So did I speak, but my heart is often tenderer than my words, and I strove again to be reconciled with the Jews, and abode in Corinth proving their folly to them by the Scriptures till again they sought to rid themselves of me by means of the Romans, saying before Gallic:  this fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to the law.  But Gallic, understanding fully that his judgment seat had not been set up for the settling of disputes of the spirit, but of the things of this world, drove the Jews out of his court, and there was an uproar and Sosthenes, a God-fearing man, was beaten.  Yet for the sake of the race of the patriarchs, the chosen people of God, I abode in Corinth till the close of the second year, when news reached me of the many dissensions that had arisen in Jerusalem.

The old questions always stirring:  whether the Gentiles should be admitted without circumcision and if the observances of the law were sufficient; if salvation could be obtained by works without faith, and many other questions that I thought had long been decided; in the hope of putting an end to these discussions, which could only end in schism, I bade the brethren good-bye on the wharf, and, shaving my head as a sign of my vow to keep the Feast of Pentecost, I set sail with Aquila and Priscilla for Syria and left them at Ephesus, though there were many Christians there who prayed me to remain and speak to them; but pointing to my shaved head, I said, my vow! and went down to Jerusalem and kept the Feast of Pentecost and distributed money among the poor, which had been given to me by the churches founded by me in Macedonia, in Greece and Syria.

I hoped to escape from discussion with James, the brother of the Lord, for of what good could it be to discuss once again things on which it is our nature to think differently, but upheld by hope that the Jews might be numbered among the faithful at the last day I told him that the Jews were the root of the olive-trees whose branches had been cut, and had received grafts, but let not the grafts, I said, indulge in vainglory; it is not the branches that bear the root, but the root that bears the branches.  And many other things of this sort did I say, wishing to be in all things conciliatory; to be, as usual, all things to all men; but James, the brother of the Lord, answered that Jesus had not come to abrogate the law but to confirm it, which was not true, for the law stood in no need of confirmation.  James could do that as well as his brother and better, and Peter not being there to bear witness of the teaching of Jesus (he too had gone forth upon a mission with John Mark as an interpreter, for Peter cannot speak Greek), Silas, who was with me, was won over by James, and easily, for Silas was originally of the Church of Jerusalem; as I have already told you, he had been sent with us to Antioch.