dispersion, that they should not circumcise their children nor walk
after the customs of Moses. Paul was induced to suppress or conceal his
indifference to circumcision but not his pronounced indifference to
water baptism.

Thus closes our last recorded meeting of the elders and apostles at
Jerusalem with no apparent abatement of zeal for circumcision. To the
last they evinced much more zeal for circumcision than they had ever
shown for water baptism; and they never in any way recognized water
baptism as the successor of circumcision.

Plainly it was not by the apostles but after the apostles' time that
circumcision was discarded and water baptism exalted.[176]

Altho' Paul ostensibly yielded to the elders and apostles at Jerusalem,
yet his subsequent epistles indicate that he remained firmly indifferent
or opposed to circumcision, water baptism, and other ordinances, all of
which he called carnal, weak and beggarly elements when applied to
Gentiles. Paul said he was made all things to all men that he might win
some.[177]

To the Jews, he became a Jew, to the Gentiles a Gentile.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 162: Acts 1.6; Luke 24.21]

[Footnote 163: Acts 11.1, 3; Gal. 2.11, 12]

[Footnote 164: Acts 11.1, 16; Acts 10.28]