For some years the Apostles remained labouring amongst the people of Antioch, but at length a trouble arose, through the disputing of the Christian Jews.
It was very difficult to them to divest themselves of the idea, that in the exact observance of the Mosaic law lay the one way of justification and salvation.
It was very difficult, again, for them to believe that faith and obedience to the law taught by Jesus Christ was sufficient without the outward ceremonies to which they had been accustomed, and which were peculiar to them as a nation. When, therefore, the Christian Jews refused to communicate with the Christian Gentiles until they submitted to the rites of the old Hebrew law, SS. Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem, there to confer upon such matters with St. Peter, and SS. James and John.
St. Peter, as head of the Church, addressed the assembly first. He told them that God had given His Holy Spirit to the Gentile as well as to the Jew; nor did He require them to conform to the Jewish customs as regarded meats, and drinks, and outward ceremonies. When he had finished, both St. Paul and St. Barnabas spoke in turn of their mission, and the success granted to their labours.
St. James then addressed the assembly, and said that the Jews could observe the customs in which they had been educated, but that the Gentiles were not to do the same. They must seek to abstain from idolatry.
The final decision of this first council, known as the Council of Jerusalem, was, that the Gentile converts were only obliged to abstain from meats offered in sacrifice, from blood and the flesh of strangled animals, and also were to preserve purity of manners as a distinctive mark of their connection with the Church of Christ.
It was necessary to prohibit these converts from meats offered in sacrifice, else they might easily have fallen back into paganism: impurity was thought so lightly of by the un-christian, that it was necessary to set a higher principle before them as a positive law and obligation. The prohibition against strangulated meats originated in the consideration of what was healthful, while the prohibition from blood had a still higher signification. While it continued to be offered in the temple as a sacrifice to God, it must be reserved wholly for sacred purposes.
The decision of the council was made known to the different Churches, and SS. Paul and Barnabas were sent again to Antioch.
Paul soon began to think of visiting the Churches they had established. "Let us return and visit our brethren in all the cities wherein we have preached the word of the Lord, to see how they do."