impression was true, for although, as Dr. McGiffert says, Paul
"recognized the legitimacy of Jewish Christianity, and
the right of Peter and other apostles to preach to the Jews
the Gospel of circumcision, and though there is no evidence
that he ever undertook to lead the Jews as a people
to cease observing their ancestral law, he had certainly
been in the habit of insisting that his Jewish converts
should associate on equal terms with their Gentile brethren,
and that they should not allow their law to act in any
way as a barrier to the freest and most intimate association
with them. But this, of course, meant, in so far, their
violation of the law's commands. It is certain also that
Paul had preached for years the doctrine that not the Gentile
Christian alone but the Jewish Christian as well is absolutely
free from all obligation to keep the law of Moses,
and though such teaching might not always result in a disregard
of that law by his Jewish converts, it must have a
tendency to produce that effect and doubtless did in many
cases. It is clear therefore that both accusations had much
truth in them, and it is difficult to suppose that Paul can
have deliberately attempted in Jerusalem to prove them
wholly false.
"And yet, though as an honourable man and a man of principle he can hardly have undertaken to demonstrate that there was no truth in the reports which were circulated concerning him, it may well be that he tried to show that they were not wholly true. It was evidently assumed by those who accused him of 'teaching all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs,' that he hated the Jewish law and that he was doing all that lay in his power to destroy it; that he believed
