Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/98

 78 ACTON BURNELL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES the expedition of the Austrian General Mack against the French. He lost his prestige after the disastrous result of the campaign, and was finally in 1806 ousted from power. His second son, CHABLES JANUABIUS EDWABD (1803-'47), became a cardinal in 1842. Sir John's brother, JOSEPH EDWABD, was a lieutenant general in the Neapolitan service, and became the pro- genitor of several distinguished naval officers ; and the Italian minister of marine in 1869-'70, Bear Admiral GEOBGE ACTON, and several other officers of the present day, residents of Naples, are members of the same family. Sir John Francis Edward Acton was succeeded as 7th baronet by his son FEBDINAXD RICHARD EDWABD (1801-'37), who married in Paris in 1832 the only child of the duke of Dalberg, and assumed the name of Dalberg- Acton. His widow be- came in 1840 the wife of the present Earl Granville, and died in 1860. Sir JOHN EME- BIO EDWABD DALBEBG-ACTON, born Jan. 10, 1834, studied from 1850 to 1854 at the univer- sity of Munich, made then with his stepfather Lord Granville a tour through the United States, and married in 1865 a daughter of Count Arco- Valley of Munich. He founded in 1861 the "Home and Foreign Review," an organ of the liberal Catholics, and edited in 1863 Matinees royales, a work ascribed to Frederick the Great, in regard to which there has been much controversy in Germany. In 1870 he took an active part in the Old Catholic movement, and has published in its support, in the German language, Zur Geschichte des vaticani&chen Concilg (Munich, 1871). He was in 1860 elected member of parliament for Car- low, Ireland; and again, as candidate of the liberal party, in 1865 for Bridgnorth, England. In 1869 he was made a peer as Baron Acton. ACTON BURNELL, an English statute, so named because the parliament at which it was Eassed was held at Acton Burnell, a little vil- ige in Shropshire. The date of the statute is Oct. 12, 1283. It is the first statute passed in England enabling merchants to recover debts due to them, and is therefore often called Statutum Mercatorum, or statute of the mer- chants. By it the mayor or the sheriff might seize and sell the chattels and lands of the debtor, or, if he had no effects, might detain him in prison until the debt was paid, feeding him meanwhile on bread and water if he was too poor to support himself, maintenance money to be added to the original debt. The statute of Acton Burnell met with much oppo- sition from the sheriffs. The Jews were ex- cluded from the benefits of this liberal statute, which was passed to encourage the settlement of foreign merchants in England. Barrington states that a similar ordinance was not passed in France till 1536, in the reign of Francis I. The statute of merchants is considered an epoch in the social history of the middle class of England, and indicated their growing power. ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, the fifth book of the New Testament, and the last of those prop- erly historical. It is recognized on all sides that the Acts were written by the same author as the third Gospel, and the early tradition of the church was firm and constant in ascribing them to Luke. Schleiermacher regarded the book as an aggregate of various reports by dif- ferent writers, and ascribed the most important of these works, the writer of which is charac- terized by the use of the word we, to Timo- thy. This view was supported by De Wette, Bleek, and other critics. Mayrhoff (1835) as- cribed the whole book to Timothy, while Schwanbeck ( Ueber die Quellen der Schriften des Lukas, 1847) assumed Silas to be the au- thor. The authenticity and canonical charac- ter of the book was in the ancient church only denied by a few heretical sects, such as the Ebionites and Hanichceans, whose objections were entirely of a dogmatical, not of an histor- ical character. Chrysostom, however, com- plains that even in his time the book was not so much as known. In modern times the crit- ics of the Tubingen school, in particular Baur, Zeller, and Schwegler, assumed the book to have been written in the course of the 2d cen- tury. Those who assert the authorship of Luke, including Renan, variously fix the time of writ- ing between 58 and 80. The author clearly indicates that for the materials of the lat- ter part of the book (xvi. 11 to xxviii. 31) he has drawn upon his own recollection or upon that of the apostle Paul. For the first part the author is believed by some writers of the critical school to have made use of older writ- ings, and in particular of the apocryphal book entitled "Preaching of Peter." As regards the design of the Acts, it has long been a prev- alent opinion that Luke intended to follow up his history of the life of Christ by a narrative of the establishment and early progress of the Christian religion. The opinion of Hugo Gro- tius that this book was intended to trace the lives of the two chief apostles, Peter and Paul, has found many supporters among the theolo- gians. According to Schneckenburger, whose Ueber den Zweck der Apostelgeschichte (1841) is the first important work on the subject from the standpoint of the critical German school, the author wished to write an apology of Paul against his Judaizing opponents, and to prove that he was in no point inferior to any of the other apostles, and in particular to Peter. This theory was somewhat modified by Baur, the chief of the Tubingen school, who under- took to show that the Acts had been compile " in the 2d century for the purpose of effectii a reconciliation 6f Petrine and Pauline Chris anity. The most important work of the Tu- bingen school on the subject is that of Zeller, Die Apostelgeschichte nach ihrem Inhalt ur Ursprung kritisch untersucht (1854), whicl regards the Acts as a book proceeding from the Pagan-Christian party, and intended to purchase the peace of the church by some con- cessions to the Judaizing Christians. The in- spired character of the book has been defende "