Of the Ordination of Bishops[8], apart from the Apostolate, we have no mention in the Book of the Acts; but that the Apostles did ordain successors to themselves, so far as their office was to be perpetual in the Church, we have ample proofs in the Epistles of St. Paul to St. Timothy and St. Titus. [Sidenote: Their functions.] To both these holy men, Bishops or Overseers of the Church in Ephesus and Crete respectively, St. Paul gives injunctions as to their duties, particularly in ordaining Elders or Priests, the distinguishing work of a Bishop[9].
Section 3. _The First Council of the Church._
For a "long time" after the return of St. Paul and St. Barnabas to Antioch, with the news that God had, through their { 34} instrumentality, "opened the Door of Faith to the Gentiles," the Church in that city seems to have continued to flourish in peace and prosperity. [Sidenote: Difficulties as to the observance of Jewish rites.] But difficulties with regard to the observance or non-observance by the Gentile converts of the rite of circumcision and other precepts of the Mosaic law, arose to disturb this quiet.
[Sidenote: A.D. 52. Hebrew Jews go to Antioch.]
The Hellenist clergy in Antioch, less wedded to Judaism, had apparently received into communion, without doubt or question, those amongst the heathen around the city who had been added to the number of the faithful by Holy Baptism; but when tidings of this freedom of communion reached the more severely Hebrew Christians at Jerusalem, certain Hebrew Jews of them hurried to Antioch, anxious to bring the converts there under the yoke of the law. Though unauthorized in this mission by the rulers of the Church in Jerusalem[10], they urged with such persistency the necessity of circumcision for the salvation of all, that the opposition of St. Paul and St. Barnabas only raised "no small dissension and disputation," and it was agreed that the advice of the Apostles and Presbyters at Jerusalem should be sought on this important question. [Sidenote: St. Paul and St. Barnabas go to Jerusalem.] St. Paul and St. Barnabas then, "and certain others with them" (amongst whom was Titus, an uncircumcised Gentile convert[11]), went up to Jerusalem, where at this time happened to be St. Peter and St. John, as well as St. James, the Bishop of that Church[12].