(14) After the way which they call heresy.--Better, which they call a sect. The Greek noun is the same as in Acts 24:5, and ought, therefore, to be translated by the same English word. As it is, the reader does not see that the "way" had been called a heresy. In using the term "the way," St. Paul adopts that which the disciples used of themselves (see Note on Acts 9:2), and enters an implied protest against the use of any less respectful and more invidious epithet.

So worship I the God of my fathers.--Better, perhaps, so serve I, the word being different from that in Acts 24:11, and often translated by "serve" elsewhere (Acts 7:7; Hebrews 8:5). The "service" includes worship, but is wider in its range of meaning.

Believing all things which are written . . .--This was a denial of the second charge, of being a ring leader of a sect. His faith in all the authoritative standards of Judaism was as firm and full as that of any Pharisee. The question whether that belief did or did not lead to the conviction that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, was one of interpretation, with which Felix, at all events, had nothing to do, and which St. Paul, when making a formal apologia before a Roman ruler, declines to answer.

Verse 14. - A sect for heresy, A.V.; serve for worship, A.V.; our for my, A.V. (my is better, as following "I serve," and addressed to a Roman judge); which are according to the Law, and which are written in the prophets for which are written in the Law and in the prophets, A.V. A sect, This, of course, refers to this expression of Tertullus in verse 5, Πρωτοστάτης τῆς τῶν Ναζωραίων αἱρέσεως, "Ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes." The word αἵρεσις, which means primarily "choice," has not necessarily or even ordinarily a bad sense. In classical Greek its secondary sense was a "sect" or "school" of philosophy, Academics, Peripatetics, Stoics, Epicureans, etc. The Jews applied it to their own different schools of thought. So in Acts 5:17 we read, Αἵρεσις τῶν Σαδδουκαίων, "The sect of the Sadducees;" in Acts 15:5, Αἵρεσις τῶν Φαρισαίων, "The sect of the Pharisees;" in Acts 26:5 St. Paul speaks of himself as having been a Pharisee, Κατὰ τὴν ἀκριβεστάτην αἵρεσιν τῆς ἡμετέρας θρησκείας, "After the straitest sect of our religion" (see too Acts 28:22). It begins to have a bad sense in St. Paul's Epistles (1 Corinthians 11:19; Galatians 5:20; and 2 Peter 2:1, αἱρέσεις ἀπωλείας, where, however, it gets its bad sense from the ἀπωλείας joined to it). In ecclesiastical writers it came to have its worst sense of "heresy" as something worse even than "schism." In this reference to Tertullus's phrase, St. Paul seems hardly to admit that Christianity was properly called "a sect" by the Jews, but gives it the milder term of "the Way" (see Acts 9:2, note). The God of our [my] father (τῷ πατρῳ Θεῷ); comp. Galatians 1:14; and Acts 22:3; Acts 28:17. Observe how St. Paul throughout insists that, in becoming a Christian, he had not been disloyal to Moses, or the Law, or the prophets, or to the religion of his fathers, but quite the contrary. According to the Law. Κατὰ τὸν νόμον may mean either, as in the R.V., "according to the Law," or, as Meyer takes it, "throughout the Law," and then is better coupled, as in the A.V., with τοῖς γεγραμμένοις. The Law, and... the prophets (as Matthew 5:17; Luke 24:27, 44).

24:10-21 Paul gives a just account of himself, which clears him from crime, and likewise shows the true reason of the violence against him. Let us never be driven from any good way by its having an ill name. It is very comfortable, in worshipping God, to look to him as the God of our fathers, and to set up no other rule of faith or practice but the Scriptures. This shows there will be a resurrection to a final judgment. Prophets and their doctrines were to be tried by their fruits. Paul's aim was to have a conscience void of offence. His care and endeavour was to abstain from many things, and to abound in the exercises of religion at all times; both towards God. and towards man. If blamed for being more earnest in the things of God than our neighbours, what is our reply? Do we shrink from the accusation? How many in the world would rather be accused of any weakness, nay, even of wickedness, than of an earnest, fervent feeling of love to the Lord Jesus Christ, and of devotedness to his service! Can such think that He will confess them when he comes in his glory, and before the angels of God? If there is any sight pleasing to the God of our salvation, and a sight at which the angels rejoice, it is, to behold a devoted follower of the Lord, here upon earth, acknowledging that he is guilty, if it be a crime, of loving the Lord who died for him, with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. And that he will not in silence see God's word despised, or hear his name profaned; he will rather risk the ridicule and the hatred of the world, than one frown from that gracious Being whose love is better than life.But this I confess unto thee,.... What was truth he was not ashamed of, but ready to own, and bear his testimony for, whatever was the consequence of it:

that after the way which they call heresy; referring to the charge of his being a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes, Acts 24:5 and meaning by the way the Christian religion, or the doctrines of Christianity, which the Jews called heresy; and as early as this were the Christians, by them, called heretics: so we read (r) of , "a prayer against the heretics", which Samuel (the little) composed before, or in the presence of R. Gamaliel the elder, he approving of it; which R. Gamaliel was Paul's master; and some have thought, that Samuel the little, the composer of this prayer, was Saul himself; so that he knew very well that the Christian doctrine was called heresy, and the Christians heretics, for he had called them so himself in the time of his unregeneracy; but now he was not ashamed to profess that way, and walk in it, and according to it worship God, as follows:

so worship I the God of my fathers; even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, suggesting, that by embracing Christianity, he had not denied, and gone off from the worship of the one, only, living, and true God, the God of Israel; and that there was an entire agreement between the saints of the Old Testament, and the Christians of the New, in the object of worship; the Vulgate Latin version reads, "so serve I the Father, and my God"; that is, God the Father, who is the Father of Christ, and the God and Father of believers in him:

believing all things which are written in the law and the prophets; which the Sadducees did not; and strictly adhering to these, and not to the traditions of the elders, as did the Scribes and Pharisees; so that since he believed whatever was contained in the sacred writings, he could not be charged justly with heresy; and as he believed, so he taught nothing but what was agreeably to the Scriptures of the Old Testament.

(r) Ganz Tzemach David, par. 1. fol. 25. 2. Vid. T. Bab. Beracot, fol. 28. 2. & 29. 1. Maimon. Hilch. Tephilla, c. 2. sect. 1.