It is in the

sins; I am surprised that your attention has been so quickly diverted from it to another message, to that of the dispensation of the circumcision. Another did I call it? It is not .. another; in itself it is not another. troublesome spirit of its advocates that it dif fers, who have encumbered it with annoying adjuncts that are foreign to it, by which they harass the faithful, all that is essential in it being included in the simple truth or blessed message which was formerly communicated to you by me. But hear further: "If we or an.. angel from heaven proclaim to you any message from heaven different from that which we have already announced, let him be anathema. Hold no communion with such a one;" these were my words then, and I again repeat them. "If any one come to you in the blessed character of a messenger from God, contradicting or defeating the message of free pardon which you formerly heard of us, and effectively accepted, whether myself or an angel from heaven, or whoever he be, let him be anathema unto you. Hold no communion with him."

I made that averment as an apostle under the immediate appointment of God. I acted under my own commission; without any regard to the practice or authority of other apostles. The message I had delivered was that of

free remission without circumcision. It seems, that others have since instructed you, that the apostles at Jerusalem are the heads of the church, and that they dispense not with circumcision; and you refer me to their authority.

I say again, as I have said before, if any one proclaim a different message, let him be anathema. For having then opened my commission as immediately under God, denouncing, of my own authority, those who should gainsay me, do I now change my character? Am I now a messenger of persuasion according to men or according to God; under man or under God? Am I, notwithstanding my former tone of independence, seeking to please not God only, but my masters truly at Jerusalem? When I first persuaded you to become followers of Christ, I acknowledged no authority but his. But it seems I had masters at Jerusalem; how then could I be what I professed to be, what the high tone I assumed purported, viz. accountable to no man but the immediate servant of Christ?

Brethren, I assure you that the glad tidings.. proclaimed by me were communicated to me immediately by Christ, and I recognize no human authority to which those tidings must conform. For I received them not from man, .. nor from any human instruction; but Jesus Christ revealed them to me.

It was not likely that previous to that revelation I should have derived any thing from the apostles. For ye have heard of my hostility to them up to that period, the courses I pursued as a member of the Jewish connection, that I knew no bounds in persecuting and desolating the church of Christ, and that in zeal.. for, and proficiency in, all the Jewish customs and observances, I went beyond many of my own age and nation, even distinguishing myself among my fellow students as an outrageous zealot for the traditions of the fathers.

But when God was pleased-God who ap-.. pointed me from my mother's womb to a fellowship in his favor with Christ, appointed me as he has all the faithful, by the effect of his eternal decree of love in favor of all who should love him-when God who thus appointed me to a fellowship in his favor from my mother's womb, that is, before my carnal circumcision, and called me to himself by grace, that is, independently of circumcision, not making circumcision but grace, or his own gratuitous goodness, the means ro cause of my admission to such fellowship-when God, who thus in the gratuitousness of my call, gave a kind of earnest of the graciousness of the commission to which he called me, the gratuitousness of his favor which I was to proclaim to the faithful;

when, I say, God was pleased to reveal his son.. to me, that I might proclaim the glad tidings of that son to the Gentiles-and to reveal him to me immediately, (euws) not in an indirect or mediate manner, but instantly by immediate and direct impression upon my spirit or mind (EV Eμo)-I conferred not with, I did not apply myself for more authentic instructions to flesh and blood, I acted quite independently. Having been directly instructed on this subject of my commission by the spirit of God, I descended not to take further instructions from man, I took not instructions from any apostle at Damascus, neither did I go up to Jerusalem to.. my seniors in the apostleship there, but I departed from Damascus and went to Achaia and returned back again to Damascus before I went to Jerusalem. Afterwards, three years.. from the time of my conversion having elapsed, I did go up to Jerusalem to see Peter, not to submit myself to his super-inspection, but rather to satisfy myself as to him, to ascertain by a personal intercourse, whether, according to the reports which had reached me he had really discharged from his mind all its Jewish prejudices, and whether he was prepared to coalesce with me in preaching the doctrine of Christ divested of all Judaism, and for this purpose I remained with him fifteen days. I

GAL. CH. I. V. 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. CH. II. V. 1, 2.

saw none of the other apostles except James, .. the brother of the Lord, (before God I am sta-.. ting the truth.) Afterwards I went into the.. regions of Syria and Cilicia.

I did not while in Judea form any obliga-.. tory connection with the churches of Christ in Judea, but was personally unknown to them. They were only informed by hear-say, that he who was once a persecutor had become a preacher of the new dispensation of faithfulness, which he once desolated, and they glorified God on .. account of me.

Afterwards, fourteen years intervening, I.. went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus with us, and I went up on that occasion for the church at Antioch under special sanction from the spirit. Without such sanction my former experience of the views entertained by those who proclaimed Christ in that city would perhaps have made me hesitate to go there. In conference with the disciples at Jerusalem I upheld Christ's message of free grace, exactly as I proclaim it to the Gentiles; I did not indeed do so to all indiscriminately, but to those whom I knew to be favorable to the enlarged view I took of the free and universal application of God's message of mercy.

When I first went up to Jerusalem, many years before the occasion I am now reciting,