vifion and voice, being to prepare him to go to uncircumcifed Gentiles, and to dispose him to receive them into the church, and treat them as heirs of the fame bleffings with believers of the circumcifion, upon their faith in Chrift, without any requirement of obedience to the ftatutes of Mofes.

How contrary to truth then Mr. Voltaire's account of this tranfaction! *

It is to be carefully obferved, there was no difference of principle or fentiment between Peter and Paul, about the freedom of the Gentiles from all obligation to obferve the Mofaic rites, that they might be faved. The fpring of Peter's conduct was not a persuasion of the neceffity of their observation of them, unto the bleffedness of heaven, but a dread of the difpleasure of the Jews which hurried him to act against his inward sense and judgment about the liberty of the Gentiles from that yoke, as he had declared it, Acts xv. 7-11. For, not to infift that TEGTEEV might be rendered fo as to denote his difguifing his real opinion by his behaviour, more than in our version, which runs, ' He withdrew,' it is exprefsly remarked, 'That the reft of the Jews diffembled together with him,' Zurumexpionσar auTW, which implies, that he firft, and they after his example, in fcrupulously avoiding the Gentile believers as unclean, difavowed their inward ap❤ prehenfions, through fear of the circumcifion.

SECTION XXIV.

Of his false relation there of Peter's behaviour to Ananias and his wife, and his cenfures thereof, together with the observation he ascribes to Erafmus, that the head of the Christian religion began his apostleship by denying Jefus Chrift.

A LITTLE after, and in the fame * page, he goes on thus, Cafaubon could not approve Peter's beha'viour to Ananias and his wife, who were a good fort of people; What right, fays he, had a Jew, a flave under the Romans, to order or allow all who ⚫ believed in Jefus to fell their fubftance, and lay the produce at his feet? Were an Anabaptist preacher at London to order his brethren to bring him all • their money, would he not be taken up as a mover of fedition, a robber, and as fuch fent to Tyburn? Was it not a horrid thing to ftrike Ananias dead, only because out of the money for which he had fold his eftate, he scarcely referved a few pounds, against a rainy day, bringing the far greater part to Peter. Scarce was the breath out of Ananias's body, when in comes his wife. Peter, instead of kindly informing her that he had juft killed her • husband for keeping a few pence, and telling her C to take care of what she had, allures her into the 'fnare. He asks her whether her husband had brought in all his money for the faints; the poor woman an'fwers, Yes, and inftantly drops down dead. Something hard this!

C

* Philof. Diction. Article Peter, page 297.

But what cause to complain of difingenuity and unjuft cenfure here!

Whether Cafaubon disapproved Peter's behaviour to Ananias and his wife, and expreffed his disapprobation of it in fuch terms as Voltaire makes him use, I will not be positive. Had our author given me any direction in which of his works I might have read his fentiments upon the fubject, I would have endeavoured to know exactly how the fact ftood, and to fatisfy the world whether he sheltered himself with justice under his authority. As he has been filent about this, I muft leave the tale upon his credit with the reader, who perhaps may with myself much fufpect fome aggravation in it. Be it however, that he hath transcribed his account of the fcripture history, and his cavils againft it, from this author with exactness, instead of paffing upon us under his name a production of his own mint, either in whole or in part. Still he must be answerable for the fame, fince in copying he shews manifest tokens of complacency and approbation.

Now is there not here a great deal of mifreprefentation? In Luke's account, Acts, v. there is no mention what proportion of the purchase money Ananias and Sapphira agreed to withhold; it is only faid, that Ananias, with the privacy or knowledge of his wife, kept back from the price of the lands which he had fold, and having brought a certain part thereof, laid it down at the apoftles feet.' Nevertheless, Mr. Voltaire is pofitive, that he prefented the far greater part to Peter, and referved the far leffer part of it to himself againft future exigencies; yea, that he kept only a few pounds against a rainy

day, or as he has it still more diminutively, only a few pence. Farther, he makes Peter to have asked Sapphira, whether her husband had brought all the money for the faints; which is causing him propose a very abfurd question, fince having been abfent from him for fome time, she could not anfwer Yes or No, without a previous account of the fum he produced: whereas according to the facred hiftorian, he only inquired' Whether the land had been fold for fo much money,' mentioning the quantity he had offered as its entire price; which was what fhe could tell at once, as she had concurred or joined with him in the alienation of the property. By confequence, he no more allured her into a fnare, according to his accufation, than one person may be said to deal so by another, who examines him about a plain and recent fact, about which there is no room for misapprehenfion or forgetfulness, without giving him information that a perfon concerned hath already suffered for the denial of the truth.-Finally, there is no intimation through the narrative of any * apostolical order to fell the land, as our author is willing to fuppofe; on the contrary, Peter, in reasoning with Ananias, proceeds upon this principle, that he was under no obligation to dispose of his eftate, but that it was free to him to retain it; for, says he, ver. 4. • While it (the land he means) remained with thee, was it not thine own? Was it not altogether at thy

* To Peter, who is faid to have given this order, the epithet of flave which Mr. Voltaire hath bestowed on him, belonged in no fenfe but this, that he was a subject of Judea, which had been reduced to the state of a province of the Roman empire, the inhabitants ftill living according to their own laws, and enjoying their own property as before.

choice and pleasure to sell it, or not? And indeed we read of no injunction upon any of the Christian converts to fell houfes or lands, and bring the money which they received from them into a public fund for the ufe of the church.

Again, as there is such misrepresentation here, is there not also unjustifiable clamour against the apoftle, for punishing this man and his wife with fudden death on account of their conduct. To vindicate their being ftruck dead, I need not labour to fwell their fin, by fixing upon them a conviction of facrilege, that is, of converting to their own purposes what they had devoted and confecrated to a religious use. This, I am aware, fome have contended to be their crime; they have imagined, that upon seeing the liberality of others, and particularly of Barnabas, they had uttered with their lips a vow to God, or a promife to the church, at least formed in their hearts a folemn refolution of equivalent force, to fell their land, and to bestow the produce of its fale for the benefit and advantage of the members of Chrift; that it was no longer therefore in their power, either not to difpofe of the eftate, or not to bring in the full price without being guilty of facrilege; an iniquity, which though it might be expiated or atoned for by the facrifice of a ram without blemish, according to the law of Mofes, where it was committed through ignorance, upon restitution of the thing, and the addition of a fifth part beyond the estimation or value of it, Levit. v. 15, 16. yet where it was done wilfully and prefumptuously as here, expofed to be cut off from the congregation of the Lord by the fword of the magistrate, or the