With respect to the Apostle Peter, he gave early signs of the dulness of his comprehension with respect to the nature of the character and kingdom of the Messiah. [175]For when Jesus had given forth but a simple parable, he was obliged to ask him the meaning of it.  This occasioned Jesus to say to him, “Are ye also yet without understanding?”

[Footnote 175:  Matt. 15.16.]

In a short time afterwards, when our Saviour told him, [176] “that he himself must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things, and be killed, and be raised again the third day, Peter took him and rebuked him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord.  This shall not be unto thee.”

[Footnote 176:  Matt. l6. 21. 22.]

At a subsequent time, namely, just after the transfiguration of Christ, he seems to have known so little about spiritual things, that he expressed a wish to raise three earthly tabernacles, one to Moses, another to Elias, and a third to Jesus, for the retention of signs and shadows as a Gospel labour, at the very time when Jesus Christ was opening the dismission of all but one, namely, “the tabernacle of God, that is with men.”

Nor did he seem, at a more remote period, to have gained more large or spiritual ideas.  He did not even know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was to be universal.  He considered it as limited; to the Jews, though the words in the great commission, which he and the other Apostles had heard, ordered them to teach all nations.  He was unwilling to go and preach to Cornelius on this very account, merely because he was a Roman Centurion, or in other words, a Gentile; so that a vision was necessary to remove his scruples in this particular.  It was not till after this vision, and his conversation with Cornelius, that his mind began to be opened; and then he exclaimed, “Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth him and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.”

The mind of Peter now began to be opened and to see things in a clearer light, when a new occurrence that took place nearly at the same time, seems to have taken the film still more from his eyes:  for while he preached to Cornelius, and the others present, he perceived that “the Holy Ghost fell upon all of them that heard his words, as on himself and the other Apostles at the beginning.”  Then remembered Peter the words of the Lord, how that he said, “John indeed baptised with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost:”  that is, Peter finding that Cornelius and his friends had received, by means of his own powerful preaching, the Holy Ghost, perceived then for the first time, to his great surprise, that he had been executing the great commission of Jesus Christ; or that he had taught a Gentile, and baptized him with the Holy Spirit.  Here it was that he first made the discrimination between the baptism of John, and the baptism of Christ.