THE QUESTION ABOUT THE OBLIGATION OF THE CEREMONIAL LAW DECIDED.
Acts xv. 10, 11. Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear ? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ ive shall be saved, even as they.
IT is a favourite idea with many, that the Gospels contain all that is needful for us to know, and that it would have been better for the Church if they only had been transmitted to us. But this is indeed to make ourselves wiser than God : for if God had not judged that the other parts of the New Testament would be useful to his Church, he would not have inspired men to write them, nor would he have pre- served them for us with such peculiar care. We acknowledge that in the Gospels there are intimations of every thing which we need to know : but will any one say, that in the other parts of the New Testament there are not clearer explanations of them, or that the Gospels are not rendered far more intelligible by the light reflected upon them in the Epistles ? Will any one say, that the purposes of God towards his Church, in the call of the Gentiles, the rejection of the Jews, and the future union of both Jews and Gentiles under one Head, are not more fully understood, than they would have been if the Acts of the Apostles had not been recorded ? or that the correspondence between the law and the Gospel would have been so manifest, if it had not been pointed out to us in the Epistle to the Hebrews ? We have now the advantage of know- ing what objections were urged against the Gospel, and how those objections were obviated. To go no further than the passage before us : There was a con- troversy which agitated the whole Christian Church, insomuch that not all the authority of Barnabas or Paul were able to settle it : and a reference was made to the whole college of Apostles at Jerusalem for their