Paul consented. He did not, indeed, see any harm in eating meat which had been used in idolatrous sacrifices, when it was exposed for sale in the market; but the feasts upon such meat in the idol temples, which were often followed by wild outbreaks of sensuality, alluded to in the prohibition of fornication, were temptations against which the converts from heathenism required to be warned. The prohibition of blood--that is, of eating meat killed without the blood being drained off--was a concession to extreme Jewish prejudice, which, as it involved no principle, he did not think it necessary to oppose. 153. So the agitating question appeared to be settled by an authority so august that none could question it. If Peter, John and James, the pillars of the church at Jerusalem, as well as Paul and Barnabas, the heads of the Gentile mission, arrived at a unanimous decision, all consciences might be satisfied and all opposing mouths stopped.