separate (that is consecrate*) Barnabas and Saul; and accordingly they fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, and sent them away. After this, where is the man that shall pretend to a call from heaven, without a call from the Church, as sufficient to constitute a preacher of the gospel; when it was not sufficient in the case of Paul himself? To prevent disorder, it is the will of God, that the authority and rule of his Church should in all cases be preserved: so the Church sends out even where God himself hath separated already; to the end that no man, under any circumstances whatever, may be independent of the Christian society. The apostle might have objected to this "laying on of hands," as unnecessary in his case, who had been consecrated already by an higher authority: but God acts by the Church which he has appointed, for the preservation of order and the preventing of imposture; and charity,, which seeketh not her own, will never claim any private rights in opposition to it. St. Paul, therefore, who had been sent forth from heaven, was sent forth by the Church in company with Barnabas. It had been the custom of Christ to send out his disciples upon the work of the ministry by two and two, and thence See Numb. xvi. 9. we we hear one of them calling his companion a true yoke-fellow in conformity with which custom, Paul and Barnabas were sent together; who travelled from Antioch to Seleucia, and thence took ship to the island of Cyprus ; where, at Salamis, in the synagogues which the Jews had in that place, they exercised their ministry and, proceeding from thence, they went through the island to Paphos, which lay at the other extremity of it. In their progress, they must have said and done many things, which had already made them well known to the people: and in all probability the fame of their preaching had reached the place long before they arrived thither in consequence of which, we are not to wonder that Sergius Paulus, the Roman proconsul, was desirous to hear what so many others of the people had heard before him he therefore called for Barnabas and Saul, and desired to hear the word of God; and being himself a man of sense and prudence, with a mind open to conviction, the word of God was likely to have its effect, and make a convert of him. But here an accident intervenes, which is far from being uncommon; a certain man, who has an interest against the truth, throws himself across the way to hinder its progress; there seems to be some such mischievous blasphemous person ready in all places; permitted by God, and provided by the Devil; provided to resist the truth; permitted to make it shine more bright; as truth seldom fails to do, when it meets with malicious opposition. Thus when Moses presented himself to Pharaoh, the magicians withstood him; with design to confute his wisdom by their philosophy, and to equal his miracles by their enchantments. This man seems to have been partly of the same character: the text calls him a sorcerer; nearly the same thing with an enchanter; and so far he is an heathenized magician; with that name of Magus, which is given only to the wise men of the heathen religion. There is a portentous mixture in this man's character; for he who, as a magician, is an heathen, is also a Jew, and is called Bar-Jesus, which is a Jewish name. A Jew, free from prejudice, and learned in scriptures of the first covenant, was of all others best qualified to hear and receive the gospel of Christ; but this was a Jew fit for nothing but unbelief: because a Jew turned heathen, would be much worse than a native heathen: his Judaism, being of a spurious malignant kind, would be all against him, and carry him away so much farther from the the truth. From his being acquainted, as a companion, with the proconsul, we may also judge that he was a person of some figure, one who had probably the repute of a learned education, such as qualified him to be in the sociciety of the superior class of people. Such a man as this could foresee nothing but the total ruin of his own character in the doctrines of the gospel; therefore it was improbable that he would receive them himself; and he was determined that no one else, as far as his influence went, should receive them. So he withstood the apostles, and either by his arguments, or his sneers, or his lies, sought to prevail with Sergius not to listen to them. In such a case as this what does the apostle do? I can tell you what he would probably have done, had he lived in this civil half-believing age: when it is the fashion not to stand up for the authority of God, for fear of being reputed an high-churchman; nor to be too sure of any thing, lest you should give offence to those, who find it convenient to be sure of nothing, and say, they cannot think as you do so with the influence of our times upon him, he might have observed, "that the learned philosopher "would be of another opinion if he would but 66 permit him to lay the case before him; that he "had "had many things to say, which his opponent "had probably not well considered." This was not the apostle's manner: he knew that nothing but the Devil could resist the gospel; that nothing but darkness could be opposite to light; so he makes the man no fair speeches; but tells him and his friends in plain terms what he thinks of him, " O full of all subtlety "O and all mischief; thou child of the Devil; thou enemy of all righteousness; wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?" The ways of the Lord are the ways of truth, and the ways of truth are strait: this man wanted to make them appear crooked and false; and the apostle seeing that this was his design, had no mercy upon him; but gave him his real character at once. And from this example, we have a rule for our own conduct in like cases. Where persons err through ignorance, or cannot see properly for want of light, we are to make a proper difference, and treat them with all gentleness: but if they pretend to be wiser than wisdom, and wish not to see by the light, but to put it out that nobody else may see by it: in short, if their design is bad, then we are never to spare them; we are never to be tender to malice; for that is the same as to be cruel to all true men: there fore, |