Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/99

 justice of the complaint and demand, if he still maintain his enmity and wrong against thee, thou art no longer held by the apostolic pledge to treat him with brotherly regard; but having slighted all friendly advice, and the common sentiment of the brethren, he has lost the privilege of their fellowship, and must be to thee as one of the low world around him—a heathen and an outcast Jew." On this occasion, also, he renewed to them all, the commission to bind and loose, which he had before particularly delivered only to Peter. As he had, in speaking of the treatment, made abundant requisitions for the exercise of forbearance, without mentioning the proper limit to these acts of forgiveness, Peter now put his question: "If my brother sin against me seven times, and as often make the reparation which I may honestly ask, shall I continue to forgive him?" That is, "Shall I not seem, by these repeated acts of forbearance, at last to be offering him inducements to offend against one so placable? And if these transgressions are thus enormously multiplied, will it not be right that I should withhold the kind consideration which is made of so little account?" The answer of Jesus is, "I say to thee, not merely till seven times, but till seventy times seven." That is, "To your forbearance towards an erring and returning Christian brother, there should be no limit but his own obstinate adhesion to his error. In coming out from the world to follow me, you have given up your natural rights to avenge, either legally or personally, those injuries which pass the bounds of common forbearance. The preservation of perfect harmony in the new community to which you have joined yourself, is of so much importance to the triumphant advancement of our cause, as to require justly all these sacrifices of personal ill-will." With his usual readiness in securing an abiding remembrance of his great leading rules of action, Jesus, on this occasion, concluded the subject with illustrating the principle, by a beautiful parable or story; a mode of instruction, far more impressive to the glowing imagination of the oriental, than of the more calculating genius of colder races.

This inquiry may have been suggested to Peter by a remark made by Christ, which is not given by Matthew as by Luke, (xvii. 4.) "If he sin against thee seven times in a day, and seven times turn again, &c. thou shalt forgive him." So Maldorat suggests, but it is certainly very hard to bring these two accounts to a minute harmony, and I should much prefer to consider Luke as having given a general statement of Christ's doctrine, without referring to the occasion or circumstances, while Matthew has given a more distinct account of the whole matter. The discrepancy between the two accounts has seemed so great, that the French harmonists, Newcome, LeClerc, Macknight, Thirlwall, and Bloomfield, consider them as referring to