Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE COUNCIL OF JERUSALEM. Sec. 1.—Scripture Narrative. Although our review of Theological Discussions properly begins at the close of the apostolic age, yet there is one transaction recorded in the New Testament to which it may be proper to advert, from its intimate connection with the whole subsequent history and government of the church, and with the controversies to which they have given rise, many of them continuing down to the present day. I allude to what is commonly called the Council of Jerusalem, recorded in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. There has been a very great deal of discussion about the true character of this transaction, and the lessons, if any, which it is fitted to suggest respecting the government of the church in subsequent ages. Papists, Prelates, and Presbyterians have usually held that it was fitted and intended to convey some instruction as to the way and manner in which the government of the church should be permanently conducted, and have all professed to find in it something to favour their respective systems ; while Congre- gationalists, not being able to find in it anything to favour their views of church government, have generally contented themselves with maintaining that it does not afford any very clear or certain materials for determining in what way the government of the church should be conducted in subsequent ages. Papists, finding it recorded here that Peter took a prominent part in the discussion Books and references on the Council at Jerusalem :— Moshemii Jnstitutiones Majores, p. 263. Commentarii, pp. 155, 169. Buddaeus, Ecclesia Apostolica, c. iv. Buddaeus, Isagoge, lib. ii. c. v. sec. iii. p. 741. Parker, De Politico Ecclesia stica, lib. iii. c. xiii. Boe'hmeri, Dissertationes...