guilty of mortal sin.  Hence he maintained that after the Passion the apostles never observed the legal ceremonies in real earnest; but only by a kind of pious pretense, lest, to wit, they should scandalize the Jews and hinder their conversion.  This pretense, however, is to be understood, not as though they did not in reality perform those actions, but in the sense that they performed them without the mind to observe the ceremonies of the Law:  thus a man might cut away his foreskin for health’s sake, not with the intention of observing legal circumcision.

But since it seems unbecoming that the apostles, in order to avoid scandal, should have hidden things pertaining to the truth of life and doctrine, and that they should have made use of pretense, in things pertaining to the salvation of the faithful; therefore Augustine (Epist. lxxxii) more fittingly distinguished three periods of time.  One was the time that preceded the Passion of Christ, during which the legal ceremonies were neither deadly nor dead:  another period was after the publication of the Gospel, during which the legal ceremonies are both dead and deadly.  The third is a middle period, viz. from the Passion of Christ until the publication of the Gospel, during which the legal ceremonies were dead indeed, because they had neither effect nor binding force; but were not deadly, because it was lawful for the Jewish converts to Christianity to observe them, provided they did not put their trust in them so as to hold them to be necessary unto salvation, as though faith in Christ could not justify without the legal observances.  On the other hand, there was no reason why those who were converted from heathendom to Christianity should observe them.  Hence Paul circumcised Timothy, who was born of a Jewish mother; but was unwilling to circumcise Titus, who was of heathen nationality.

The reason why the Holy Ghost did not wish the converted Jews to be debarred at once from observing the legal ceremonies, while converted heathens were forbidden to observe the rites of heathendom, was in order to show that there is a difference between these rites.  For heathenish ceremonial was rejected as absolutely unlawful, and as prohibited by God for all time; whereas the legal ceremonial ceased as being fulfilled through Christ’s Passion, being instituted by God as a figure of Christ.

Reply Obj. 2:  According to Jerome, Peter withdrew himself from the Gentiles by pretense, in order to avoid giving scandal to the Jews, of whom he was the Apostle.  Hence he did not sin at all in acting thus.  On the other hand, Paul in like manner made a pretense of blaming him, in order to avoid scandalizing the Gentiles, whose Apostle he was.  But Augustine disapproves of this solution:  because in the canonical Scripture (viz.  Gal. 2:11), wherein we must not hold anything to be false, Paul says that Peter “was to be blamed.”  Consequently it is true that Peter was at fault:  and Paul blamed him in very truth and not with pretense.  Peter, however, did not sin, by observing the legal ceremonial for the time being; because this was lawful for him who was a converted Jew.  But he did sin by excessive minuteness in the observance of the legal rites lest he should scandalize the Jews, the result being that he gave scandal to the Gentiles.