2. A spirit of benevolence towards those who need your aid —
[If you are richer than others, consider yourselves as the Lord's stewards ; and do not stay till you are called upon, and then " give your alms grudgingly and of necessity ;" but " be glad to distribute, and willing to communicate ;" remembering that blessed saying of our Lord, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."]
Gal. ii. 14 — 16. When I saiv that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews ? We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the icorks of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the viorks of the law : for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
THE Apostles, in all that they declared, were in- fallible, being under the immediate guidance of the Holy Spirit, by whom they were inspired ; but, in what they did, they were frail and fallible, like other men. Of this we have a painful evidence in the passage before us ; wherein we see Peter, from whom the Roman pontiff, unfortunately for his own claims, derives his infallibility, fallen into the grossest error, and acting in a way which brought upon him the severest reprehension. The circumstances relating to that event are faithfully recorded for the instruc- tion of the Church in all ages : and, as they com- prehend things of fundamental importance to our welfare, we will enter into them somewhat minutely; and state,
I. The conduct reproved —
Peter, during his stay at Antioch, where the Church consisted almost exclusively of converts from among