[Footnote A: "Apostatic: Pertaining to an apostate or apostasy."—Dictionary.]
NOTES.
The Subject Proposed: It now becomes m. melancholy task to trace through the early Christian centuries the decline of the Christian religion. By this phrase I mean that a really unchristian religion was gradually substituted for the beautiful religion of Jesus Christ; that a universal apostasy from the Christian doctrine and the Christian Church took place. So tracing the decline of Christianity, I shall establish the truth of the first great message with which the modern prophet, Joseph Smith, came to the world; and shall also prove the fact that a necessity existed for the establishment of such a work as he claims, under God, to have founded, and which will bring us to the culmination of the ages—to the completion of all the dispensations of the gospel in the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times, in which will be "gathered together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and earth, even in him." (Eph. i:10.)
Character of the Early Christians: First of all, it should be remarked that the early Christians were not so far removed from the possession of the common weaknesses of humanity as to preclude the possibility of apostatizing from the Christian religion. Owing to our being so far removed from them in time, by which many of their defects are obscured, and the exaggerated celebration of their virtues, extravagant ideas of the sanctity of their lives and the holiness of their natures has very generally obtained; whereas a little inquiry into the character of the early saints will prove that they were very human, and men of like passions with ourselves.
Ambitious Controversies of the Apostles: The mother of Zebedee's children exhibited a rather ambitious spirit, and the two brethren themselves gave much offense to their fellow apostles by aspiring to sit the one on the right hand of Jesus and the other on His left when He should come into His Kingdom.[A] Even Peter, the chief Apostle, exhibited his full share of human weakness when he thrice denied his Lord in the presence of his enemies, through fear, and even confirmed that denial by cursing and swearing.[B] It was rather a heated controversy, too, that arose in the early Christian Church as to whether those who accepted the Christian faith were still bound to the observances of the law of Moses, and more especially to the rite of circumcision. Although there seems to have been an amicable and authoritative settlement of that question by the decision of what some learned writers have called the first general council of the Church, held by the Apostles and Elders at Jerusalem,[C] yet the old difficulty broke out again and again, not only between the Jewish saints and the Gentile converts, but even among the Apostles themselves, leading to serious accusations one against another, the straining of friendship between fellow-workmen in the ministry, through criminations and recriminations.
[Footnote A: Matt. xx:20-24.]
[Footnote B: Matt. xxvi:69-75.]
[Footnote C: Acts xv.]
After the settlement of this very question of circumcision by the council at Jerusalem, Peter went down to Antioch and at first mingled unreservedly with both Jew and Gentile converts without distinction, accepting both Jew and Gentile in perfect fellowship, departing entirely from the restraints placed on a Jew by the law of Moses, which rendered it unlawful for one who was a Jew to have such unrestricted fellowship with the Gentiles. But when certain ones came down from James, who resided in Jerusalem, then Peter, fearful of offending "them which were of the circumcision," suddenly withdrew his social fellowship from the Gentile converts. Other Jewish brethren did the same; Barnabas, the friend of Paul, being among the number. Whereupon Paul, as he himself testified, withstood Peter to the face, directly charging him before all the brethren with dissimulation, saying: "If thou being a Jew livest after the manner of Gentiles and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?"[A] Yet this same Paul, notwithstanding his loyalty to the Gentile converts on that occasion, his zeal for the decision which had been rendered by the council of the Church at Jerusalem, and notwithstanding his usually strong moral courage, subsequently showed by his conduct that he, too, was not beyond the weakness of "becoming all things to all men;" for a short time after the incident with Peter at Antioch, when in the province of Galatia, and he desired Timothy to be his companion in the ministry, Paul took him and circumcised him, because it was well known that while his mother was a Jewess, his father was a Greek, and all this for fear of the Jews.[B]
[Footnote A: Galatians ii.]