CHAPTER III.

ST. PETER'S RETURN TO THE SERVICE OF JESUS AFTER THE CRUCIFIXION, AND HIS WILLINGNESS TO ENDURE EVERY SUFFERING RATHER THAN CONTINUE ΤΟ DENY HIS MASTER, MAKE IT UNQUESTIONABLE THAT HIS REPENTANCE WAS SINCERE, AND THAT HIS OWN MIND WAS FULLY CONVINCED OF THE AUTHORITY OF THE DOCTRINES WHICH HE INVITED OTHERS TO EMBRACE.

I HAVE endeavoured to show, in the former chapters, that Peter could not have acted and discoursed as he did, from the time of his commencing a publisher of the doctrine of the cross, without strength and illumination from Heaven. Waving, at present, the force of this argument, and postponing the consideration of the miracles which he wrought, and other evidences of the veracity of his testimony ;I ask, Is it credible that he should have been willing to take the part in which he engaged after his defection, if he had not seen his Saviour risen from the dead, and been assured that Christianity is true, and the

greatest of all truths-" the Wisdom of God, and the Power of God unto salvation 1."

The

Peter might have separated himself from the body of disciples, and gone back to his original avocation, and the quiet and security of domestic life. He had every temporal distress to apprehend from returning to his allegiance to Jesus, and every worldly encouragement to hope for, if he had chosen to persist in renouncing Him. None of the rulers or priests had shown a symptom of remorse of conscience, when he stood forward as a witness of the resurrection. rancour, with which they pursued the Master, they had a full disposition to exercise against His followers. Peter might have met the caresses and applauses, instead of the anger and enmity, of these leading men of his nation. And, if Jesus had been a false prophet, he would have done well to abandon His cause. If all had terminated in the crucifixion, the Apostle's labour would have been in vain. It would have been useless to others, and ruinous to himself.

Of the consequences of resuming the office, which he had abdicated by his denial, Peter could not have been unapprized. His case was one of peculiar difficulty. He, who had occupied a chief place among the Twelve, who had been the most ready to make

1 1 Cor. i. 24. Rom. i. 16.

confident promises, had fallen lower than any, with the exception of Judas Iscariot. He must have expected to hear it objected to him, that he had thrice disowned Jesus, after having listened, during the closest attendance upon Him, to the "words which proceeded out of His mouth "," and been ob servant of "all things which He did, both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem 2." He had this reproach to bear, in addition to the hard treatment incident to the life of an Apostle. For revilings, and insults, and for opposition of a still more trying nature, his mind must have been prepared. He must have known that the utmost weight of the indignation of his countrymen would fall upon him for asserting that the victim of their barbarity, whom they had nailed to the cross as a malefactor, was a Prince and a Saviour, at the right hand of God, Peter must have been aware that this doctrine would be ill received, that the hearts of "the betrayers and murderers of the Just One" would not be easily melted to repentance, and that the persons, who dared to proclaim their guilt, would be "as sheep in the midst of wolves 1." But "none of these things moved him "."

Can the motive of his zeal in "hazarding his life

for the Name of his Lord Jesus Christ" be mistaken? What could have actuated him, but love and reverence for God's truth? What object could have presented itself to his view, but the "saving of himself, and them that heard him?" To what recompense could he have had respect, but "a crown of glory, which fadeth not away?" He left ALL in this present world, to be "partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel +."

It is contrary to universal experience, repugnant to all the ordinary principles of human action, that a man should endure poverty, toil, reproach, and persecution, to make a deception pass current in the world, from which he foresaw that no benefit could accrue to him. It must be evident to all, except the most blind and bigotted objectors to Sacred Truth, that no man would dedicate his life to the propagation of an imposture, to his own certain loss and prejudice—an imposture, which placed before the assertor of it "tribulation and distress, persecution and famine, nakedness, peril, and the sword "."

1 Acts xv. 26.

3 1 Pet. v. 4.

2 1 Tim. iv. 16. 4 2 Tim. i. 8.

5 Ut pro concepta opinione mortem quis subeat fieri potest, quanquam et hoc rarum est; at ut quis idem faciat pro testimonio rei quam falsam esse novit, et unde nihil, aut ipsi, aut aliis, boni sperari possit, omnibus sani judicii hominibus incredibile videtur, Grot. ad Matt. xxviii. 13.

Rom. viii. 35.

E

And let it be remembered, that, unless Peter had lost all respect for those Scriptures, which from infancy he had been taught to revere, there were threatenings against FALSEHOOD in the Old Testament, to which he could not have been insensible. He must have considered, if he had any religious feeling, that, to declare the Divine mission of Jesus, without believing in it, was to offer a fearful affront to the Supreme Majesty of Heaven. If "destruction from God was a terror to him," he must have reflected on the sentence, "He, that speaketh lies, shall perish1;" and he must have known, that, to assert untruly, with a consciousness of the untruth, that the Sufferer on the cross was "the Christ, the Son of God," was to utter, not a falsehood only, but blasphemy 2.

If, in defiance of the Divine wrath, and from some motive, not to be penetrated, Peter made a false show of sorrow for his denial, and attempted to spread a religion in which his own faith had been destroyed, how extraordinary were the measures which he took for the execution of his project!

He combined with associates, on whose firmness he could have placed no dependance. They, who had fled from Jesus, when they believed Him to be a true Prophet, were not to be trusted, as confede

1 Prov. xix. 9.

2 See Milman's Bampton Lectures, Lect. viii.