to him who thinks it so it may be unclean. It is well to abstain from eating flesh or drinking wine, or anything else that may give offense to others, but these things are all unimportant in themselves. One man esteems one day above another; another man esteems them all alike; let each be fully persuaded in his own mind. Only let us not judge one another, nor put stumbling-blocks in one another's way (Rom. xiv).
From these considerations it appears that the suspicions entertained of Paul at Jerusalem were substantially true. Possibly he did not absolutely teach the Jews to abandon the law; possibly he did not even completely abandon it himself. But in his writings he constantly treats it as a thing indifferent in itself; Christians might or might not believe in its obligations, and provided they acted conscientiously, all was well. Along with these very skeptical opinions, however, Paul strongly held to the necessity of worldly prudence. He is very indignant with the "false brethren privily introduced, who slipped in to spy out the liberty we have in Jesus Christ, that they might enslave us; to whom," he adds, "we did not yield by subjection even for an hour" (Gal. ii. 4, 5). But whether the brethren at Jerusalem required him to clear himself from the report that he was not an observer of the lay, there came in another principle of action, which he has himself explained with praiseworthy frankness. "To the Jews," he tells the Corinthians, "I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to those under the law as under the law, not being myself under the law, that I might gain those under the law; to those without law, as without law (not being without law to God, but law-abiding to Christ), that I might gain those without law; to the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak; I became all things to all men, that by all means I might save some" (1 Cor. ix. 20-22). Acting on this elastic rule, Paul might easily comply with all the demands of James and his zealots. To the Jews he became a Jew for the nonce. It was perhaps in the same spirit of worldly wisdom that he took the precaution of circumcising a young convert who was Jewish only on the mother's side, his father having been a Greek (Acts xvi. 1-3).
While such was the conduct of this strong-minded reformer, it is plain that his attitude towards the law was not shared by
