Chapter Twenty-One1
Objection based on S. Peter's treatment of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts v. 1-11).
This Peter is convicted of doing wrong in other cases also. For in the case of a certain man called Ananias, and his wife Sapphira, because they did not deposit the whole price of their land, but kept back a little for their own necessary use, Peter put them to death, although they had done no wrong. For how did they do wrong, if they did not wish to make a present of all that was their own? But even if he did consider their act to be one of wrongdoing, he ought to have remembered the commands of Jesus, who had taught him to endure as many as four hundred and ninety sins against him; he would then at least have pardoned one, if indeed what had occurred could really in any sense be called a sin. And there is another thing which he ought to have borne in mind in dealing with others---namely, how he himself, by swearing that he did not know Jesus, had not only told a lie, but had foresworn himself, in contempt of the judgment and resurrection to come.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Answer to the objection based on S. Peter's treatment of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts v. 1-11).
[If you understand the circumstances, you will see that Ananias did wrong, and was punished for the general good.
The preaching of the Gospel and its wonders uplifted the first Christians to heaven, and men came from all directions to drink of the fountain of grace. They gave up individual possessions and joined all together, so that wealth ceased to exist in this spiritual society. Among others, Ananias and his wife offered their property to the common stock. When once given to Christ, it was no longer their own. It was therefore wrong to keep some back, though merely in itself such a deed does not appear so.
Peter at once cut out this evil, in order that the disease might not spread to the whole body of believers. The deed was not a wrong done to Peter, and therefore it did not receive his forgiveness;2 but it was done to the Deity, and was an outrage on the faith. Besides, if no notice had been taken, they would have thought their hidden deed escaped Christ's notice, and so would have proceeded unrebuked to worse sins, and have infected others, like a pestilence, with the same ideas. To prevent this, Peter checks the disease, and drags up the weeds before they can spread over the field.
The above is proved by Peter's question: "Why did ye resolve3 to tempt the Holy Spirit?" Then they were slain, by a blow, not (as you say) of a sword, but of the conscience, coming from the Holy Spirit of love. Peter is therefore without any blame for the death of either of them, which was sent as a warning to the rest.]
Footnotes:
1It is at this point that the attack on S. Peter begins. Harnack (op. cit. p. 103 et seq.) considers that the opponent's work was here divided into two, a division which Macarius has quite obscured. He does not show why a book of excerpts from the fifteen books of Porphyry should have been thus divided, but he affords valuable though unintentional support to the theory that the work is the two books of the Philalethes of Hierocles. In this case this might well mark the beginning of the Second Book. As the beginning and end are lost, Harnack reconstruct? the two parts as follows: the first part as containing x + 10 + 13 questions, and the second part 9+16 + x (p. 105 n. 1).
2Thus briefly and in parenthesis does he answer what his opponent had said about the injunction of "seventy times seven." See note on the heading of chapter xx. This answer is excellent as far as it goes, but scarcely covers all the objection.
3The quotation, as often, seems to be from memory, as the reading is τί ὅτι ἔδοξεν ὑμῖν instead of συνεφωνήθη.