2. And again, the Lord replied to Philip, who wished to behold the Father, "Have I been so long a time with you, and yet thou hast not known me, Philip? He that sees me, sees also the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father? For I am in the Father, and the Father in me; and henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him."[1] To these men, therefore, did the Lord bear witness, that in Himself they had both known and seen the Father (and the Father is truth). To allege, then, that these men did not know the truth, is to act the part of false witnesses, and of those who have been alienated from the doctrine of Christ. For why did the Lord send the twelve apostles to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,[2] if these men did not know the truth? How also did the seventy preach, unless they had themselves previously known the truth of what was preached? Or how could Peter have been in ignorance, to whom the Lord gave testimony, that flesh and blood had not revealed to him, but the Father, who is in heaven?[3] Just, then, as "Paul [was] an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father,"[4] [so with the rest;][5] the Son indeed leading them to the Father, but the Father revealing to them the Son.
3. But that Paul acceded to [the request of] those who summoned him to the apostles, on account of the question [which had been raised], and went up to them, with Barnabas, to Jerusalem, not without reason, but that the liberty of the Gentiles might be confirmed by them, he does himself say, in the Epistle to the Galatians: "Then, fourteen years after, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking also Titus. But I went up by revelation, and communicated to them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles."[6] And again he says, "For an hour we did give place to subjection,[7] that the
- ↑ John xiv. 7, 9, 10.
- ↑ Matt. x. 6.
- ↑ Matt. xvi. 17.
- ↑ Gal. i. 1.
- ↑ Some such supplement seems necessary, as Grabe suggests, though Harvey contends that no apodosis is requisite.
- ↑ Gal. ii. 1, 2.
- ↑ Latin, "Ad horam cessimus subjectioni" (Gal. ii. 5). Irenæus gives it an altogether different meaning from that which it has in the received
