is only by doing violence to all the evidence
which we possess, that anything can be done to support either the
theory of Baur and his school that the apostles of the Church were
divided with regard to the _Law_, or the more recent theory of Harnack
and others that they were divided with regard to the _Person of
Christ_. All the apostles believed that the gospel was for all men on
equal terms, and that Christ was the divine Lord of all.

In addition to these points, it is necessary to say a few words about
_the ministry of the Church_ which is described in Acts. It is
asserted by such writers as Martineau, Sabatier, and Schmiedel, that
the state of the Church and the ministry in Acts betrays the fact that
the author did not write in the apostolic age. It is said that
"hierarchical ideas" or "hierarchical pretensions" can be detected in
such passages as i. 17, 20; viii. 14-17; xv. 28; xx. 28, and that such
ideas {112} could not have been entertained by the apostles. It is not
possible to give a full discussion of such a theory in this book.[4]
We must be content with noting that, in order to give it any appearance
of validity, it is necessary to reject every part of the New Testament
which does not happen to agree with it. Schmiedel, who places Acts
between A.D. 110 and 130, says that "Acts xx. 18-35 has many ideas in
common with those of the Pastoral Epistles," but that "the author has
not yet reached the stage in the development of Church government which
characterizes the First Epistle to Timothy." [5] He says this simply
because that Epistle, which he regards as a late forgery, shows a form
of Church government practically identical with Episcopacy, while he
thinks that Acts xx. shows a form of government intermediate between
the genuine apostolic form and Episcopacy. To this we may make two
answers; (a) that the Church government in Acts and 1 Timothy is
practically the same, the work of the apostle being in r Timothy partly
delegated to an apostolic vicar; (b) as there is excellent evidence for
regarding 1 Timothy as a genuine writing of St. Paul, it gives us an
additional cause for believing that the description of Church
government in Acts is not fictitious.

ANALYSIS

The outline of the book is laid down in the words of our Lord quoted in
i. 8, "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon
you: and ye shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea,
and Samaria, and unto