Product Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1877. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAFFER IV. THE HISTOKICAL VALUE OF THE WORK, CONTINUED. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. We now enter upon a portion of our examination of the Acts which is so full of interest in itself that peculiar care will be requisite to restrain ourselves within necessary limits. Hitherto our attention has been mainly confined to the internal phenomena presented by the document before us, with comparatively little aid from external testimony, and although the results of such criticism have been of no equivocal character, the historical veracity of the Acts has not yet been tested by direct comparison with other sources of information. We now propose to examine, as briefly as may be, some of the historical statements in themselves, and by the light of information derived from contemporary witnesses of unimpeachable authority, and to confront them with well-established facts in the annals of the first two centuries. This leads us to the borders not only of one of the greatest controversies which has for half a century occupied theological criticism, but also of still more important questions regarding the original character and systematic development of Christianity itself. The latter we must here resolutely pass almost unnoticed, and into the former we shall only enter so far as is absolutely necessary to the special object of our inquiry. The document before us professes to give a narrative of the progress of the primitive Church from its first formation in the midst of Mosaism, with strong Judaistic rules and prejudices, up to that liberal universalism which freely admitted the Christian Gentile, upon equal terms, into communion with the Christian Jew. The question with which we are concerned is strictly this: Is the account in the Acts of the Apostles of the successive steps by...