[81] Tradition tells very little about Cornelius. There is indeed a long article devoted to him by the Bollandists, _Acta Sanctorum_, Feb. t. 1, p. 280, but there is nothing in it. He is commemorated on Feb. 2nd. The Greeks make him bishop of Scepsis, the Latins of Cæsarea. St. Jerome says that in his time the house of Cornelius had been turned into a church. The story of his life as told in the Martyrologies is evidently a mere mediæval concoction. At Scepsis the prefect Demetrius brings him into a temple of Apollo, when at his prayer the idol is smashed to pieces and the magistrate converted. Such stories are, however, the stock-in-trade of the legend-mongers of the Middle Ages.
"The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch."--ACTS xi. 26.
The eleventh chapter of the Acts is clearly divisible into two portions. There is first the narrative of St. Peter's reception at Jerusalem after the conversion of Cornelius, and secondly the story of the origin of the Antiochene Church, the mother and metropolis of Gentile Christendom. They are distinct the one from the other, and yet they are closely connected together, for they both deal with the same great topic, the admission of the Gentiles to full and free communion in the Church of God. Let us then search out the line of thought which runs like a golden thread through this whole chapter, sure that in doing so we shall find light shed upon some modern questions from this divinely written ecclesiastical history.
I. St. Peter tarried a certain time with Cornelius and the other new converts at Cæsarea. There was doubtless much to be taught and much to be set in order. Baptism was in the early Church administered when the converts were yet immature in faith and knowledge. The Church was viewed as a hospital, where the sick and feeble were to be admitted and cured. It was not therefore demanded of candidates for admission that they should be perfectly instructed in all the articles and mysteries of the Christian faith. There were indeed some points in which they were not instructed at all till they had been "buried with Christ through baptism into death." Then when they had taken their stand upon the Christian platform, and were able to view the matter from the true vantage point, they were admitted into fuller and deeper mysteries. Peter too must have had his work cut out for him at Cæsarea in striving to organise the Church. St. Philip may have here lent his aid, and may have been constituted the resident head of the local Church.[82] After the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch he worked his way up to Cæsarea, preaching in all the towns and villages of that populous district. There he seems to have fixed his residence, as fifteen years or so later we find him permanently located in that city with his "four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy" (Acts xxi. 8, 9). We may be sure that some such Church organisation was immediately started at Cæsarea. We have already traced the work of organisation in Jerusalem. The apostles originally embraced in themselves all ministerial offices, as in turn these offices were originally all summed up in Jesus Christ. The apostles had taken an important step in the establishment of the order of deacons at Jerusalem, retaining in their own hands the supreme power to which appeal and reports could be made. At Damascus it is evident that at the time of St. Paul's conversion there was an organised Church, Ananias being the head and chief of it, with whom communications were officially held; while the notices about Joppa and the six witnesses of his action whom St. Peter brought with him to Cæsarea indicate that an assembly or Church organised after the model of the Jerusalem Church existed in that town.
[82] The Church tradition reports, however, that Cornelius was first bishop of Cæsarea, but without any solid authority for the statement. See, however, the note in last chapter, p. 141.