ཕན་ To the accomplishment of this prediction, St Paul refers, when he affirms that "the things of God were revealed by His Spirit" to the ministers of the Gospel, and that they proclaimed these things, "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth '." So St. Peter says of the Apostles, that they "preached the Gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven 2," and he calls the word, which he and others delivered, "the word of the Lord, which endureth for ever 3." 3, The Epistles, no less than the Discourses, of Peter bear indubitable marks of Divine illumination. He must have written, as he asserts that his brother Paul did, "according to the wisdom given unto him." The compositions are above the natural power of the man. Can any reader, free from prejudice, who has afforded them a careful examination, believe that they are the writings of the unenlightened Hebrew fisherman? Even if it could be imagined that Peter might have corrected his first false opinions, and entered fully into the economy of the Christian dispensation, and composed his admirable Apostolic Letters, without 1 1 Cor. ii. 10. 13. 3 1 Pet. i. 25. 2 1 Pet. i. 12. 4 2 Pet. iii. 15. 5. St. Peter's style (says Blackwall) expresses the noble vehemence and fervour of his spirit, the full knowledge he had of Christianity, and the strong assurance he had of the truth and certainty of his doctrine; and he writes with the authority of Divine light and succour, is it possible to believe that he was unaided by the Spirit of God, when, under circumstances the most difficult and embarrassing, this humble disciple stood up, on the day of Pentecost, a defender of the faith of Jesus, and vindicated, with complete effect, His title as the expected Saviour? Could he have thus acquitted himself without preternatural assistance? To say nothing of the new languages with which he was then gifted, and his new understanding of Scripture the first man in the college of the Apostles. A devout and judicious person cannot read him without solemn attention and awful concern. How strong and terrible is his description of the conflagration of this lower world, and future judgment of Angels and men, in the third chapter of the Second Epistle! And what a solemn and moving Epiphonema, or practical inference, is that, "Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness"-in all parts of holy and Christian life—ἐν ἁγίαις ἀναστροφαῖς καὶ εὐσεβείαις.—Sacred Classics. Joseph Scaliger calls Peter's First Epistle majestic. Erasmus says, It is worthy of the Prince of the Apostles, and full of apostolical dignity and majesty. He describes it, as verbis parca, sententiis differta. Ostervald esteems it one of the finest Books of the New Testament. Of the Second Epistle Ostervald says, It is most excellent, as well as the foregoing, and is written with great strength and majesty: both Epistles plainly show their Divine origin. Other Books were sent forth under the name of Peter, of which he was not the author. Mention is made by ancient writers of Peter's Acts, and Doctrine, and Gospel, (different from St. Mark's Gospel, which has sometimes been called Peter's) and Preaching, and Revelation, and Judgment. See the Codex Apocryphus N. T. of Fabricius. truth-can it be thought that a poor, rude, uneducated1 man, taken from his boat and his nets, could, of himself, address a multitude of people, at considerable length, with the self-possession, force of argument, and perspicuous arrangement of his subject, for which Peter was so remarkable on this very first day of his entrance upon his public commission? Could this low-born, untutored Galilean2 have compelled attention, shortly after, from the highest and proudest body invested with authority in Judea? Could he have so pleaded the cause of Christ before the Sanhedrim, as to "cut to the heart" that vain and arrogant assembly? Could this friendless, defenceless disciple of the crucified Prophet of Nazareth, have baffled and confuted his angry and powerful enemies, and excited deep alarm in the Jewish magistracy and government? Could this (in himself insignificant3) man have borne a principal part in · ἄνθρωπος αγράμματος καὶ ἰδιώτης. Acts iv. 13. 2 The Emperor Julian is said to have commanded, by public edict, that the Christians should be called Galileans, a name designed to make them contemptible, by marking the despised country from which the first teachers among them sprang. Greg. Nazianzen. Orat. iii. 3 The Apostles were contemned as poor and ignorant men, some of whom got their livelihood by fishing—piscatorio artificio. Lactant. Inst. 1. v. c. 2. The reviler, Hierocles, whom Lactantius quotes, pointed to St. Paul and St. Peter, as two of the leading champions of the Gospel. Præcipue Paulum Petrumque laceravit. filling Jerusalem with the doctrine of the cross, and made himself dreaded as one of those, who brought upon the senate of Israel the guilt of the blood of Christ1? The Apostles had been told by their Divine Lord: "When they shall deliver you up" to councils and rulers, “take no thought how or what ye shall speak; for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you"." 2" The history discloses the fulfilment of the promise. Not to insist upon the power and efficacy of St. Peter's preaching beyond the limits of the Jewish capital-the impression, which his sound and strong reasoning made, in the city of Jerusalem, upon those who knew his birth, country, and education-the conviction, which his arguments produced in the minds of the ingenuous, and the perplexity, which they occasioned to his obstinate opposers3; his unanswered and unanswerable vindications of the Gospel belief; his firm, manly, collected account of the motives and principles which guided his conduct; are proofs of his having received, according to the prediction of his Lord, "a mouth and wisdom," which all his adversaries united were unable to "gainsay or resist 4." 1 Acts v. 28. 3 Acts v. 24. vi. 10. 2 Matt. x. 19, 20. 4 Luke xxi. 15. |