and state of those churches, as addressed by St. John, or rather with the life of St. John himself, who addresses them under the warning of removal for their failure. The throne at Jerusalem being gone, there was still, by him who had been there with the Lord, a recognition of the churches as something upon earth: there was nothing sealed in this. But if we take the Apostle as the mystic representative of the dispensation in its condition after the departure of St. Peter and St. Paul,[1] then
- ↑ If we trace the actual order of Church history in the Acts, we shall find the breaking up and scattering of the central and only church of Jerusalem by the death of Stephen, gone to Jesus—and then the church on earth scattered—thereon Saul called for an entirely new instrument to Gentiles, rulers, and the people of Israel—and thereon the union of the Church with Jesus in heaven for the first time mentioned, “Why persecutest thou me?”—but after this (though the principle of Paul’s mission and the union of the Church with Jesus was established), the patience of God continuing to work by the ministration of Peter. Æneas and Tabitha are the witnesses of his power; and the calling of the Gentiles is by his mouth, that the witness of the Jewish stock might still be preserved in grace, whatever the righteous justice of the dispensation might do in judgment (and so in dispensation the faithful partake of the ruin of the unfaithful, as Caleb and Joshua must wander in the wilderness)—and thereon extraordinary intervention might effect, besides, in one born out of due time, the witness of prerogative grace in the disorder of the dispensation, as to man. We find the lingering traces of habitual evil in the Saints, for they objected to Peter his having gone to the Gentiles—yet this was the final sin of the Jews. Such was the patience of God, that
