important inquiry to a termination, that we ascertain what is the amount of the apostolic testimony concerning HIM whose name they proclaimed, for whose glory they laboured and suffered, and concerning whom they ardently desired that he might be magnified in them, in life and in death.

CHAP. I.

ON THE EXAMPLES OF THE APOSTOLIC INSTRUCTION CONTAINED IN THE BOOK OF ACTS.

The general character of the book intitled the Acts of the Apostles.-Its leading design.-What information it presupposes in the reader.-Its important use.The chief scope of the discourses which it embodies.The principal heads of its testimony concerning the Messiah.-I. His real humanity.-II. He is the Author and Cause of divine blessings.— III. The Efficient Cause of the apostolic miracles.-IV. The Giver of the miraculous influence of the Holy Spirit.-V. The universal Judge.-VI. The relation of religious institutions to him.-i. Baptism-Investigation of the command of Christ to baptize, and of the Calm Inquirer's observations upon it.-Whether there is any formula of baptism, of divine institution.-Religious dedication.—Being "baptized unto Moses."-Association of the Names in the institution of baptism. -Genuineness of Matt. xxviii. 19.-ii. The chief subject of the gospel ministry.-VII. Use of the appellative, LORD.-VIII. Idiom of the term, the name.-IX. Worship paid to Christ.-i. Invocation.-Instances.— Examination of the term, and strictures on the Calm Inquirer's criticisms.-ii. The case of Stephen.-Nature of the blessings implored by him, and what they imply in the person addressed.-Remarks on the Unitarian interpretation.-iii. Converts and churches were commended to Christ by special acts of devotion.-Recapitulation.-General observations.

It may be questioned whether the title which, from an unknown but very early antiquity, has been prefixed to the Second Part of the sacred narrative of the evangelist Luke, was appropriate to the design and composition of the work. For the book contains no information upon the proceedings of the far larger number of the apostles,

of

after they received their promised qualification on the day of Pentecost, when they would undoubtedly be ready to embrace all proper opportunities of executing the infinitely solemn and important command which their Lord had delivered to them. It gives no account of the introduction of Christianity into numerous countries, which we are assured received that religion within the apostolic age; nor even of the origin many of those churches which are recognized as existing and flourishing in the subsequent parts of the New Testament. It gives a minute account of some detached labours and discourses of Peter; but it does not follow him into those wider spheres of exertion which we have reason to believe that he actually occupied. Though it treats the most copiously of the actions of Paul, yet it, by no means, furnishes a complete history of his life and services to the cause of Christianity, down to the time at which it closes. In his own epistles there are allusions to many and very important circumstances, which occurred during the period embraced by the narrative of Luke; but of which the narrative takes not the smallest notice.* The book, valuable and sacred as it is, cannot therefore with propriety be called The Acts of the Apostles. It does not profess to occupy so wide a field: nor does it even propose a regular history of the

*For instances, see 2 Cor. xi. 23-28. xii. 2. Gal. i. 17. ii. 1. 2 Thess. ii. 2. Titus i. 5.

persons and facts upon which it dwells, often with a circumstantial minuteness. It is rather a collection of anecdotes and particular memoirs, referring to the actual commencement of the Christian dispensation, detailing some events in the history of the churches at Jerusalem and Antioch, and occupying its latter. half with many and interesting transactions of the apostle Paul, but, as we have remarked, not including a perfect series of them during the period that is embraced.

The annunciation of his design which Luke gives in the preface to his Gospel, seems very justly to comprehend the two parts of his work : and, if this be admitted, it will supply us with a sufficient reason why the book called the Acts was drawn up in its particular manner and order; and it will prevent our disappointment at not meeting with those statements, in either history or doctrine, which an incorrect estimate of its intention might lead us to expect.

Whoever Theophilus, to whom the books are inscribed, was, it is plain that the writer's design was, not to make him acquainted with the fundamental truths of Christianity, for in them he had been already instructed; but to furnish him with a selection of facts, relative to the actions, discourses, and sufferings of the Lord Jesus, and the diffusion of his religion in some particular places and by some particular persons. Those places and persons, it is highly probable, had some connexion with Theophilus more than other places or persons would have had and thus,

some specialty of circumstances was the principle which guided the selection. By the interest which he would feel, from the associations thus formed in his mind, it was the design of the evangelist to increase his assurance of the truth of those doctrines, and the force of those obligations, in which he had already received information: "It seemed proper to me who have accurately followed all [the circumstances] from the first, to write to thee in order, most noble Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of the declarations in which thou hast been instructed."*

As we are not to regard the book of the Acts in the light of a regular history, so this view of its design will prevent our expecting from it a body of Christian doctrine. It supposes the reader to be, like Theophilus, already acquainted with the great principles of that doctrine and it is therefore, occupied in giving him the facts which formed the basis of evidence for those principles, or which were examples of their diffusion and influence among men. If any person were to contend that any given doctrine is not a genuine, or at least not an important, part of Christianity, because it is not made prominent in the narrative, or in the discourses, of this book; I would request him to consider, whether the principle which he is assuming, would not lead him to regard every moral duty as indifferent, or

* Luke i. 4.