If so, Peter and John must have heard these words;
they are too plain to be misunderstood; and the occasion is too solemn
for them ever to be forgotten. Yet the "Acts" tells us that Peter
needed a vision to enable him so much as to baptize Cornelius; and
Paul, in the Galatians, knows nothing of words which would have
completely borne him out as against those who, though they heard, must
be supposed to have either forgotten, or ignored them. On the other
hand, Peter and John, who are supposed to have heard the "Sermon on
the Mount," know nothing of the saying that Jesus had not come to
destroy the Law, but that every jot and tittle of the Law must be
fulfilled, which surely would have been pretty good evidence for their
view of the question.
We are sometimes told that the personal friends and daily companions
of Jesus remained zealous Jews and opposed Paul's innovations, because
they were hard of heart and dull of comprehension. This hypothesis is
hardly in accordance with the concomitant faith of those who adopt it,
in the miraculous insight and superhuman sagacity of their Master; nor
do I see any way of getting it to harmonise with the orthodox
postulate; namely, that Matthew was the author of the first gospel and
John of the fourth. If that is so, then, most assuredly, Matthew was
no dullard; and as for the fourth gospel--a theosophic romance of the
first order--it could have been written by none but a man of
remarkable literary capacity, who had drunk deep of Alexandrian
philosophy.
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